Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 794: Rediscovering Myself Through Running with Aaron Klein
Transcript
- 0:10Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson. My
- 0:14mission is to help Trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be human,
- 0:19to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in who
- 0:23we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating authenticity,
- 0:28genuineness and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more about my
- 0:33courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com. That's the
- 0:38Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. So five four, three,
- 0:44two and one, our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very
- 0:49excited to have as my guess say Aaron Klein. Aaron, welcome, Hi,
- 0:53Thanks guy, all right, good to meet you. Thanks so much
- 0:55for joining me today. So Aaron got into no Headphones Running in twenty twenty
- 1:00three unknowingly. It quickly transcended into a lifestyle choice and a form of self
- 1:06therapy that has unlocked a lot of self examination and has allowed him to explore
- 1:11his curiosities. Aaron lives an alcohol free lifestyle nearing nine years as of January
- 1:18twenty fourth of Booze Free Living. He's an advocate of healthy living and in
- 1:22general exploring curiosities that come up. One thing he preaches is this never give
- 1:27up all right eron welcome. So before we could go into here, share
- 1:32with the listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently. I mean,
- 1:36so if we go all the way back to my early life originally,
- 1:38I'm from the Bay Area, grew up in Sunnyvale, California, lived a
- 1:42little bit of time there until I moved up to Washington State in nineteen ninety
- 1:48three. I was a about eight years old, and so I've been up
- 1:51up here in Washington State ever since. My wife and I spent a small
- 1:55little portion of time about two years down in San Diego. But we move
- 2:00back up to Washington in November of twenty nineteen to deal with the perfect weather.
- 2:05No, couldn't deal with the perfect weather now, couldn't deal with it.
- 2:08Now. We missed home. We found out we were having a child,
- 2:10and so we didn't have a support system down there like we do up
- 2:15here. So we just made the trek back home and I bought a couple
- 2:19acres of property and we now have our horses at our house. And so
- 2:23yeah, we're up here in Port Orchard, Washington, which is in a
- 2:27general puge of sound area just across the bay from Seattle. So awesome.
- 2:31So your bio was interesting in that it is short, but it seems to
- 2:38me that there's a lot behind it. So how did this all start for
- 2:46you? This whole idea of no headphones running, That you would even make
- 2:52that kind of distinction, I think is very curious to me. But how
- 2:55did all this start for you? So I've been a runner for a little
- 3:00while. I ran a few half marathons and kind of hung up my shoes
- 3:06for a little bit after I had a knee injury and just kind of had
- 3:08this this false assumption that you know, running actually is bad for you,
- 3:14and so I fell back into it in twenty twenty three. Honestly, what
- 3:19happened was I was just having one of those days at work where it was
- 3:22just everything was compounding. I was just staring at my screen. I just
- 3:28I got to this mode where I just couldn't handle it, and so I
- 3:30shut my laptop and I just went I found myself downstairs putting my running shoes
- 3:36on, and I just left the house. I had no phone, no
- 3:38nothing, and I just went for a run. I ended up going for
- 3:42thing, it was like an eight mile run, which is pretty crazy for
- 3:45me after not having run you know, more than three miles and probably the
- 3:47last year and a half or so since my last race and since my injury.
- 3:52And I just found myself going and going, and I was spent the
- 3:54time to just process stuff. And you know, I was a crazy person
- 3:58out there. I was having conversations with myself. I was talking out loud.
- 4:00I was talking to this person that in that moment was kind of even
- 4:05me off, and you know, having these fake conversations, and I kind
- 4:09of just got done and I went, wow, like, I feel amazing,
- 4:13I feel great, and so like I just I and I recognize,
- 4:15you know, the feel good feelings that you generally get from running, but
- 4:18there was something more profound after that run, specifically for me, and I
- 4:25made the connection of Okay, I think I was undistracted by podcasts, music.
- 4:30I was really like spending time with myself, which I don't tend to
- 4:34do often, and so I just got honestly, I just got really curious
- 4:39about it. And I said, you know, hey, a couple of
- 4:42days from now, I'm going to do that again and see what happened.
