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and welcome to Karen Glasser live interviews with some of the creative voices of today so whether you're here
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live or on replay make sure to say hi in the comments and tell us where you're watching from
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today we have an important topic we are talking about inclusivity and mental health my guest today is Rob Glasser he
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gets real about mental health as someone who has had challenges he's doing his best to advocate for inclusion in a
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world that isn't built for people with disabilities as a mental health advocate he is active in the online space
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fighting for disability inclusion via online podcasts and shows as well as
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bi-weekly wellness events so Rob welcome to the show
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howdy everybody how are you uh not too bad uh on the opposite side
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of the screen now so you know but other than that I'm usually up on here anyway so so in case you're wondering yes this
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is my son um who I'm extraordinarily proud of for many things but especially because of what he's doing right now in terms of of
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um helping people as a mental health advocate so we're gonna Jump Right In Rob and I'm just going to ask a question
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when somebody says mental health what do they mean what is mental health so I thought long and hard I bypassed
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the informational ones because those are very clinical a lot of the websites that um have it you know Nami who all that
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stuff so I think the best way to put it is your thoughts your feelings and how
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you take care of them um a better term might be emotional
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health because it's um a way of describing you know just
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that your your emotions so I think for you know the ease of people watching I
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think that's the best way to go about describing it it's just it's how you make sure you're inside brain is is
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doing okay okay I think that makes sense so would you say um that the whole idea
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of mental health or mental disabilities or mental challenges has that changed through the years is it because it's
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much more prevalent now people are talking about it are they not talking about it what has changed that's true I
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mean I saw I'm a big history above so when I watch a series from way way back
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when before mental health was a thing it definitely was looked at a lot differently so it was kind of a negative
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thing it was sometimes even a you know a demonic thing you know if you have a if you have a mental illness you might have
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been you know possessed um today for I guess maybe even recently-ish
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um there's more trying to figure it out um you know like therapists do their
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thing regular medical professionals do their thing um but I would say
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it's good or it's better because it's talked
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about it's not necessarily something that's fixable per se but if you bring it up
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enough it's it's on your mind so that to me is what makes it better than it would have
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been maybe even 10 years right right so I hear you say a lot and I've heard a
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lot of people say this and in fact I used it as part of the intro and that was the word inclusion so
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um what do we mean when we say inclusion in terms of Mental Health
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um Okay so I know tough one to answer directly but
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I think in terms of making your day-to-day
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business easier um allowing your customer or yourself
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for that matter to be able to do activities for business or whatever
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um you have to make it easy for different types of challenges so to
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speak um if it's okay I'll run into some of the ones we talked about last week
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um so delivery to your home is probably the biggest one um instacart doordash Uber whatever it
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is you can get you know dinner delivered you can get groceries you can get uh Home Improvement stuff because a lot of
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those companies deal with Home Depot and stuff like that that's probably the best
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example and it's not new obviously delivery has been going on but I think it hasn't really been thought about
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until more recently how much better and how much easier it makes uh the daily
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person uh you know do and this just goes for anybody not even if you initially have a challenge but just generally the
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ability that you have to go on your phone or call and be like okay I need milk eggs and whatever and it comes to
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your door so that's a very easy example um especially for someone like I who
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doesn't like to go outside a lot with anxiety it's easier for me to get my stuff to me because I can get what I
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need in a much safer fashion um I guess oh I'm sorry
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so I would assume that it's that individuals who have some mental
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challenges mental health challenges or physical challenges right yeah I was
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thinking about that too yeah so really anybody with any sort whether it's physical mental emotional whatever it is
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it's gonna make your life easier now on the topic of the physical thing you know we do have the inventions of you know
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Wheelchairs and stuff like that which I've obviously made that type of thing 50 times better because it allows you to
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go right but that's more of the technical that's like you know you make it because you know your job as the
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company is to make it able for somebody to move around when it comes to this kind of thing it's
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not really necessity I mean there still are supermarkets there's still a Home Depot so so you can still go there this
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though makes it better for more specifically people with with
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difficulties but it just it makes it easier to do right what you would do
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regularly um but it doesn't stop you from doing it the other way it just makes it easier
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for those who can't I guess go right go out now
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there's also examples though of companies out there who have actually gone in the entirely different direction
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um and we've talked you and I have talked about this a lot in fact this is where you are very involved as as a
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vocal individual in fact I saw a tweet that you did today um that got quite a bit of a response
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and and action going on about this and so let's talk a little bit about Niantic
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oh okay we're jumping in there okay um sure um okay so yeah that's a funny subject
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now first what is Niantic what is this is a app company that focuses on AR
