Latest / Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck / Interview with Brandon Courter | Awakening Vulnerability

Transcript

Interview with Brandon Courter | Awakening Vulnerability · Alive & Kicking: Stories of Waking Up with Kay Eck

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Kay Eck, and welcome to my podcast, Alive and Kicking: Stories of Waking Up.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Podcast Family.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're back today for another episode with my friend Brandon Carter.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Brandon.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, what's up?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing really good.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy to be here with you today.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to um give a little introduction of you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you're I've known you since I think middle school.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you're yeah, and you're 30 now, right?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, 30.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Just turned 30 in July.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's a true.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Happy big birthday.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um how I met you is that I became friends with your mom through this dinner group that we both got involved in and both hated.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and um, and that was a long, long time ago.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, one of my favorite memories of you is actually fairly recent memory.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think you'll remember this.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We um I always felt like a connection to you.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we met for brunch in the city where you live, and on the way out of the brunch, I think it was raining, and it the city was really gray and dark, and you had on this white t-shirt, and um you were riding that thing.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: What do you call that thing?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's a the one-wheel, yeah.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: The one wheel?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's a one-wheel.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're already six four or six five.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Six four.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Six four.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that uh that thing you were riding on made you look like you were some kind of mythic Roman god or something.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you were like, you must have been close to seven feet tall on that, and you were just like riding down the city street, and this it just was like so surreal to me and hilarious.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's the future.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that was so funny.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you I think you were having trouble getting into your car as well.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, and somebody hit me.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, didn't they?
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: They like hit me right, yeah.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody hit you from behind, and then like that caused your car to lock or something.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it just sat there.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: But you you also gave me some good advice.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that I I was like, I had that guy in my house or whatever.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember I I took those pictures of him that made him look like an alien was trying to pose him as a real person?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember those pictures?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: But uh he uh you you told me that like I needed to create a a barrier between me and him because uh he was gonna drain me or whatever.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I I like kept that in mind towards the end, and he eventually like got a got a got away and got a job or whatever.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: But um yeah, he he definitely you were you were right, he started.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that that's a great place for us to start because um you know when you talk about you're like even though you're like this giant manly man, you're also like very empathic and very sensitive, and that's you know been a bit of a rocky road for you.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start back with your childhood.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: What was your what was your first memory of you as you that nobody told you about?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Huh one one really vivid memory I have for my childhood that I'm proud of was I I saw these um these little girls choking someone out with a sweatshirt on a playground on a playground.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I like ran over and I like tackled one of the girls off of uh off of this little boy or whatever, and I was like, don't choke him out, or and then like his teacher came over to me and like told me that like hey, don't like hit a girl or whatever.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: And he like they like threw me, threw me in detention.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's I don't know why that came to mind.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: Just like the first thing came to mind, but uh that like I was like, no, like that's this is bullshit.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like I was like saving that kid.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's that's incredible because I feel like that's sort of like indicative of what your life has been like, really.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like people making assumptions about you, and how did how did that work for you as a as a young kid?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, it was it was uh frustrating.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I had a lot of learning disabilities, uh, and I was in um special ed classes, which was really hard.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I had like a hard time with my ego as a kid because I I was always told that like, oh, like Brandon, you know, you're so smart, like you can like, you know, figure out all this stuff, but then like at the same time, it was like I was so bad at school, you know, and then like having to like cope with that, and then having having to like uh like not being able to reconcile my performance with like what everyone told me about myself was really hard.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, like uh like with special ed classes, uh that like you would have these like big like councils.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like there it would be like all of your all of your teachers would be in a room uh with my parents who like were voracious advocates of me, but in a way that was really hard, you know.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it would be like the teachers um who were very kind of orthodox, wheat-in-knee kind of people for the most part.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them liked me, but most of them were just frustrated that they had to like give me any kind of accommodation.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and then it was it was those sorts of people like battling with my family, and then me, I was kind of in the middle feeling like completely like powerless and left out of the equation, and like you know, like here's my parents having to fight my battles for me because I'm so weak, and then here's everyone else like pointing at me for being weak.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was hard for me to to cope with that at the time to like understand what that meant, and ultimately understand that like the standards that I was being compared to were just a load of shit, just like complete trash, like that doesn't matter at all.