- 4:44And then I did it again and again and again, and it just kind
- 4:47of collesced and turned into this thing for me. And then you know,
- 4:53I decided I'm going to run my first full marathon a few weeks after kind
- 4:57of getting back into running. Well, actually it was going to be a
- 5:00half marathon, and then I kind of shared it with my wife, and
- 5:03because I'm a very suggestive person, she asked me the simple question of,
- 5:09hey, do you think you'll ever run a full marathon? And so that
- 5:13kind of got bouncing around in my mind, and I came upstairs for a
- 5:15few hours and came back down and said, Hey, I'm going to run
- 5:18a full marathon. And so I made this goal with myself to do all
- 5:23of my training without headphones. And so that's just kind of what it turned
- 5:29into. And yeah, that's the general. So in terms of self exploration
- 5:39and curiosity, what did you discover about yourself? Were there any I guess
- 5:46challenges? I mean, did you find that maybe you were in fact anxiously
- 5:51distracting yourself and this was something different or how did that work for you?
- 5:59That's really good question. I found that I think that we're I don't want
- 6:06a blanket statement here and say all. You know, but I think generally
- 6:10in society nowadays, we have a propensity to subconsciously distract ourselves, you know.
- 6:16I think that in the world's world of social media and podcasts is another
- 6:21great one, which is kind of you know, it's kind of ironic that
- 6:24I'm even saying this while I'm talking on the podcast, but I would tend
- 6:30to find myself filling as much quiet time in my life as possible with something.
- 6:38And to me, when you pull back like that is a form of
- 6:42distraction, right, Like you're trying to distract your mind because you're not wanting
- 6:48to be in the thing. And I find this can be as the simplest
- 6:54tasks of washing your dishes, or you know, you throw a podcast in
- 6:57because washing your dishes is not the most fun task to do, So,
- 7:01you know, you find a form of distraction. And so I think generally
- 7:04as people, we are tending to shift more towards that modality of living.
- 7:12So it was it was a very eye opening thing for me to just realize,
- 7:15like, wow, I do that a lot, So maybe I should
- 7:17just try to remove this from my life and see what happens, and see
- 7:20what comes up and so yeah, there's been a lot of things that have
- 7:25transcended from it, which I wasn't expecting, you know. And I think
- 7:28the other thing too is I went into it without any expectation. I was
- 7:31just thinking, like, hey, you know, just kind of pay attention
- 7:34as you're doing it and see what comes out. And the things that have
- 7:38come out have been pretty eye opening to me, okay, such as you
- 7:44know, one thing that I have really recognized and I'm getting better at is
- 7:53paying attention to my body. And what that means is, you know,
- 7:58if we're talking more specific to run and the act of running, is when
- 8:03I am doing a lot of my long runs without these headphones and without podcasts
- 8:11and music, I'm really able to focus on you know, if I'm starting
- 8:16to feel an ache or pain somewhere, I can correct it like that because
- 8:20I'm able to stand my body where I can kind of call that out and
- 8:26maybe make an adjustment. Or I realize like, hey, I'm slouching a
- 8:28little bit here, my back is a little bit too loose right now.
- 8:31Maybe I tighten my core or whatever, and those that ache and my knee
- 8:35might kind of start to subside, and I realize, like, oh,
- 8:37you know, I wasn't engaged with my core. I wasn't fully in the
- 8:41moment present with my body. And so I've also you know, and taking
- 8:46it outside of running in connection with my body, as I've really been able
- 8:50to recognize the things that come up in my body that you know, So
- 8:58let me pause here for one second. And I'm sure you've read this book,
- 9:01but it was actually recommended by my therapist. The Body Keeps the Score,
- 9:05have you fantastic, amazing book, And you know that was I see
- 9:09a therapist every other week, and so one thing she'd recommended was trying to
- 9:16pay a little bit more attention to my body. And so I had a
- 9:20tough time with it. I really had a tough time with it. And
- 9:22so I found that sitting with myself doing something physical without the distractions has given
- 9:31me the opportunity to really actually get in tune with my body. And so
- 9:33I'm finding now, you know, I'm finding things like anger, frustration,
- 9:41sadness. I'm finding that stuff percolating in my body before it even hits my
- 9:48mind, and so I'm able to kind of recognize, like, oh,
- 9:52I'm feeling this way before my brain registers it. If that makes sense.