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virtual reality their focus is mainly giving you apps that you can go outside and explore the real world through your
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phone which seems counterintuitive anyway but you know that's what AR is it's real fake life it's augmented
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reality it's kind of cool yeah everyone's doing it too um so yeah so they're one of the many
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people so before I go into more of that but I think generally speaking you know obviously you have Microsoft and Xbox
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you have blizzard you have uh Playstation all these companies they the
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bigger companies before Niantic have already made the implementations to make it easier so for instance Xbox has
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um for visually impaired they have easier reading on the screen for people with movement with their hands they have
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controllers that are easier for you to use um for audible issues you have uh people
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reading to you on the screen so those companies I think for a while now have already gone over
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that I think Google does that too as well so there's a lot of the internet people that are doing that now
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um for good or not good when you have a company like Niantic and others as well
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um gaming is different than it used to be gaming is now a job gaming you can make money off
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of gaming you win trophies for um ABC will show I think it's Minecraft
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competition live and it's really 100 people sitting in a room on the computer playing a game which again seems a
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little odd but what are you gonna do very odd I can't even imagine why that would be entertaining but okay fine you
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know I guess that's in a way I guess that's kind of what we're doing too but you know in a different form
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um so gaming has become more of a thing than it was it's not just a thing you plew for a living
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with Niantic and other games the one I do is Pokemon go obviously you can tell
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I'm addicted from behind me um they had other ones they had a Harry Potter one that they had to shut down
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they have one called Pikmin Bloom which basically instead of collecting Pokemon you collect flowers and that's their
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thing their ideas behind their apps are to walk around and go out which generally speaking is not a bad idea I
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mean if you want to walk around your block if you want to do whatever if you can right go for it be my guest that's
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not a problem right um it's become clear that companies like
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them it's it's hard to get a hold of them and it's hard to get them to listen or at least to make
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them think like they're listening um when you live where we do where it's 120 the weather is a big issue you don't
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want to walk outside when it's that hot anyway however there are places on the
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East Coast where it's storming and it's hailing and I guess somebody said it was flooding the other day outside of their house
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it's not always just necessarily the mental part but it's the physical too and the problem with all of the bubble
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together with the gaming here is it's one thing to ask a question have
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them come back and say we can or cannot because when you ask a question and you get a
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very generic robot answer or no answer right it becomes clear that there's a
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problem right right and that's the issue
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but if I recall and that's so let's go back two years and um when you know we
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were living through a pandemic we're living through covet and in fact my understanding is is that they did some of these things they brought them in so
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that because they knew people couldn't go out yeah so they they call them voters right yeah so they called them
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bonuses which are now taken away because they're no longer a bonus people called them a quality of life uh change which
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is a different term obviously the bonuses would consist of being able to do more from home so incense which is
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something used in the game is stronger when you're not moving um you can remotely uh raid together so
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if there's a gym in New York and you have a friend that lives there you can raid in New York from California via
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this pass um things like that so they call them bonuses and they make it very clear when
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they respond this is what they had planned all along and again fine
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whatever that's their call they can do what they want right it's you know and and really I you know the
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it's not on me or others to really say what they're doing they're the business they make their decision they do what
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they want it actually brings out something really quick that I was reading for a video I did last week that even though the government has ways to
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control this stuff it's really the business that has the bottom line so because you know I was at home talking
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to my wife we were talking about and we came to the conclusion that this is not something that you go to your governor for this is not something you go to your
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people for because that's real life people that they deal with physical things right you can't call up your
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governor and say there's a company online that's it's happening that's not what you do they're going to be like
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that's not my area because you know and that's fair because that isn't what they do so that was the one thing I kind of
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wanted to remember to bring up was that you know it's so rely on people like you
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to be activists basically right and and and I use the word activist um because you are about you're literally a
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mouthpiece for other people and who who for you know can't do it themselves
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maybe that is their disability who knows but the fact that you're doing this um and helping and I have to believe
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it's it's frustrating when you don't you don't get a response or the response you get is ridiculous or those kind of
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things um so this is definitely a company that's not doing what they could be
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doing to be inclusive is that basically more or less I mean it's um
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okay I think I can't think of another word but yeah I mean basically they're you you you can tell when a somebody is
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being kind of a little dumb so to speak but you know when the people are smart
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enough and they just aren't doing it so I know these people are bright obviously they took a franchise and to be clear
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because I I always want to make sure the the Pokemon company they do they are part of this obviously because they gave
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the right to the franchise but I always want to be you know clear what I what I like about the game is that I like the