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, I mean it would take me years to understand that.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's like very hard, a hard lesson to learn.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that that's like tragic and traumatic and just god awful.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I can't even imagine how hard that must have been for you.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it was hard.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was hard for sure.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um it was uh yeah.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and people were probably, you know, and and also uh, you know, you were kind of at the leading edge of that whole um, you know, sort of the the bringing in of the accommodations for students.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: You were that was really kind of a new thing um back then, wasn't it?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: It was, yeah.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: The teachers were definitely not used to it.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I remember uh this one teacher having an argument with me about like the ethics of it.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like I mean, I'm like, I'm 15, dude.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm not equipped for this.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: And he's like, he's like, if you don't, if you don't bring in this assignment on time, like you will fail this class.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: And like uh and then I like tried to, you know, if I tried to say anything, he would just like cut me off.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And man, yeah, that kind of stuff.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like a kid like you, who doesn't, you know, like who doesn't have like textbook at the time, textbook disabilities, is seen, I'm sure, as like a troublemaker, or you're just not putting the effort in, or you're just like you're just a nuisance to them.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: I yeah, yeah.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I've come to see it like from I can I can like understand their perspective at the time.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: They must have thought like this is some like privileged shit that's like coming in and he doesn't give a shit, and his parents are like making us do extra work, you know, they're just like trying to get by.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I can like, you know, I don't I don't think in the end that any of them were bad people or anything.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: I just think that they like, yeah, they were just the wrong people for me at the time.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, they were people that weren't very open to understanding where I was coming from.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you wouldn't have been able to articulate it when you were 15, but now how do you think that could have been different for you?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: What would have worked better?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'd it would have just had to be a complete a complete paradigm shift.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there is absolutely no way I could gain anything from being in like a traditional high school environment as someone who learns the way I do.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I can't I can't learn from like a textbook in a classroom at all, like at all.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like it doesn't, it just doesn't work.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I mean I've learned from like being on the job that like I can I can I can definitely learn things really fast.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: I just have to do it uh in my own way.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, I don't know, some setting where you're like trying to apply the things you're learning in a practical way as you're learning them.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh I yeah, I don't I don't know.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean I I I think that there's like some cool ideas in like Montessori schools or whatever, but it I don't think I think I I just wasn't in the right school, you know.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I think that's true for everybody.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I mean I that that that paradigm of schooling was not like invented for like people, it was invented for factory workers, you know, like no one's supposed to like learn in that way.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like yeah, you chose it, yeah.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of seem like one of those kids who um would have been just fine out in the woods or in the mountains.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think about that all the time.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Top out, you know.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And totally at your own pace, which is sometimes super fast and sometimes like super casual, and you know, yeah.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I mean we we're probably gonna get into this too, but like I I I struggle with bipolar and I was undiagnosed for a really long time.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um but yeah, I mean, a lot of times I think that like those sorts of I mean, these sorts of illnesses, like some some some illnesses are pretty much just detrimental.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And to some people, bipolar is a nightmare, an absolute nightmare.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: But uh mine, I I have hypomania.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and in modern society, that can be a nightmare for me.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, if I was out in the woods chilling, you know, I would just have like a few sets of months where I was like being really productive and going crazy and feeling like really spiritually connected.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I would have some months where I was resting and I was fine.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the for me, the depression comes in when I feel completely drained of energy and then am like forced to work in like a traditional nine to five and like handle like the those sorts of uh responsibilities in spite of that uh deprivation of energy.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I manage it now um with the help of therapy and medication uh and you know willpower and exercise, you know, just keeping all my ducks in a row.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a it's a big thing to manage.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So can you take us back to you know what led to your diagnosis, that that path?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, I think the first time I was diagnosed with depression was in uh I think I was eight.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think I was I was eight years old and I was just a sad kid.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um my parents brought me in.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and yeah, some yeah, I mean I barely remember it, but I do I remember getting some medication, uh and and I think that was when I was diagnosed with ADD too, was uh around then.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um but then uh yeah, throughout high school, I continued to have struggles with depression, but was never diagnosed with bipolar.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um although like in retrospect it was like very obvious.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean me and my friends would like run around until like all hours of the night, like some months, and I'd be like unable to like actually like climb out of my bed like other months.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, um, and that yeah, that seems like a a pretty typical high school story, but like yeah, like when me and my friends would like run around until like 2 a.m.