- 9:58So it's something that's allowed me the opportunity to really get in tune with with
- 10:01things like my gut and my chest and really know like, oh, anger
- 10:05is coming, or I feel a sadness coming. It's it's not hasn't quite
- 10:09got there yet, but it's coming because I know that this is the way
- 10:13that I feel when when you know, when I get in that in that
- 10:16in that space. This is really interesting to me. Obviously, this whole
- 10:22topic of mindfulness self awareness is coming up for me. Yeah. In the
- 10:28bio, uh, you mentioned drinking, and one of the things I just
- 10:35want to put that topic aside for a second. But one of the things
- 10:37that's coming up from me Arin is this was running. You were obviously an
- 10:43avid runner. Was that in and of itself a distraction? I mean,
- 10:52but not not. Everything is a distraction, right, It depends. But
- 10:56I'm just curious, was that in and of itself? Were you using that
- 11:00as an distraction? Oh? For sure, And so I think that's kind
- 11:05of interesting you touch on that because I the reason I got heavily into running
- 11:09in the first place was ten years ago was my decision to run my first
- 11:16half marathon, and I full transparency. I did it in kind of a
- 11:22last ditch effort for me to stop drinking alcohol because I tried all these other
- 11:26things. And you know, if anybody out there's listening and knows that tie
- 11:31and that issue that can prevail with alcohol use is it's you know, it's
- 11:39a tough thing to get over and it's a tough thing to kick and you
- 11:41can try all the things, but it's really hard if you have that in
- 11:45you. And so I kind of had this crazy thought of like, hey,
- 11:50maybe if I run this marathon and I just throw myself into running,
- 11:54I can distract myself enough to just not drink, right. And so I
- 12:01hold a lot of immense gratitude because it worked. That is the one thing
- 12:05that finally got me to stop drinking. And so it was definitely a form
- 12:11of distraction for sure. And I think that like, yeah, I can
- 12:16use you can use running as a form of distraction. Like I mean,
- 12:18if you boil it down, anything and everything is just a matter of what
- 12:24are you using it for and to go back to, you know, like
- 12:26listening to for me, listening to music and podcasts during certain activities, I
- 12:31just found like maybe I'm trying to avoid being with myself. And that's what
- 12:35it was for me. So what started the drinking? How did that?
- 12:43What? Oh gosh, I you know, I so I didn't. I
- 12:48started drinking a little later in my life compared to I think most from what
- 12:52I you know, I hear from stories that I gather from people. I
- 12:56didn't start. I didn't drink until I was nineteen, and I had my
- 13:00first drink at nineteen. And then what happened was it just honestly the confidence
- 13:05it gave me. I just realized, like, wow, it pulled me
- 13:09out of my shell because I'm naturally kind of an introverted person, and so
- 13:13that kind of lingered, and then you know that the good side of it
- 13:18obviously always morphs into something darker and sinister, and so I just, you
- 13:22know, years went by, and I just kind of found myself in this
- 13:26repeat, in this loop of getting in the bad situations and then recognizing that,
- 13:31you know, ninety nine percent of the time alcohol was the catalyst,
- 13:35and then not be able to give that up as kind of very concerning.
- 13:41So that always kind of stuck with me throughout of like, you know,
- 13:46this is obviously an issue for me because this thing in my life keeps showing
- 13:52up and keeps presenting bad outcomes, but yet I'm still doing it. And
- 13:56so you know, I went in and an that whole battle of quitting drinking
- 14:03for a number of years, for sure, a number of years. I
- 14:07mean, I appreciate sharing that. I mean, this to me is the
- 14:11story of this podcast. You know, here you are now at this point
- 14:16in your life where you've developed or uncovered the courage enough to okay, look
- 14:24at yourself without distraction. And what got you to that point where the impetus
- 14:31was in part this drinking and you know what that was covering up in a
- 14:39sense, because for most of us are you know, the things we do
- 14:43to distract ourselves and to cover up. There's a lot of there's something there,
- 14:50something that doesn't come out of nowhere, you know, And that overcoming
- 14:54to me is very inspiring. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think
- 15:00you know, there was a lot of things in my childhood that definitely fueled
- 15:05that, you know, later in my life that I realized I was burying
- 15:07subconsciously. And I've since worked on pretty extensively, and I've investigated and examined
- 15:13and and so but you know, the old the other you know, honest
- 15:20fact is that I've my family is littered with alcoholics and addicts, and so
- 15:28I'm not you know, it's hard for me to play the genes are responsible
- 15:31for everything, and I think that, you know, the nurture nature,
- 15:35it's a blend of the two, in my opinion, And it's definitely if
- 15:39you have it littered in your family and the cards are stacked against you in
- 15:43some component, then your likelihood of falling into that is pretty hard. And
- 15:50but you know, in recognizing that though there, I felt though that I
- 15:52had this very very you know, honest and genuine reliability to break that mold
- 16:03in my family, right, because if I could contribute anything in this world,
- 16:07it's you know, it's it's really like helping others in some capacity,
- 16:12and if in any way, shape or form like my family history and what
- 16:19I've done in comparison to the people that have come before me and my family.