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Pokemon you know I have my little my little dudes all over my room um so I like the aspect and that's why I
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got into the game um I like that you know the anime I like the mangas I like all the stuff so that's what it was and
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it's it's partially also insulting for that because it's kind of like taking your childhood life livelihood and kind of
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screwing with it yeah and then laughing about it so it's both sides it's the fact that they know they can do things
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and for some reason and again they might be hatching some sort of plan and all of
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a sudden they're going to be like poof we're all good again right but it's it's the waiting game plus it's the kind of
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like you know you're insulting an entire group of 90s kids that grew up with right right exactly
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so I I want to jump into something that is really not to do with inclusivity exactly but it has to do with mental
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health and having structure in your life and and having the ability um to have schedules and routines in the
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importance of doing that and also the importance of having a person or persons
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around you helping you how does how does that work okay well actually in a weird way
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because when I was playing the game that was kind of part of my day so I'd always take a couple you know an hour to go on
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the game and play um but yeah um scheduling generally which I know
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everybody's been doing since the dawn of time but uh scheduling in general
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um allows you to not necessarily think too hard and just kind of do your thing
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so you know I have days where I do certain things I have times I do certain things whatever obviously we're not into
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getting my schedule here but generally speaking on a regular weekday or a regular day
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um I have what I do for a reason um the the second part about having the
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surrounding around you is definitely helpful too because obviously if you're in the same household of somebody and
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you have to kind of explain them what's going on it's good to have them go oh you know I see what's going I see why
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you're doing what you're doing um but generally yeah when it comes to and this is kind of where I like to
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educate and why like I like The Advocate but I also like being the educator too because I like to explain why that kind
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of thing works but definitely it makes the day just kind of go by as it should
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no need to stop and think no need to concern you kind of you wake up you know
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what you're doing and then when you do have the the off hours you can then go okay well I did what I got to do now
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let's go play a game or now let's go I agree I have to tell you I understand
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exactly I'm as as you know I'm very calendar oriented I'm very task list oriented I'm very structured because
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when I am not I feel out of control and um and it affects my mental health
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because I don't feel like I'm now in control so that is something that works for me for those of us who those of you
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who are listening in right now that's something you might want to consider if if you have some mental health challenges we're going to post it
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through some other things right now but that's something easy that you can actually do on your own right in your
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own home wherever you are in your work and actually create that schedule to
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keep you together so let's I want to jump into what laws or rules in play do
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you kind of touched on it you said the government really can't yeah okay so as far as things like for
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physical disabilities obviously you have companies and online now uh that has to
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have certain things so your websites need to be big and bold uh you can't have too many flashy colors you have to
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make sure you have you know black and white screen depending and then as far as in real life uh you know wheelchair
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ramps ability to open doors without having to push the door and again a lot of these things have been around for a
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while but you don't always think about it until you look back and go oh that's a really great invention you know
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because so you have uh stuff like that and again place to place differs so things that we have in California will
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be different on the other side just because of where we are so for you know kind of like the natural disasters we have earthquake protection right whereas
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the other side has snow protection because you know they don't get earthquakes as much as you know we do so
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those are the laws and rules and I think you know again I don't watch the news a lot but I think for what seems to be
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going on they're tweaking as they go so as things come up the government for what they can
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do will say oh this seems like a cool idea let's see if we can put this in the hearing it may not go for everybody
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maybe it'll just be you know California Nevada and Arizona and that's it maybe
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it'll be in the country so those are the kind of things that are uh already in play so let's talk a
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little bit about remote work um you know for for some of us I've been I've been working remotely most of my
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life and I know that you work remotely but with the pandemic and with everything that was going on everybody
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was working remotely for a while right and my guess is for those who had mental
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health challenges it was it could have either have been a really good thing or a really bad thing um you know not being able to get out I
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know that there has been a very big rise in mental health challenges during this this time frame that we're in but it
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also could be a really good thing because if you are challenged by by having OCD or social anxiety or whatever
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you have not having to go out and not having to be in an environment right
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that is uncomfortable actually it's almost like everybody got to do what you do right you do it at home and do it at
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home do you see that um the people that you are in Communications with that have
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mental health disabilities are they going to stay home now is that what they're looking to do is is to continue
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to work remotely because when they realize they could do it I mean um you know I don't know I think
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everybody's kind of personally making their individual things um some people seem to like it some
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people seem to hate it just like you said um you know I it'll be interesting to see I
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I don't um I would think some of the people I talk to they
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probably prefer it some people I know have to because of their their physicality