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: it would just be this like insane frenetic energy, and then each of them would start dropping off one by one, and then like going to sleep, and then I'd continue on, you know, like until until like 5 a.m.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: just running through the night, you know.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh and uh yeah.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so for you, I think some of those manic times are super creative too, but it feels like you've been able to keep your creative nature as your you know moods have been evened out a little bit.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is do you is that true?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it's true.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've um me and uh one of my good friends from high school, I I recently moved into a building that he has, and uh he is the apartment manager there.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: We found an uh empty room in the building that we've installed a wood shop into, and we've been working down there, it's been pretty cool.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I've actually really recently gotten into uh working with concrete, which is like such an amazing medium because it's so cheap.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: You can like buy a bag of concrete for like six dollars and make like five like pieces of pottery out of it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's cool.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my new my new concept for my apartment.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: I want to make it uh psychedelic industrial.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's like the tag plan for it.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: I found these like rough, beaten-up lewed pipes.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like make making like furniture out of them.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's cool.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then so this is you have like a really interesting kind of personality because you are super creative, but you're also super technical.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm I I want to be more technical.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but um yeah, I I mean I I work with uh with C sharp uh for law firm uh management data, and uh yeah, I I love my job now.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's really it's really fun.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: I love to understand uh and be better at coding.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: I love to like get better at like a skill, so it's really satisfying to me in that way.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So what how has this this path through the through your mental illness been like a spiritual path?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Has it has it run side by side?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, yeah, it it has.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think it took me like a while to connect with my spirituality in any way.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was like uh I was like super down on like any form of spirituality for a while, uh, because I grew up in Wheaton, which is the Mecca of Christianity, most churches per capita uh in the world, I think.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh I was just really like against like everything that was from there at the time.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I was uh I thought that religion was to blame for like all of the problems in the world, uh and I was like an edgy neckbeard atheist guy who like played video games all day during my depression.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: For a while I was like totally that guy.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh as I went and got help from uh this group, uh Rush Day Hospital, which I totally recommend to anyone who has serious problems with uh with any kind of uh psychological issue.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I sort of started to see these people like it's a group of like 40 people um in a room, and everybody has their own issues and they all like communicate with each other uh and kind of figure it out together, and it's like led by a few psychiatrists and psychologists, uh, but generally it's just people helping each other figure out like what's going on with them at like the deepest level, and uh it's like hard to even put it into words, but I think like through that experience I understood like the sort of like spirit of people and like the connectedness of people, and like yeah, it became I guess human connections became something spiritual for me, and then like that that did run alongside me kind of becoming you know a functional human, you know, and somebody who can actually feel their emotions.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because I I had all of that like blocked off for a while was too much, you know, it's too much to deal with that, like while having it completely out of control.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: But uh yeah, I I think that I think that for me, like the connection between humans and like an ability to take like clear, open-minded feedback from someone else is like a beautiful and like spiritual thing.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I think that shutting off from that is like one of the most like harmful things you can do to your life, like no matter how successful you are.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: Tons of people are very successful and they shut themselves off from like other people, you know.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that's always going to be damaging to like this potential joy that you could have from sharing your life and being my God, that's so beautiful.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think about that environment that you were in, just seems like that should be the environment that we're all in all the time.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: When you when you meet somebody, you know, like, hey, what's going on with you?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how are you feeling?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: What do what what's on your mind?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's troubling you today?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why can't we talk to each other that way?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's because we're too busy.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's because we're too busy, that's why.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Too much other crap going on.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Just like those teachers, you know?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: They had too much crap going on in their lives.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: They're not bad people.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: They just were like, oh, you know, this kid is taking up another 20 minutes of my life every day.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what the heck?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: I can't deal with that.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm busy.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, what would it be like if that was the environment?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is that possible for us?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that it's just, I think it's it's a matter of time.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: It might not be in our lifetimes, but I I do think that eventually things will get to that place.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I have a lot of political opinions uh regarding like how we get there.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that we need to democratize the workplace.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think that that's like a huge step towards getting there.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so and uh fix income inequality.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think that would be a big part of it.