- 16:25And this is not me bad mouthing my family in any way. I
- 16:26loved the members of my family and they're all very unique individuals. But if
- 16:30I can at least be known for the person that kind of broke that mold,
- 16:36like that's enough for me. You know, and so I it was
- 16:41in my family and it was there, and it's a thing. And you
- 16:44know, ironically, my uncle he was a huge, huge component of keeping
- 16:51me mentally fit and out of alcohol use because he was a recovering alcoholic and
- 16:57he had quit and he had been sober for years. And I had the
- 17:03fortunate opportunity to get really close to him. Him and his wife, my
- 17:08aunt, moved from California to Washington probably about ten years ago, and so
- 17:18I got to spend time with him at the end of his life. You
- 17:21know, he had since passed. He passed away, I want to say,
- 17:23about two years ago, after moving back down to California to be with
- 17:26his family. But I had the chance to sit with him a lot in
- 17:33quiet reflection and have conversations that I couldn't really have with a lot of other
- 17:37people because he had gone through it and he knew it. And it also
- 17:41definitely helped that he was part of the family and he understood, Hey,
- 17:45you know, his brother was an alcoholic, his father was an alcoholic,
- 17:49My grandfather was an alcoholic. So it's just you know, you can just
- 17:52keep going down the list and counting on your fingers. I can just keep
- 17:55going and going and going and going, and so to have him in my
- 17:57life was just so impactful and to be able to share stories with him and
- 18:03it was Yeah, it was a blessing for sure. When you're running and
- 18:12you're you're not distracting yourself, You're you're consciously not distracting yourself. Yeah,
- 18:18does stuff come up where you're like, holy shit, get back down there?
- 18:22Oh sure every time? Is that? What is that? Like?
- 18:29I think, what's what stuff comes up where you're like, no, no,
- 18:32look at it that? Yeah, for sure, Like, I mean,
- 18:34there's definitely some things that come up in regards to the darker side of
- 18:40things. You know, A lot of it just might be my uh,
- 18:47you know, just general like how I might have responded to my kid in
- 18:51a situation, you know, the day before. We'll just come up out
- 18:53of nowhere, and like, I try to be very observant about those things
- 18:57when it happens, and I'm I'm usually pretty quick to recognize. And you
- 19:03know, if I make a poor parenting decision and I react poorly with my
- 19:06child, I'm usually pretty good about immediately addressing it and apologizing and talking to
- 19:11him. And he's granted, he's three and a half, so he doesn't
- 19:14quite understand it yet. But it's still a hard thing for me, and
- 19:17I don't want to, you know, be reactive, but that sort of
- 19:21stuff will come up when I go on these runs and I call back and
- 19:25you know, think that I might have addressed it with a quick talk and
- 19:29apology, but it'll come up deeper because it'll it'll kind of you know,
- 19:33why are you doing that? And you know, I'll just get into that
- 19:36mode of just like negative self talking, know like, and I'll get down
- 19:44upon myself for that. And then usually I find it in me to exercise
- 19:48some grace and realize that like, I'm not I'm still not doing a bad
- 19:52job, and parenting is hard and so things come up, but I'm pretty
- 19:56good about tempering them. But I find I'll be honest, what comes up
- 20:00more than anything is kind of feelings of gratitude and love and peace. I'll
- 20:07be honest, Like that comes up more than anything now when I when I
- 20:10go on these long runs, is I'll just I'll kind of get overwhelmed by,
- 20:15you know, feelings towards my wife, you know, and I'm not
- 20:18very I'm not a very vocal person, so I'm one to write, you
- 20:22know. So, my wife's birthday was yesterday, and I make her these
- 20:26cards every year, and they're kind of like my way of I guess still
- 20:33being a kindergartener and making your you know, your parent happy birthday cards.
