Daily Dose of English 148
Getting Back in the Saddle
Daily Dose of English 148
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. Oh, excuse me. In this episode, we're talking about getting back in the saddle. getting back into the saddle, which is a phrase or an expression that we use to say when you're starting something again that you maybe stopped doing. Because it comes from the idea of riding horses. A horse's saddle is that thing that you put on a horse to sit on. And if you fall off the horse, you got to get back in the saddle because you're also, you're not going to go anywhere, right? So you have to get back in the saddle to keep riding the horse. But the idea is that you fell off in the first place, right? That's why it's getting back in the saddle, not getting into the saddle. So if you were just getting in the saddle, it would be for the first time, but getting back in the saddle, which is what I'm doing here in figuratively speaking, is what we're going to be talking about. So I'm talking about getting back into the saddle because in yesterday's episode, I talked about burnout and I took a few days break. I don't actually remember exactly what day I took a break, but I think it was... Let's see, today's Tuesday and I think it was like Friday or something. So it was maybe Thursday. So it was sort of a long weekend for me. I didn't do anything Ben's Language Lab related. I just didn't, I just focus on other things. And today is my first day doing anything for Ben's Language Lab. And like I said last time, the reason that you don't notice this, that you're listening to this the day after the other one, is because I've been preparing in advance to have things like this happen. And so today I wanna talk a little bit about getting back in the saddle and how to do that and that sort of thing. First, I wanna talk about a couple of other names for it. So a couple of other phrases you could say. So there's getting back in the swing of things is also common. That's usually more for when you're starting like a bigger thing that you generally do. Like a job or I'm getting back from vacation. It doesn't specifically refer to a specific thing that you're doing. I'm recording these podcasts again, so I'm doing a specific thing, but getting back into the swing of things is more like if you get back from vacation and you have to start going to the market again and cooking and cleaning and all these things that you generally do, but it's not talking about anything specific. Getting back in the swing of things. Let's see, other ones that we have, the opposite actually is falling off the bandwagon, which is where you stop doing a general thing, so you sort of fell out of the saddle, and then you can get back on the bandwagon is also another way of saying it, but that's not as common for getting back on. Well, I mean, I guess it is, it's not uncommon. I don't know. But that one tends to sound more community-like, like it's a bunch of people doing something. So for example, if somebody is working out a lot and then they stop working out, they could say, I'm getting back. I fell off the bandwagon for going to the gym. because a lot of people go to the gym. It's a very popular thing, so it's not the same as falling off the saddle, which is a little more individual. However, you can use all of these mostly interchangeably. Nobody's going to think it's that weird if you said that, like if I was to use getting back onto the bandwagon, or if you said you fell off the saddle with your working out. Those all also make sense. I'm just saying that they have a slight feeling towards that thing. So I'm getting back onto the saddle, back into the saddle rather, for recording and I feel good. I'm glad that I took a break. I feel much better and I now feel like I can focus and make good episodes and continue to record other things and maybe try out some new stuff. I'm excited to push forward now that I've lost a bit of my lead. So for these podcast episodes, I still have about three weeks ahead. But for my other series, the Tintin Comics and How English Works, which are coming out still, I'm like a week ahead, barely. So I wanna focus on getting those back ahead. is gonna be my goal. The nice thing about those is that they are not daily, so they're weekly, so it's faster to get ahead. So if I make one per day, I actually can get ahead pretty quickly. So my goal is right now is actually gonna be to finish the current Tintin that I'm recording, because I would like to finish that series and try something else with that block of time. I'm actually considering trying to do a video game playthrough of some kind, like a story-based video game. I think it might be sort of fun, or potentially doing, like reading a book, because I do enjoy reading aloud, and I think that might be fun. But we'll see. I'm not positive. I think I want to try a video game. I think that's going to be an interesting way to record and potentially very repeatable for other people trying to make content for any of their languages. So I think that's what I'm going to try next. And then for How English Works, which is the other thing that I'm recording, I want to do a couple of more episodes on that, and then potentially go back to Image Talk, because I know that some people liked Image Talk. But How English Works is my most popular series right now. Whenever those videos come out, they're the most viewed. So I think more people do just generally like those. So I'm not positive. The other thing that I might try doing is actual like very beginner stuff for like, This is people somebody's first day learning English. I haven't really done true beginner stuff yet And I'm curious what that would be like. I think it can be pretty cool. I just need to Figure out some format for for like a short story because I think like 10-minute short stories About me or like talking about as an English speaker, I guess, like talking about real life things like family or driving or shopping, things that are pretty common might be a good way to do it. The only thing that I'm worried about is like how I'm going to get good imagery in there. Because I don't know if you know, but I don't do any editing on these, any of my videos, because my goal is to make something that anybody can do theoretically as a hobby, as like a part-time hobby. And editing makes that pretty much impossible. That's the biggest error I see on comprehensible input channels is that they edit their videos a lot and editing takes so much time. It's so time intensive. And I think that is the number one reason why a lot of channels make a couple hours of input total and then they kind of just give up. but my complete lack of editing has allowed me to make two hours of content per week, over two hours of content per week for, at this point, what, it's August, I started in, I can just scroll back down, I started in the fourth month, January, February, March, April. I said it in April, so April, May, June, July, so that's four whole months of content plus a little bit of August. So if I do some quick math here, let's see, four months times, let's just say 31 days because there's a couple of days, that's not right, four months times Oh, yeah, that's what it is. Four months times 4.5 weeks-ish, like 18 weeks of content, more or less, times two is 36 hours, something like that. And so I've already produced 36 hours of content on my own in four months without really having to work that hard. Like I think I put 50 hours into this project total, which is a very good ratio. So yeah, that's what I'm trying to emulate. But anyways, I got off track. Tips for getting back into the saddle or back in the saddle is definitely to take things slow at the beginning, but push yourself. Don't go too slow. I'm going to record this episode and a Tintin episode today, but I'm not going to start by recording two Daily Dose and two Tintins. I'm not ready for that quite yet. Um, but I'm going to work up to that. So start slow, but don't start too slow so that you're like making it too easy for yourself because you're getting back, like push yourself a little bit, have fun with it as well. Um, and that's the other thing I would say is to have fun with it and focus on being positive and enjoying it rather than going, Oh no, I have to get back into this. Um, finding that positivity and enjoying it is going to be a lot better for your, your continuation of the thing. I'm also getting back in the saddle with a couple of different things. Actually, yeah, with one thing, which is going back to jujitsu, which is a martial art that I enjoy. And so I've had to remind myself to take it a little slow and be positive about it, have fun with it instead of thinking, oh, I have to do this again. And then I'm also getting in upping my exercise routine, but that's actually been pretty fun. I'm really looking forward to that. So that's not even hard to do, but yeah. So that's all the time that I have for today. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to this episode. I hope that you enjoyed it. Maybe you learned a little something here and there. And I hope that you stick around for more things that I make in the future. I'll see you then. Bye.
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