• 21:30
  unknown: Yeah.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because everything in our society is just designed to keep people moving constantly, you know.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of the programming, really.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I I remember this moment when one of my kids, who you know, um was telling me that in their job they didn't they were they only had a week's vacation for like eight years or something.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And even though when I was when I just started out in my career, we didn't get into vacation for a year.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: You had to work for a year before you got a single day off.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: But when he described that to me, this vacation policy at his new job, I was like, oh my God, you're a paid slave.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like we, you know, like we you're it's like you the we're being kept at a level that keeps us just quiet.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can't quite put our finger on what is actually occurring, but we're being kept at a level where we cannot thrive and prosper.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like completely normalized, and you're seen as radical if you point it out that things are weird.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like anymore, it's getting better.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, people are starting to realize it.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think that as horrible as COVID is, you know, obviously it's a wake-up call for everybody.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: People can see that for one, you know, like the the wheels, the wheels stay on.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, in spite of the fact that no one was working for a long time, like society continued to function.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we don't need the red line to go up.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then, yeah, and then like I guess along the same lines, just yeah, people were going in to work, and I think that they, you know, as scary as it was, got to feel like a bit of you know, like ease, like just the uh yeah, and some people got to feel ease.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't want to make it seem like right, yeah, but tons of people, it was an absolutely horrible situation full of anxiety around how they're gonna do their next paycheck, but right, you know, but this concept about you know the um varying levels of productivity, activity, and rest, which you could say in you know, uh with a in a bipolar setting, you know, maybe it's extreme, it's higher than maybe it's desirable, and maybe lower than desirable, but that idea of productivity followed by a period of rest, like what's wrong with that?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there there isn't there isn't anything wrong with that.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, all right.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like well the what's wrong with that is that when you rest, you're not being productive.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: It should be extreme productivity all the time because you know our group is competing with this other group, and as long as that's happening, you know, that's what will be wrong with it, is that it's not the most productive thing.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think do you think we need to have uh the most productive thing?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: No, uh no, well, I think that I think that there are problems relating, if we're talking on like a nation level, there are problems relating to being less productive than other nations, but I mean I I think as on a human level, like if everyone like could agree like we should just chill out, then I mean that would be good.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: But obviously, there are that there it's it's a more nuanced issue than that.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um we we need everyone to chill out, or else like someone else will out compete us, you know.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're in this paradigm where everyone's fighting, you know.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and that's part of the programming is that is the fear that somebody's gonna get ahead of us and then they're gonna be dominant and we're gonna be submissive and you know, like blah blah blah.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's part of the whole dynamic.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yeah, exactly.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, it's all it's all it's all fear, and yeah, that's uh I mean, and and what you said about uh about like the sort of bipolar idea of working and then rest being the be being an okay paradigm, like I agree, and also that's the paradigm of like modern neoliberal capitalism right now, whether they want it to be or not.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: You have booms and busts, like you will rest.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like the neoliberal capitalism right now is like untreated bipolar, you know?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like they pop off, you go crazy, you sell a bunch of houses to people who can't afford it, and then all of a sudden you're boom, you're in a depression again, you know.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like, yeah, our world is bipolar, and we need to rest, and like it we're not, it's not treated right now.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you wonder, you wonder if it's you know, the larger environment that's causing the bipolar in the people or the bipolar nature in the people that are causing it in the environment.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I personally think, yeah, it's the I think it's the environment for in in a in a large part.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that certain people are you know more susceptible to those sorts of tendencies.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm I'm more I'm I like you know, it took me a long time to cope with the fact that I like do indeed have bipolar, like the medical illness, and like for a long time I didn't want to, you know, take my meds because it's yeah, it's society, man.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just society, but yeah, no, I do also have the illness.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, I don't think it would be as bad if if we our society didn't function in the way that it functions now.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh yeah, I mean so yeah, I mean it's it's obviously we created society, but I mean I think it kind of just goes back to like what happened after uh the you know the monarchy fell, and then like you had the public land, and everybody wanted to be chilled on the public land, and then a bunch of capitalists were like, no, we own this, so here we are.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: So can we talk a little bit about you know the the being a man and having to go through the um you know, this journey with mental illness and how difficult that is, and how we're just like it's not really being acknowledged that this is a big deal that we need to face and provide support for.