- 20:37And so I usually make her a card every year. And like, I'm
- 20:40really good about writing how I feel, but I'm just not good about vocalizing
- 20:44it. I'm working on that. But a lot of that stuff comes up
- 20:48for me when I'm out there running is kind of feelings. I might feel
- 20:51gratitude and love for certain people, and and so yeah, I find more
- 20:56positive comes up than negative. Let me take a pause right here. We're
- 21:00speaking with Aaron Klein. We'll be back in two seconds. What what's It's
- 21:10interesting, Aaron? What strikes me about what you're saying is this whole topic
- 21:15is I mean, it sounds to me, uh as if you're almost kind
- 21:23of rediscovering, uh who you are, you know, with the alcoholism,
- 21:30uh, coming out emerging from that, almost like a rebirth. I don't
- 21:34want to be too dramatic here, but I mean you're being conscious of sharing
- 21:44this process of not of not distracting yourself and running in order to kind of
- 21:52rediscover and and share who you are. I think that it takes a lot
- 22:00of guts. I think it takes a lot of courage. Are there challenges
- 22:06for this to you? I mean, is this and it's one thing to
- 22:10do it and to distract yourself, but again you're making this conscious choice to
- 22:15do it undistracted. Do you ever do it and say, you know,
- 22:19is it scary any part of it? Or I think that I think that
- 22:29people in general, and I can only speak specific to myself here, so
- 22:33I'll let me just reframe that. For me, I think generally, like
- 22:37if something is going good or well, I will have a propensity to try
- 22:42to talk myself out of it somehow like maybe you know it's you know,
- 22:48not deserving of this or whatever. So I'm I mean, every day I
- 22:52try to talk myself out of running when I have it on my schedule.
- 22:56And that's the thing, Like that's the misconception I think sometimes is that like
- 23:03you know, these things are easy or this you know, this way of
- 23:08doing it has changed my life and made life easier, and like that's not
- 23:11the case. Like if anything, it's made up, If it's not the
- 23:15case, you know, I don't want to sugarcoat all this stuff because I
- 23:18think we we tend to apply that through the lens of things and you know,
- 23:22the self help will we live in, which I think is all great,
- 23:25but like not, sometimes these things that we do don't make our lives
- 23:30easier. They make them more fruitful, right, they make them more worth
- 23:33living. And that's what I'm finding. For me to get out and go
- 23:37on a training run, Mike, it's not easy for me to get out
- 23:40there and do it. I have to talk myself and to do it,
- 23:42and I have to gear myself up. I'll find myself distracting myself all the
- 23:45time. You know. I'll have a plan to go on a run in
- 23:48the morning at six o'clock on Saturday, and I won't leave till six forty
- 23:52five because I've found two hundred other things that I can do where it's like,
- 23:56come on, just get out the door. And so I I think
- 24:00there's that part of my my brain that's like, hey, are you sure
- 24:03you want to subject yourself to this? So yeah, it's not it's not
- 24:07easy, but I think just doing it and just telling yourself to just do
- 24:15it and do it, and when you're in it. You're you're in it
- 24:17right, You're just doing it. Do you see yourself as a somewhat different
- 24:26person from them when you were drinking? Oh? Absolutely, for sure.
- 24:33Yeah, I mean I think I'm man. That's that's a very hard that's
- 24:41a very tough question for me to answer because it's been a long so I
- 24:45have to like really put myself back in my shoes, you know, over
- 24:48nine years ago. I think I have a propensity to recognize love more than
- 24:55I did before. I think that I have h the ability to pull myself
- 25:03out of darker thinking quicker I am. I'm finding I'm having a little bit
- 25:11more grace with myself and I'm able to kind of be less selfish. I
- 25:21still have selfish tendencies, for sure, but I find myself less selfish and
- 25:26usually trying to make myself of service to other people in some way, shape
- 25:33or form. And so life, like I said before, like you know,
- 25:41this life didn't get easier after I quit drinking at all. Like in
- 25:45fact, that like it kind of got harder for quite a while because you
- 25:49pull back this this blanket in this thing that's kind of been serving as a
- 25:55crutch in some way, and it starts. What it does is slowly starts
- 26:00exposing all of these dark things that lie dormant that you didn't realize were things.
