The Quest | Relaxing Talk to Unwind and Drift Off

Looking for a relaxing sleep podcast to help you unwind, quiet busy thoughts, or gently fall asleep? In this solo episode of The Insomnia Project, Marco settles in for a calm and gently wandering conversation about his quiet quest for a golden prize.
Through soft storytelling and reflective moments, Marco explores the small details, observations, and thoughts that come with pursuing something a little unusual. The episode unfolds at an unhurried pace, allowing the narrative to drift naturally in the soothing, low-stakes style listeners have come to expect.
This gentle, meandering conversation is designed to ease anxiety, quiet the mind, and help guide you toward rest — making it an ideal sleep podcast for bedtime, relaxation, or peaceful background listening during your day.
Whether you’re settling in to fall asleep, taking a calming break, or simply looking for a tranquil listening experience, this episode offers a soft place to land. And if you don’t make it to the end, that’s exactly what we hope for.
#sleeppodcast #insomniapodcast #relaxingpodcast #sleepconversation #calmpodcast #bedtimepodcast #fallasleepfast

​The Quest
(Original airdate: July 18, 2018) 

Welcome to the Insomnia Project. Sit back, relax, maybe lie down, make yourself comfortable. Listen, we're going to have an episode where I have 26 minute of light conversation that will hopefully allow you to just relax and enjoy your evening or your day or your afternoon, depending on when you're listening to this podcast. I am your host, Marco Timpano, and this is a, uh, solo episode. That's right. This is an episode where it's just going to be me, me and you on this podcast today. I spent most of the day riding around on my scooter, and I was riding back and forth because I was in search of hardware for my new powder room, faucet, sink faucet. So I was looking for. I was actually looking for the faucet that will go in our powder room. And what we're looking for is gold faucets and a gold lever for the toilet. Of course, it seems almost impossible to find gold because who has gold or brass faucet taps and the flusher or the lever of a toilet? But we're doing a powder room, and we're making it look really special, let's say. And we decided that, oh, you know, gold, little gold accents would really help make this room pop. And of course, you know, when you casually sort of decide that, you don't think, oh, how practical, or how easy is it going to be to acquire these. These items for the powder room? So today I spent the day driving to various, you know, kitchen and bath stores, and I was looking for gold color or brass faucet. And they were so expensive, so they were like, you know, pure brass. And they were far above the budget that we want to spend in the powder room. So then I spoke with someone, and they said, you should really try the Habitat for Humanity stores or the Restores, as they're called here. And I said, that's a great idea, because oftentimes people will return items or they'll donate items. And some of the items might be older. So if you get something from the 70s or 80s or even the 60s, perhaps they'll have gold faucet and then you can take that hardware and put it with your new sink. So I was like, okay, I'm on a bit of a mission. So I went to this one place, and they didn't have it. And the salesperson was really lovely, and she was like, you know, you should try one of these two stores and just call them, and they'll let you know if they have one. And she had mentioned that these two stores generally will have things more in that vein. So I was like, oh, this is great. This is leading me on a path. And it was a lovely day today. So it was like, the sun was out and it was warm, but it wasn't blistering hot, and there wasn't humidity. So it was a comfortable, lovely, sunny summer day. Perfect day for riding around on the scooter. So I called one place, and they were like, I'm sorry, we. We don't carry any of that. I'm m. Like, no problem. I'm glad you let me know. So I. I didn't, you know, waste my day coming down. And then this other place said, yes, we do have that, and we do have it in golden color. And I said, wow. And she's like, we have a few. So I'm like, oh, this is great. And then I was like, oh, I should just go down. I shouldn't wait on it. So I packed up my. My gear, and I said, I'll go. It'll take me a good 45 minutes, and it's all across the city, but I'm gonna do it. So I hopped on my scooter, went for a lovely drive. Once again, I went on one of my favorite streets, which is Bloor Street. And Bloor street in Toronto is a long street, and it stretches quite a bit. And, you know, I love the annex, which is this, you know, bohemian, sort of artsy student area that is found on Bloor Street. I love Koreatown, and that's found on Bloor Street. And I was heading to Bloor street west, so I was heading west to an area that has some really funky, cool shops on it as well. And I wasn't planning to get out and look at those shops, but even just driving by them and seeing them on a lovely