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk a little bit about that?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'll uh the first thing I want to say about that is that the stigma is like getting better every day.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_02: It is not as it's like definitely not as hard to be a man with uh mental health issues now as as it was even even five years ago.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: I felt like completely ashamed.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to like tell people about it.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: I've gotten more confident in talking about it, but also uh society is getting used to people like having horrible mental illnesses, which is good, but also it's because so many people have horrible mental illnesses, you know.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh but yeah, it was hard to it was hard to cope with that.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think for a long time I accepted that I had them, um, but it was in an ego-defending way.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: So uh like I would say things like, uh yeah, I know that I'm depressed, but I don't need to get treatment because I know what I need to do to help with my depression, I just don't do it, you know, because I'm I'm a bad and like lazy person, you know, like but I could do it, you know.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, so uh like I I think that but it it was it was hard, yeah.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's hard to I wasn't socialized to have the level of feelings that I have, and I wasn't taught that feeling things is actually like like being a super empathic person is actually like a superpower, you know, like it's actually like like to be able to like be being there's so many things about being a man that like even traditionally, like even like the idea of a man that are enhanced by being like an empathic person, like you can like be more like emphatic, you know, with people, and you can like you know, you there's like power in like your emotions.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I think that that's like one big thing that I would tell to like young dudes that are like seeking that are like thinking about getting mental health, but like don't know if they need it.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'd I'd say like it's like it's like working out, like you like will gain like a new sort of force to your personality.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, like if you had met me, you know, a few five years ago, I would be like a pale shade of who I am now.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like I like really was like a husk of a person at that time.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I would like because I was you know just ignoring all of this like juice that I had, you know.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I would say, yeah, reconnect with the juice.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I would tell.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, I I love that you speak about um, you know, that empathy, the empathic nature as being a superpower, because I mean that it just goes contrary to all of the the ways that um men especially have been taught to be in the world.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I just love that.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so like I feel like for men who are 30 and under, like they're coming into a better understanding of it, the society is more accepting of it, and that's the um the era that they're growing up in.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: The men from you know, 30 to 60.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's like the group that is, I think, struggling the most.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: So how would you, you know, what would you say about that?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: How would you see that shifted?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I and yeah, I've I've seen like a lot of older men like go through group.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah, it often a lot of times it is a shit show.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, they are they have been like totally socialized that like like you do things like in spite of your emotions, you know, like your emotions are are like a barrier to you.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, growing up, like my dad is like a phenomenal person who's found like his own way to like you know put push through things, but hit his uh and to like you know get a lot of stuff done and be a very capable person, but his sort of motto has always been like, you know, sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you, uh like and that's a helpful motto, but also it means like, you know, get over it.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: Which is and it it is sometimes you do just need to get over it, that's true, but it's about the way that you get over it.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um and uh and yeah, I think that that's like the mentality that a lot of these, you know, older dudes have.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: But and and they they will they'll hit these when you put them in an environment where you're not supposed to be able to escape, where you're in a room full of 40 people that are like all watching you and like trying to figure out what's up with you, like you can sometimes they'll become like, oh like holy crap, like I'm like this giant like chain has been like unleashed off of me, and I can like really be who I was.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like a pile of tears, like just like and it's beautiful to watch, but sometimes like their egos are just too strong.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they'll just fight back against what anyone says.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: They put themselves on an island and like shut themselves off.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: So some people, I mean, I mean, I don't want to say that anyone's like beyond reaching, but I mean I've seen group has convinced me that some people have like shut themselves off to an extent that it's just like wow, that is like an impenetrable ego.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like you are saying some nonsense right now to like defend yourself, yeah, and you don't need to, yeah.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's such a shame because like that's a lot of people that fall into that category, and you know, the the the strength and the wisdom and the life experience that they could be bringing to the table in a little softer way would be so valuable and welcome.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: This, you know, I I I talked, I wrote a little bit about what you're talking about in my book, and that if you look in the dictionary under the word vulnerability, it makes it sound like it's the worst curse that could ever fall upon you.