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um but I can see how some people I talk to probably want to go back out and do their thing too so right you know it's
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um that's the one thing you like having the option and yeah I mean for me personally I like having the option yes
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as far as other people that's one of the few things I I really don't know because it's such a everything's changing that
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who knows what you're gonna do tomorrow pigs you know but good point good good
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good point so let's talk a little bit about now um what's out there for mental health help
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um you know for if you're listening right now and um and I'm going to use the word trigger that is a word that is actually used I
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believe in mental health situations or where you might watch something and you
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will you say I'm triggered and what does that mean what does the word triggered mean in the mental health program excuse
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uh well it depends so there's the it's it's for me it seems to be kind of like
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a memory thing too it could be good or bad uh you could read up on something that goes oh I remember doing that when
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I was a kid or you can see something and go oh and it kind of knocks you out of your sorts uh depending on your
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sensitivities I guess um I because of triggers I've never
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actually looked up the definition personally but I think from knowing what I've seen and what I've known
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um triggers real you know most of the time it's usually bad because it's not the show of something you want to think
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about but it can be you know you can use it in a positive way
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um and kind of reframe your your brain in a way but one way or the other it's
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something that will make you think of something else that will either stick in your brain or maybe kind of make you
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smile because it's like ah I remember doing that in memory yeah the trigger is
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in my I think I would Define it I think trigger trigger on the gun you know you you're gonna you're gonna let it go yeah
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I I think that um trigger basically has an emotion you end up having an emotion
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about it whether it's a good feeling or a bad feeling but you are triggered by it so for the those people who are
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watching right now you're tuning in and you and we're talking about mental health it could be triggering you
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um I want to we want to give you some resources of places that you can go to to actually get some information so the
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NIMH what does that stand uh National Institute of Mental Health and
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website yeah it's one of the few it's um similar well no I'm sorry Nami I think is state-owned so this is one of
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the few that's actually government uh widespread throughout uh USA and I think
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they do other places but I'm not sure but I know for sure for United States um they have a lot of they're it's
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similar to like what the who does for General Health right these guys do for uh mental health so to get information
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to research to find out more one might go to this site correct yeah there's I think there's a search bar at the top
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and you can type in whatever you might be interested and they should bring you down a bunch of Articles and resources
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and stuff you can read through so the next resource is a d a and what is the
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American American Disability Act so this is It's government but it's actually a piece of paper which I learned recently
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I thought it was a group it's actually not it's literally just a document document uh but this is the one that
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gives the yes or the no to what you can and cannot do this is the one that continuously updates
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um I guess it's actually not that old um apparently I think it's 1998 is when
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it actually first really started so up until then there was no
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you know set thing um there's you know there's there's online versions which I don't come to
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mind right now but this is if you're looking forward to see if your
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business or company might be doing something not so hot oh this might have some resources to do obviously be
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careful what you're reading and doing but if you have a question you might want to go to here to see what your uh
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personal rights might be right uh for you know and and the next thing you know
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is suicide prevention so what I want to say about this before you put give me your your
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um information about this um if you're watching this and you are having these feelings you want to reach
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out to somebody you want to reach out to the suicide prevention Lifeline reach
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out to somebody in your circle that to talk to them and that's so important so
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the suicide prevention are the live people on the other end when you go to the website yeah um I probably should
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have brought the phone number but when you go to the website I believe at the top there's the phone number so okay
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we'll go check it out later guys yeah so you can you can get the phone number from them
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um I believe I don't know I believe even like 9-1-1 you can call and tell them you're having a emergency personally
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they might send somebody to so stuff like that um there's phone numbers everywhere
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um but I know this one is a popular one uh should be promoted not not enough you
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know but um yeah they have a phone number to use um and yeah I mean it's it's definitely
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something that's newer to me because you would not think of having a phone number you know maybe 20 years ago
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um I don't know how long they've been around I'm sure they've been around for a while but um it's a good one
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it's not necessarily when you want to have to have on hand but it's good one to have in your brain and I think even
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if you just type in the word Suicide Prevention the phone number comes up on Google automatically right right and I
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think for family members of people of of their family members that have mental
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health disabilities or challenges if like you know I you as my son you have
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you have challenges and you are making a life for yourself because of those challenges which is pretty awesome you
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can tell I'm a proud mom um so this is what I want to do before I give you some last minute thoughts I
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want to let people know how they can follow you now I alluded to the fact that you do weekday everyday videos on
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mental health and on nerdy things and all sorts of stuff so we're going to