day, there's such a lovely feeling. So I was like, all right, I'll go on this mission. And I went into this Habitat for Humanity store, and it was fantastic. It had just some fantastic things that people had donated. There was a champagne bucket, an old champagne bucket. It was $40. And I was like, this is such a stunning looking piece that would just look great on a shelf or if you used it for champagne. It just looked like a great solid piece. It wasn't what I was looking for. And I didn't want to pack it on my scooter because I was on a mission. And I went to go look and then I found the faucets that the person who I'd phoned had told me about. And they were bathtub faucets in antique brass. So you know, antique brass has that sort of golden brown look. And I was looking more for a bright gold look. So I was like, all right, it's not here, it's fine. It was a lovely day. Explore the store. So I was like, alright, I'll go in this Habitat for Humanity store and see what they have. And you know, I, as I said I had noticed that cool champagne bucket and then I noticed an old piano and it was really kind of neat. And then I noticed a Singer, one of those old Singer pedestal sewing machines and they were selling it for $200. And I thought, oh wow, what a cool, interesting piece. And I remember my grandmother had one of those and it was like hers. I remember being even older that you would use the pedal with your feet going back and forth, back and forth to make the actual sewing machine work. And I always wondered what happened to that because I so remember it and I so associated with my grandmother that I wish I had had it in my possession, but who knows what happened to it. And I was like, okay, so that's that, that's what, what they're worth about 200 it seemed at least at the uh, at the restore. And then I noticed, and it was like, you know, you see, you see tables and chairs and stuff that you remember from the 80s or you know, from your grandmother's house. And then I noticed this executive desk. And it was this big, big desk. It would take up a huge, I would say it would take up about 110 square feet, this desk. Because it came around almost like a, like a um, like a U shape, like a very square U shape. And it was just this big wooden executive desk that somebody would have had. It almost seemed like something that would be placed in the White House or in, in a old style, big executive, I don't know, like a throwback anyways. You could see like uh, an executive. A movie studio from the 40s would have this kind of a desk. And I was like, what a great piece. But nobody could put that in their Home office, that's for sure. And even their office. It would take up so much space that you would have to be someone who required a desk that big. But it was fascinating. It was almost like being in a contemporary museum. And, you know, there was so many different pieces there that I could just go on and on about it. But, um, you know, what a great day. What a great way to spend your day. In search of golden faucets. The quest of golden faucets, if you will. That was my day. And, uh, you know, there's a few things that I like to do when I get a chance, depending on how busy my day is. And there's, um, an app that I use. It's called Voxer, and I'll often Voxer friends of mine. And Voxer is like a WhatsApp where you can sort of send a brief message up to 15 minutes to your friend, and your friend will pick up that message whenever they can. So it's a great tool to communicate with people who live in great distances from you. So I have a friend in Los Angeles, and oftentimes I will sort of tell him about my day or what's going on during my day. And because of the time difference, it will be really, really early in the morning for him. And by the time he listens to my message, he's heading to work, and half my day has gone. Gone by. But he'll have listened to the beginning part of my day, to which he'll often, on his drive to work, respond or tell me what's going on with his day. And I'll pick it up either later on in the day while he's at work, and I'll sort of cap it up, uh, by saying, oh, you know, this is the results of what I was concerned about, or this is what happened with, you know, the meeting I was gonna have that day. And it's such a great tool. We have such great tools of communication these days and those kind of apps where you can. You can sort of hear the person's voice. So it's not an email or a text, but it's this sort of moment in time that's frozen and sent to a buddy or friend or family member of yours through one of these apps that you can then later go back and listen to. And. And you can listen to it whenever you want. But you know that there's that message waiting from wherever in the world. And, um, it's a part of my day that I always look forward to. So I'll m. Listen. And sometimes you'll just be talking. And sometimes what will happen too is you'll forget that you've pressed the button or something's happened. And so you'll talk for a good 10 minutes before you real it hasn't been recording. And then you'll have