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: And strength, of course, we've got you know what the traditional definition of strength is.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if you think about how to be in the world with that strength, it's like brittle, like a stick.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: It it's like you can't get into it, it's easy to break.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas vulnerability is more supple and you become more resilient and you navigate the world in such an easier way.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: And vulnerability is the thing that you do because you're strong, also, you know, like you are able to be vulnerable because you're strong.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: True strength.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, not just like the facade of strength, the armor.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like I can actually take a hit.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't need like an ego to like tank all of the like bad stuff that somebody could say to me, or the like legitimate feedback that somebody could give me.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I like I can legitimately take it in stride, feel it like change, let a part of myself die, and then continue on, you know.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I mean, I think that that's like actual strength.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that the sort of strength where you are strong in a way where you can be unwavering and unchanging is a sort of useless strength that's just like damaging to people.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: It can be really effective at doing really shitty things, you know.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's amazing.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I just feel like everything that you've been saying is such important medicine for us right now.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I yeah, I I think so.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think that there's I think that like if there's one thing that people need to like think about spiritually, it's like just being able to, you know, listen to other people, you know, and that's how that's like so it just sounds so like obvious, but I mean, like I don't think that generally anyone is like like almost no one is like actually listening to like other people with actual open ears and without like an ego to shield them.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um and obviously like I already need an ego, like I've I've got an ego, but like yeah, you gotta be able to let it down.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean you you can think of the ego as sort of a uh like a structure, a mechanism that was protective in the time when we needed that, when you know life was a lot more dangerous, but it's become something completely different in situations where it's not needed.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, yeah, so exactly.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um so do you see yourself in a leadership position on this?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things that you know I love about you so much is like your charisma is off the charts.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in some ways you don't really even know it, you know, like you do but you don't, but you also don't care.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just like uh I I I should be.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: I like I I wish I was in a leadership position in it.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, like I've just been trying to sort of live my life for now.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I've been I've I've only had a few years, I feel like, of actually being alive, you know.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess I've just been being a little bit uh selfish for a while, you know, just like feeling like a real human for the last you know, three or four years.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's like nuts to like have emotions again and have feelings and have relationships and like want to meet people, not want to be like in a basement and yeah, wasting away.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I think just I mean, just like being here and talking about that, that it's like you know, can help a lot of people.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Good, yeah, I hope so.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's selfish at all.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really healthy that you know you want to live a good life.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like that is really important.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I like you talk about the difficulty, or you haven't even said that that it's difficult, but this habit that we have of not listening to people, I feel like I've been um you know, kind of doing that work for a long time.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: And when I started this podcast, I noticed that when I would prepare questions in advance, it would take me out of the moment.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't even for a second lose my focus to turn and look at a question, I would lose the connection that I had with the person that I was talking to.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I've my my I think of it almost like a meditation to be so focused and so present with somebody that I can actually have a real conversation.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I've been trained in this, and it's still really hard to do.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well that that yeah, that completely makes sense.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's hard.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's just a it's a very like it's the most intense thing that you could be focused on.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like another person is like the most complex thing like in the world.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: So to try to like pick out facets that they might find novel and interesting, like from what they've said, is like actually really hard, you know?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh yeah, I think you do do a really good job of it.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um personally, like I I think that I learned how to listen like that at a really early age as well, uh, just like uh you said.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I did it to kind of like I was kind of like the key, the peacekeeper I felt like in our household.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't even know if I like did that good of a job, but I was you know, I was like trying to like keep an eye out, like looking out for everybody else's like emotional states and trying to predict like the way the weather was gonna go when I was a kid, you know.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to, oh, what's going on?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody all cleaning the south.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nothing crazy is gonna happen.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you see for your future?