- 26:07And so I found myself, you know, maybe being more angry or
- 26:11more frustrated or more self defeating talk. And so I had to really go
- 26:17through a pretty large learning curve in regards to how to live life again and
- 26:26essentially like recover, like recover this person that I that I was, you
- 26:30know, years and years ago, you know, to the person I was
- 26:33when I was a kid, to the person I was when I was in
- 26:34high school. And I know that sounds weird to even like date high school
- 26:38is like a time where I'm like, yeah, things were pretty good,
- 26:42but like I didn't drink in high school, I didn't do drugs, I
- 26:45didn't do anything when I was in high school. And so I do think
- 26:48back to that time, it is like that was my baseline, right,
- 26:52that was my baseline, And so I'm getting back to my baseline and I'm
- 26:56finding that And so yeah, maybefore alcohol and after, I think life was
- 27:04harder, but uh it's definitely now, Like if I if I talking about
- 27:11it right now today, Uh, it's definitely better. I mean way better
- 27:15and less harder. So you have your website is the Daily Getaway, right,
- 27:22and you also have a newsletter. Uh, and we'll have these linked
- 27:27up, yeah at sub stack. What is your hope? I mean,
- 27:33what do you you have a message? How would you articulate what your message
- 27:38is to people? You know? I think my message to people is just
- 27:45stay curious with yourself and explore yourself and and just die, like dive into
- 27:53yourself and don't and don't give up, you know, because like that's the
- 27:56one thing I could say about my elf is you know, as many of
- 28:00these I would like to say, I have more character defects than uh than
- 28:08not. But I think like the one thing I can say in a positive
- 28:15perspective in regards to myself is that I I don't I don't give up,
- 28:19and I think none of us should ever get up. And so if things
- 28:25are tough in life, like just keep going, just keep going, keep
- 28:29finding the thing. If you're if you're on a path towards you know,
- 28:32your own uh mindfulness journey or healing trauma or whatever it is. Uh,
- 28:40just like, don't give up. Just keep trying things. Just keep trying
- 28:41things. Not every not everything's gonna work. But I think that if you
- 28:45try a hundred things and you find too that work, you know that that's
- 28:51a win and you'll you'll find you'll find what works, and then you'll just
- 28:53keep doing it. And that's kind of what I've done, is I just
- 28:56find the things that work, and then I just keep doing them. Was
- 29:00your level of drinking, I mean, was were you talking about every day?
- 29:03Were talking about it? Was? It was pretty much for four or
- 29:08five times a week for a little while. Like would you say you were
- 29:11an alcoholic? Oh? Yeah, sure, yeah, I would like to
- 29:15say. And I know there's like that that argument that like once you're an
- 29:18alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic, And I honestly I don't believe that because
- 29:22I don't I don't feel like that is me anymore. But I'm still cautious.
- 29:26But yeah, I definitely was in it. You know, a lot
- 29:30of it had centered around partying. It was a lot of social drinking.