to sort of give the gist of it so that you're not re recording another 10 to 15 minute message because you've just spoken to yourself for no reason. But, um, which isn't always a bad thing either. Sometimes you can address what's going on in your day by just talking out loud to yourself. I'm certainly just talking to a microphone myself right now for this episode. So I hope you're. I hope you're either nodding in agreement or nodding off at this point. Um, I'm trying to think of other things that I'm in search of because I feel like that quest for the faucet is sort of the theme that I want to explore on this episode. You know, I've had some quests in my life. Quests to go see certain sites or attend certain events. I know that I. One of the quests I had was to attend a particular festival in New York that happens every September. And I was like, oh, I really want to go to that. But I was never in New York around that time. And then one year I happened to catch that festival and it was such a great time. And I have a friend who lives in New York, and I was able to meet up with her and we were able to explore the festival. And to be honest with you, the festival wasn't as great as I had imagined it was going to be. That said, uh, though being with my friend at New York at this festival actually made it quite, quite great. I remember too, one time me and my friend were backpacking through Europe. And whenever I travel with a friend and we're going to a place that we anticipate and we really want to go to, I always say, all right, you pick the place that you really want to explore and we'll do one day where we just explore that. And we'll explore it however long you want. And if you want to stay longer, that's totally cool, I'll go off and do something else, or I'll hang out at a cafe while you explore the museum or the park or wherever we happen to be. And then on one day, we'll do what I want to do and we'll just do it thoroughly. That way no one feels any pressure. And if that person wants to stay longer, they can, and no one's going to pressure them to get going or whatnot. So my buddy Loretto and I went to the Palio, Il Palio in Siena, and that's a medieval horse race that they do in the main piazza. And that was the thing that he really wanted to do. So he was like, I really want to do the Palio. And I was like, all right, a horse race. If this is what you want to do, we'll do it. And we got up early to get our seats, and we got our seats, a great seat in the piazza, and people were rolling in. And pretty soon the piazza filled up and there was this growing excitement. And I was like, wow, this is really exciting. And I had no, no real plan. Like, I had no real, I was like, I, I, I didn't have any agenda here. This was what he wanted to, but I was getting excited. And then I started to ask him, like, how does this work? What exactly goes on? And we started to meet people. We met somebody from California who then became my pen pal for a while. And I was like, getting excited in the horse race. And people were coming in dressed in their medieval costumes and throwing flags and whatnot. And the horse race happened and it was like a maybe a 90 second race. It was over almost as fast as it started, but it was so much excitement in that short time. And everybody was cheering and whatnot, and the winners were so happy. And it was a great experience. That wasn't even my quest. It was my friend's quest, but I had so much fun at, uh, that quest. So then it was my turn to, to follow my quest. And since we were traveling through Europe, I said, let's go. I've always wanted to go to Salzburg, Austria. And here's a funny thing. So I have a fascination with the movie the Sound of Music, because every year, you know, there's a movie that your family watches and you just, at the youngest age you can remember, you get enveloped in this film, that it's an important part of your family, and it becomes a film that resonates with you. So because the, the backdrop of Salzburg Ostro reminded my mom of her homeland or her hometown, I should say, her and her family would always watch this film. And so growing up, every Christmas when it was on, we would watch this film. And so I pretty much, I could probably recite the entire movie. If you press play or started the movie and I was watching it with you, I could. And you said, can you say all the lines before it happens? I probably could say a good 80% of the lines. Because I remember from even before I could speak, I remember watching. I remember watching it as a young child and at my grandmother's house, after we've had Christmas dinner, we'd sit and we'd watch it. And there'd be parts that people would laugh, and there was music. And sometimes we. You know, as I got older, I'd be playing games, and I could hear in the background. So I said to. I said to my buddy, I really want to go to Salzburg, and I want to go on a Sound of Music tour. I want to see all the sights that I've seen in this movie for decades now. And he's like, I've never seen this movie. I'm like, well, we did what you wanted to