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I would like to uh the big thing that like jumps out of my head immediately is I want to live in like a more communal setting, I think.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um one of the things I was really interested in, I was trying to get my friends to do it for a while, and we were actually like pretty close to pulling the trigger on it.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um you're gonna get some land in Custer County, um Colorado, which is like cheap land next to like public, it would it would be like this like hundred-acre swath of land next to like a public area um that we could like go into like 5,000 miles or something of like giant like woodlands, and then we could all and then Custer County specifically if we wanted to do, because it uh it has no building codes.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: So we would we would be able to build like whatever kind of crazy structures that we want out there.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and like me and a bunch of my friends are into like building stuff.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so yeah, we we wanted to build like a crazy commune that had like big cool houses.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's like I I could I could definitely I I would eventually want to try living that lifestyle, like just a bunch of people living kind of in a secluded area.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'd still want internet, you know.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'd still want modern amenities, you don't have to lose that stuff, but uh yeah, just in like beautiful nature at all times, everyone living for cheap, being able to travel a lot.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like that sounds amazing.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where I can see my life going.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: I you're not alone.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: I I know a lot of people who are on the same trajectory, and I think that's gonna be a really big aspect of living in the US, all around the world, actually, um, in the not too distant future.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, I I mean I hope so.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a way better way to live, you know.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: But even right now, in the new spot that I'm at, um, there's more uh of a communal vibe going on there.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: The last place I moved into, uh I moved into because my sister uh got a job and I moved into her old place.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: But then um this new place is in like a community that's like way more connected.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we when we bring the like barbecue out and the smoker, like people are like, Oh, can we like throw our meat on with you?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I got like a bunch of friends in the building, so already like it's it's already like much more communal kind of vibe.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm digging that.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like it's it feels like super supportive to you too.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's really great.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's awesome.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so should we switch to the lightning round?
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa, the lightning round.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's go.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I forgot about the lightning round.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, here we go.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: The first one's probably gonna be hardest for you because I I picked it specifically for you because of your personality.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's hear it.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the first question is board games or video games?
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: Does board games include tabletop RPGs?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, board games, yeah, board games, way better.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: Awesome.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: Video games are are good and cool, but tabletop RPGs are way more open.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so this is this is not the point of the lightning route.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not supposed to like elaborate on things.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you can elaborate.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: We make up the rules as we cover.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: All right, excellent.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_02: Tabletop RPGs are dope.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um so what traits did you inherit from your mother?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh from my mother, uh, empathy, uh, and I just think like a good nature and like a kind demeanor, like she's just sweet to everybody.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, and that's what's so awesome about her.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: And from your dad?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: From my dad uh tenacity, um and uh I a technical skill, I guess, I've inherited both genetically and from his tutelage.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and uh yeah, just uh an unwillingness to give up like a spark of fire.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh what is the one thing that you own that you wish you did not own?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: One thing that I own that I man, I can think of so much crap.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to get rid of so much stuff right now.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: How long do you have?
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I yeah, there's like uh a big box of the man, see it's see, I just threw away a ton of crap.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: So now everything that I don't want to own, it's like I'm on the fence about not wanting to own it.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_02: So like it's like hard to naming that is like actually a really hard thing.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like you shouldn't have asked me this in a lightning room.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: I want nebulously, I want to get rid of so much of my stuff, but concretely, it's like impossible to decide.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: I I want to get I want to get rid of a box, man, and I can't even think of what the box is of in my closet.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's a box in my closet and it's full of stuff, and I don't think I really need it, but every time I look at it, I'm like, I kind of need some of that stuff.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't want to sort through the box right now.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: A box in my closet, that's the answer.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, gotcha.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I moved out of my big house, big family house.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: And even though I am like not a uh, I'm not even close to a hoarder, I like to live like really clean.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I there's still, you know, six people lived there, so it was a lot of stuff to clean out.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a library full of books.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I got rid of a lot of books, but I also kept a lot of books, and I was putting them in boxes to put in the storage unit.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when I went back to the storage unit with my daughter, she's I was like, why did I keep all these books?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're never gonna come out of here.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never even gonna open up the boxes.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: And just like I was wondering when you were packing up, I was like, why is she packing all those boxes, those books?
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, why didn't you tell me?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: Say something with books, books take so long to read.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: Books are like a massive time.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: I have so many books, I don't need books.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm the same way.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: There, a box of books.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: I have a box of books, I'm with you.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let's get rid of that.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're so hard to get rid of, though.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because they have sentimental value, but sentimental value, I'm like trying not to believe it anymore.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: Objects, they shouldn't have sentimental value, or maybe very few.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: What touches me is the future potential, you know.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, like that's a book, that's a classic.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I should read that, even though I haven't, you know.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and let me dedicate like hours of time and energy.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, I'm gonna have that and not want to dedicate that to other things.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I'm just gonna go sit in the sun instead.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so what's the worst job you have had, and what's the worst job you could have?