- 29:34So it wasn't just myself. It was groups of people that were doing this
- 29:37four or five times a week. It was you know, parties at the
- 29:40houses all the time. And and then what happened is that I kind of
- 29:44had somewhat of the control on it to where it would become weekends, but
- 29:49I would always binge. I would always binge on the weekends, and I
- 29:52was I was a blackout drinker most of the time, and so that,
- 29:57yeah, that became the weekends. And then what kind of started happening is
- 30:02I would kind of say, Okay, hey, you know, you're you're
- 30:04done, You're not You're not going to drink till next weekend. And then
- 30:08Thursday might roll around and I'd find myself, you know, just standing in
- 30:11front of the beer aisle and You're like, how the hell did I get
- 30:15How did I get here? And then I'm and then I'm I'm having that
- 30:18conversation with myself of okay, not tonight, don't do it. But then
- 30:22you know, next thing, you know, you're ringing it up at the
- 30:25cash register and like that whole recognition, you know. And this is what
- 30:29came out a lot when I was training for that first half marathon. When
- 30:33I got to the end of that week of first training, I honestly I
- 30:36was said to myself, like, hey, you you owe yourself a drink,
- 30:38right, you can celebrate. But something in me, whatever it is,
- 30:42some sort of divine intervention whatever you want to call it, had enough
- 30:47strength in me to say, like, hey, put a lot of work
- 30:51in this week. You know, one drink is not going to be one
- 30:53drink. It's going to be it's gonna be five six seven, You're probably
- 30:56gonna black out, You're gonna wake up like shit tomorrow. Then the whole
- 31:00thing is going to happen again. So just don't do it. And so
- 31:04that's as simple as That's the way it happened. And so yeah, but
- 31:12I was definitely a multiple times a week drinker and then it turned into a
- 31:17weekend, but it was always it was always just too much consumption. And
- 31:21so yeah, you know, plus the other thing I was looking at,
- 31:26you know, at that time, my wife and I were starting our relationship
- 31:29and we had just gotten married, and I kind of had this world that
- 31:34I was building too in a positive way, and I just kind of did
- 31:38this whole thing where I'm like, hey, I don't I don't want to
- 31:41subject her to this. You know, it's not horrible now, but like
- 31:45I was just able to look in the future and like, no, like
- 31:48I think I know where this is going to go. I don't want to
- 31:51get it there. Let's just not do that. You know, if the
- 31:53day ever comes where I have kids, like, I don't want to subject
- 31:56my kids like hell, that's the saddest thing to me now that I have
- 32:00a kid is having seeing children grow up in households with addiction, and it
- 32:08just breaks my heart. And I just knew, you know, years ago,
- 32:12I was like, I don't want to be a part of that,
- 32:14you know, and it was a part of my childhood, and so yeah,
- 32:20I just didn't. I just was able to look in the future far
- 32:22enough to put a stop on it before it got to the point to where
- 32:27it was very detrimental. So again, your newsletter is called The Daily Getaway.
- 32:34What are people going to get from reading your newsletter? Yeah, so
- 32:40it has yet to launch. I'm still working on the template for it.
- 32:45But when it is finished, I'm hoping that what people can get away from
- 32:51it is, you know, I'm going to share my running journey for sure,
- 32:55I'm going to share, you know, some of the things that come
- 32:58up for me with no headphone running. I'm going to advocate for it,
- 33:01but I'm gonna I'm gonna do it in the sense that like, hey,
- 33:04this helps me you can try it on for size, but no way,
- 33:07shape or form like this is not a cure all for everybody's issues. That's
- 33:10just working for me, So I just want to spread the word. And
- 33:15then the other aspect of it really is, you know, nutrition is a
- 33:20part of my lifestyle as well, and so I want to share some things
- 33:23that are working for me as it's centered around running. And then I'm a
- 33:30I'm a book lover and I love reading. I love reading fiction books.
- 33:32I love talking about them. So there's going to be a section in there
- 33:37where it's just I talk about books that I'm reading and hope that I can
- 33:43kind of spark people's love for fiction because I think it's coming back, but
- 33:49I think we've we've moved away from it over the years and it's hard.
- 33:52It's it's got thing I said you can get. You can get a lot
- 33:53of help out of fiction too. So yeah, also awesome. Yeah,
- 33:59Well wins that launch date, I'm I'm hoping in January of twenty twenty four,
- 34:06and it'll be it'll be a monthly newsletter, so I'm not going to
- 34:08blow people's in box up with the newsletter as I'm growing it. But also
- 34:15on my substack, I put up posts periodically, and so you know,
- 34:20if people subscribe to my substack in general, they'll get notification of my posts,
- 34:25which are just I mean, honestly, it's just whatever's on my mind.
- 34:29Yeah, sure, awesome, we'll have those linked up here. Thank
- 34:31you at the showness page. You're welcome the Trauma taperspodcast dot com. Aaron
- 34:37awesome man, so inspiring. Appreciate you coming here. You're doing it.
- 34:42Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me, and I'm super
- 34:45grateful to have this chance to talk. And anytime you get to have a
- 34:50real, honest, open conversation with people is that, you know, that's
- 34:53the stuff life is made of. So thank you. I totally agree.
- 34:57That's why, that's why I invited you. Want here. Love to have
- 34:59you back in the coming year. Two would be awesome today that our brother
- 35:02take care all right? Thank you. I appreciate it, all right.