do. Now you're gonna do what I want to do. And he was like, oh, my goodness. I can't believe. He was like, uh, all right, let's do it. So we booked ourselves a, uh, Sound of Music tour. And we hopped on a bus. It took us to where the kids swung off the trees, where they fell into the water. The church where the family was married. The downtown where she splashes water on a horse in a fountain. And all these little moments in the film we saw. And I think during the bus rides, they play the soundtrack. And my buddy was like, this is incredible. He goes, this is something that I would never, ever do. But I'm having such fun just watching everybody, like, singing along and having a good time and seeing things they recognize. And he goes, seeing aspects of a movie that I only have a vague, foggy kind of knowledge of because people talk about it. But he goes, I couldn't tell you anything about the movie. And he was surprised that I knew so much about the movie. And so we did that for the day. And we had seen so much of Salzburg because of it. He goes, you know, I feel like I got to know this city really well through the eyes of this film, and I'm so happy that I did it. So it was two sort of adventures that I. That we had gone on for each other and really enjoyed it. And this happened also on a trip to California, where we landed in San Francisco and drove to Los Angeles. And along the way, one of the people we went with was like, I really want to go to Las Vegas. So we're like, we'll go to Las Vegas. So we went. We went to Las Vegas, and we got to see Las Vegas. And he wanted to gamble, I think, at the. MGM was one of his Things. So we all went gambling at the mgm and then we. We did everybody else's. And I'm trying to think what mine was. Mine, I think was. Oh, I don't. I don't. I think mine was to drive the bridges in San Francisco. So we did the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay. The Bay Bridge, if I'm not mistaken. Oh, please correct me if I got that wrong. Our listeners from San Francisco and then our other friend, she wanted to. Oh, you know, when it escapes you, I don't remember. And I'm sure it'll come to me, but, uh, yeah, these are some quests that I've been on. So I kind of talked about the top of my day and what I did for most of the day today. And then I talked about some other quests I've been on. I should talk about the latter part of my day, which is. Which. Which is what happened just before I started recording. So right now there's a fringe festival going on in the city. And if you're not familiar with fringe festivals or if there's not one that's happening in your city or town, it's basically a festival where people put up various shows. So the Toronto Fringe Festival is such that these theaters throughout the city get reserved for these 10 days or 12 days. And if you get picked, you can do your show at a certain venue and at various times so people can come see your show. And, uh, you know, people come into the city to see various shows. It's a great way to see quite a bit of theater, from comedy to drama to musical to kids shows. It's all there at this festival. And Edmonton Fringe Festival in Canada is huge. And the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland is the largest. And there'll be performers from all over who come to do shows here. Anyway, so I had to take my wife. She was going to see a show. She's at a show right now. She's seen a musical about Andy Warhol's life. So it's an Andy Warhol musical is what she's gone to see this evening. So I said, let's get on the scooter. It's been such a beautiful day and I'll take you down. So I'm taking her down and I'm, um, on Bathurst Street. I know I've name dropped quite a few streets. Once again, this is one of my favorite streets to be on. I've always loved Bathurst. And not that it's a particularly lovely street, although it's. It's charming in itself. But I Love Bathurst street because it was the first street when I first started driving at 16 from the burbs. It was the street I knew to take to get into the city. So I would always take Bathurst because Bathurst would take me to where I would pick up the highway to get back home and I could get off at Bathurst and just take it to get downtown. So for me it's very nostalgic. We're driving on Bathurst and all of a sudden I feel something odd with the scooter. I'm like, oh, something's going on. So I pulled over and sure enough, flat tire. So my wife's like, oh, you know what, I'll stay with you. I'm like, no, you have a show to go see. You have a friend who's waiting for you. You go see that show, I'll deal with a flat tire. A flat tire is not the end of the world. It's just a flat. It's a flat. So, um, it was more than a flat, it's really flat. And I called CA to come pick up my scooter and they were taking it to a scooter shop, which I'll deal with tomorrow. But once again, it was this, this sort of adventure that I was on. I now had to wait for the tow truck person and I was like, oh, they had said it's going to take about 55 minutes. So I was like, well, 55 minutes. I'm