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: The worst job that I have had was man, okay.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I worked at this uh medical association uh for a while, and it was it was I I grew a lot during the course of the job, but it also had like a rigid sort of structure, like not as rigid as like some corporate structures, but I don't like get along well and like any of that.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then also like the whole time they were like, Brandon, like you've been a temp for two years, and like we're gonna hire you.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then like they like didn't hire me in the end, uh, which was really horrible.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: That was like the worst.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: And towards the end of it, the job got uh really bad.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, and I would say that like I've worked at like you know, I worked at like OSCO before, like a pharmacy, like as a soccer, and that that wasn't even like as painful as like that like horrible corporate environment, you know.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you were upset that you didn't get hired for a job that you didn't like.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: That was before the mental health care.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because my ego was riding on it.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: My ego is riding on it, yeah.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's pretty common.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's like that's like being turned down by somebody that you didn't even want to date in the first place, you know, like Yeah, true.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: True.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: Although I think a lot of that is revisionist history.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: In this case, it's not though.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like that.
• 50:47
  unknown: Okay.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um the worst job I ever had was when I was like 15 or 16, my dad owned a foundry, which I was used to working in a foundry.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: That was fine.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: But next door to him, there was a can, like a little indie candy factory.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in the summer, they didn't have air conditioning, and they used to they had to keep the doors and windows closed.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, and they were pouring this hot peanut brittle on these big steel tables.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like an oven in there.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of my jobs, they used to have this little like tin of um, like a little cupcake tin, and they would put fudge in it with this machine, and it would drip the fudge over the metal part of the tin.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: My job was to scrape that fudge off of the tin with my thumbnail eight hours a day.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, I did that eight hours a day.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: My thumb was like bloody.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's horrifying.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's like some industrial revolution shit.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is why we have unions.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I was a kid, so I was just like, uh, oh my god.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's horrifying.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're like, this is normal.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: This is what normal people have to do.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, what are you most afraid of?
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what am I most afraid of?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh um I I think like going back to the way that I was before I got like mental health care, like I think that like all of my fears kind of revolve around like not wanting to like re-enter that state of like disconnectedness and just weirdness and um just unhealth.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think everything kind of revolves around that.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like afraid to like gain any weight because of that a little bit and like you know, I I like have to if I if I like get off of like a rigid like workout schedule, or if I get off of like if I like miss an appointment or something, then I I like have that fear in my gut of like, oh like you're gonna go back to the way you were, you know.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're gonna have to learn to like walk the line between discipline and then also then or letting discipline own you.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right, exactly.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: So did you bring a question for me today?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: See, I didn't let discipline own me.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: You can make one up on the fly.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you could be anywhere right now, where would you be?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in a pretty amazing place, so I mean, I love where I am, but I would love to have like all my kids here for just like a little while.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's been so long since we've been together, and um, you know, now everybody's super spread out, and it's gonna get harder and harder to be together.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: But if I could have that anywhere on the planet with them for a week, it would be awesome.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that'd be sweet.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that happens for you.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, me too.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_02: What about you?
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: All the troops.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um be anywhere right now.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think like I'd want to be like near the top of like a low mountain, you know.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe there's like a lake there, you know.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: So somewhere like that.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_02: That'd be good.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_02: Somewhere brisk, you know?
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: You should try Iceland.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: Man, I should try Iceland.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, yeah, Iceland would be that'd be good.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'd be I'd be down.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_02: I keep seeing, it's funny that you say that, like the algorithm thinks the same thing because it keeps showing me pictures of Iceland recently.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Brandon, I just want to thank you so much for being uh with me today.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that you know our conversation is really gonna be helpful to a lot of people, and I really commend you for your vulnerability and your strength and your willingness to show up to that to this conversation.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: This was great.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: It felt good to you know talk about this stuff and uh just talk to you again.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been great.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.