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encourage people to go follow you on YouTube at altered universe and you will find all of Rob's videos
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um he also has a podcast and you can find him on Spotify just type in Altered universe
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um but I think actually you can just type it in it will find you um twitch he's on Twitch now twitch is a gaming platform correct uh mainly gaming
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but if you look hard enough you'll find uh people doing podcasts now and people doing
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um other things too but yeah it's a specific gaming one but it's a very it's
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very popular it's definitely a lot easier if you're looking to use something to grow it's not as specific
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as YouTube is you only you know need to you I mean I think you know 50 people to get your thing off the ground
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um and they allow you to you know yeah you still there's still the rules obviously if you if you put up something not appropriate they'll take it down but
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it's become uh probably one of the better ones as far as Gamers but you
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know it's opening it up to other video people yeah that's that's very interesting now I mentioned also that
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you are very active on Twitter and for those of you who don't play on Twitter and you go on Twitter they know don't
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know what to do with it it's literally a conversation and what happens is is that if you have a following you know however
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big it is or however small and you comment on somebody's tweet and they come and back and then you come and back
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what do you have now you have a conversation and so your conversations on Twitter tend to be I mean not all of
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them but tend to be you you're being an activist or you're being an advocate for inclusivity so I encourage people to go
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check it out and get part of the conversation and last but certainly not
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least you also have a visibility on LinkedIn and I just realized as I'm
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talking to you we didn't give them your website so I'm going to go ahead so let's while I'm doing that I'm going to
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ask you um to give some last minute thoughts on those people who maybe have health
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challenges mental health challenges um they they realize that where they are it's not as inclusive as it should be
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any suggestion for these people as I type out your website and put it up
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um all right well I mean I'll kind of say that and kind of give you just some final thoughts too as well
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um so yeah I mean the the biggest deal here and I think it's aimed towards companies
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and businesses and such um the one we didn't bring up that I kind of want to do really quick was the Living Desert
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um which is a zoo by us and they actually have a sensory bag for people
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who have high functioning anxiety you get fidget toys you have uh headphone or
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ear muffs whatever they are uh there's quiet zones at the zoo so if you kind of need a decompression time you can stop
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the map actually tells you where to not go at certain times because it gets busier because those are the animals you
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want to see um so that's that I think the most important thing here to do is you don't
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have to be humongous business to know what you're doing and if a zoo in a
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small area can do that so can a bigger business too and it's not calling out
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anybody I mean a lot of people are doing it well you know I mentioned like Google Microsoft uh they're doing it pretty
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good for the motion they're like 98 there but but I would say the biggest thing is if you have some sort of a
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difficulty or problem you know write your letters call your call your Congressman whatever it is you do
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um call up the people that you think have some pull in your area
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um they might not have an immediate or an exact answer but they can at least
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pass on the notes they can at least send you to somebody else you know give you an email so I would say that's the most
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important thing um it's doing what you do for you is fine but if
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you're looking to kind of like expand that to others and everybody else fortunately or unfortunately depending
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on how you look at it um you got to go to the the big people that are that are running the the world
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so to speak and those are the the men and the women that are
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that that should have the ability I say should because obviously but um I would
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say that's my biggest uh thing to tell people is uh write people email people
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call them do whatever you do and like you said start conversing and at some
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point someone's going to hit and go oh okay and that's when you continue your
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your your speech to the to them like your Tweet today and there was a woman who you actually for you you retweeted
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something that she wrote yes he responded back to you so now for those
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of you who don't know how social media works that's how it works now Rob is in the vision of this very powerful woman
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who is actually involved in this well I put your website up what are people going to say it's a very cool website by
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the way but what are people going to find over there the first thing I'll say is Pokemon of course um now we have a whole bunch of things
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uh we have our blogs that vary from nerd to educational
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we have uh some freebies on there coloring pages arts and crafts all that
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good stuff too because that's something else we like to do at home is arts and crafts because it's fun um I believe we have some of our videos
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up there as well so if you want to check them there um and we're you know we're updating as
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we go so anytime we have a new video or a new event whatever we'll put up the information there
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um yeah it's pretty easy and they can go on your mail list your email list so yeah yeah we have to subscribe and that
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way you won't you miss out all the fun stuff and we have a monthly email we send out and all that too so yeah you
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don't spam people I can attest to that um you know because there are some free
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downloads in there and the reason why you have the arts and crafts and stuff like that is because it's really good for mental health and it's really you
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know all of that stuff so it's there is we do Connect the Dots here Rob
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thank you for being on the show this is a treat for me obviously but thank you for being on the show
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um I want to thank all of our viewers you have a choice as to where you spend your time you chose to spend it with
32:50
Robin I today we want to thank you go out and give someone an awesome day and we'll see you next time on the next
32:55
Karen Glasser live goodbye everyone bye guys