not going to stand here with the scooter. It's in a safe place. I pulled it over into a little parking spot. I'm gonna go for a little stroll. And now I'm on Bathurston College. And College street has a lot of little bars and whatnot. And I went to this little. And my phone of course was losing its power. Like I had very little power left. I'm like, I should find a place that can charge my phone. So I found this place and it's called Snakes and Lattes. And it's basically one of these places where it's a bar or a cafe where they've got all different kinds of board games and different kinds of games from Jenga to Catan type games to loud games to quiet games and you go there and you pay a certain amount. You can pick any game off the shelf and you play while you with your friends, while you drink coffees or beers and you have a good time and you pay for however long you're there. So I walked into that place and I'm like, hey there, I need to charge my phone. And I just thought of all the places that I could find, most likely they'll. Because it's a gaming place, they certainly must have forms of technology and they'd probably be able to help. So I went up to the person, he's like, can I, can I find you? Can I help you? I was like, I'm not here to sit and play, but I do want to see the games that you have for sale. I got my car has my. Sorry, my scooter has a flat and I'm just waiting for the tow person but my phone is dying. Is there any way we could charge your phone? And once again, this person was really lovely and was like, yeah, let me see what I can do. And he went to the bar and he, I think he removed the charger from their tablets where they sort of key in the drinks you want. And he charged my, my phone. And I knew I had a good 20 to 25 minutes in, in that store. So I was looking at various games, board games and various games and thinking, oh, could I play this with my niece and nephew, you know, or is it too advanced or too a game that requires you to be older? And then a few moments later he said, sir, your phone is ringing. I said, oh, thank you. And I picked it up and sure enough it was the um, tow company saying that somebody was going to be there in five minutes. I said, thank you so much. And it charged my phone just the right amount. And so I went and met up with the tow truck person. This really sounds like a quest now at this point, point the quest of my day. So the tow truck person comes and, and he brings, so I've got a scooter, he brings the largest flatbed truck one could ever hope to have come. And I was like, you've brought this for my scooter. And he's like, yeah, when I get a call, I just go for wherever the car call is. I'm like, you could put three car on this flatbed. And he's like, I know, but, well, I'm going to take your scooter. So I was like, okay, he's taking my scooter. And I'm like, I live around the corner. Do you need me to go with you to this shop that's closed? He's like, I know the shop. I'm like, I just don't know where you're going to put my scooter. I don't know where he goes. Don't worry about it, I will find a place to put it. And I'LL take a photo and send it to you. And I said, oh, that's really nice. So this tow truck person was sort of going out of his way. After the person at the games cafe went out of his way, I was like, all right, you know, a flat tire is not the greatest thing in the world, but everybody seems to be really lovely. And I'm like, alright, I'm gonna take a Lyft or an Uber home. I happened to take a Lyft. It was my first Lyft ride that I took. And the driver, whose name is Katelyn, was really, really lovely. And I got to sit in the front of the car because there's people in the back. And I took one of those shared, um, rides. I forget what they call them for Lyft, but what you. You get what I'm saying? It's more than one person. And, you know, I just started talking to her and saying what a nice night it was and said, do you mind if I roll down your window? She's like, no, it's a great night. So we were chatting and she was telling me her favorite podcast and, you know, I told her I was a podcaster and she wanted to know more about the Insomnia Project. So if you're listening, Caitlin, thank you for a lovely ride. And it was one of those rides, one of those Uber rides where you're having a great time speaking with a driver and you realize it's a short distance, so you're already home. But it was lovely and I thanked her and, uh, she was like, it was lovely having you in my vehicle. And actually, as I look at the time, it was lovely having you on my quest. After the Uber, after, sorry, the Lyft ride, I came home and I'm like, gonna record a podcast and then I'm gonna post it right away. So thank you for listening, as always. The Insomnia Project is recorded, I should say is produced by drumcast Productions. It's not always recorded in Toronto, but this one is. And you certainly took a little ride with me through the city. I hope you have a great evening or a great afternoon or a great morning. Thank you for listening and we hope you will listen and sleep.