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Being “Stuck” in life is real. How can we get UNSTUCK? · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:04
  We are faith and fury.
• 0:06
  Love and fire.
• 0:09
  This is the human equation where every voice counts and every truth cuts deep.
• 0:17
  With your host, Joseph Pangaro.
• 0:21
  Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the human equation.
• 0:26
  And here we are for our Friday night roundup.
• 0:30
  We're spending some time together.
• 0:32
  Normally at this point on a Friday evening, I would have an adult beverage to help get me ready for the weekend, but I'm not doing that this week.
• 0:41
  Instead, I have an icy cold, what is this, spring water?
• 0:44
  It's fantastic.
• 0:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 0:47
  I'm staying hydrated.
• 0:50
  So it's been an eventful week.
• 0:53
  There's a lot of things going on.
• 0:55
  And as I'm I'm making my notes, I'm looking through things, I'm going through my feeds.
• 1:00
  A couple of things people have asked, they say, hey, uh getting these emails.
• 1:06
  Joe, where do we get your books?
• 1:08
  Where can we get this, that, and the other thing?
• 1:09
  Well, you can get my book, The Investigation.
• 1:12
  You can go to uh Blue 360 Media.com and you can get the interview, which is how to conduct a complete and thorough interview, no matter who you have to interview.
• 1:23
  It was created for law enforcement, but anybody that has to interview will benefit from reading this book and going through it.
• 1:30
  You can get that from Blue 360 Media.com.
• 1:33
  You want to go take a look.
• 1:34
  I have another book that I'm working on.
• 1:37
  And I'm going to talk about it a little bit today.
• 1:40
  Because I I found it is a a topic that never really affected me in my life.
• 1:48
  I gotta be honest with you.
• 1:49
  It never really affected me, but I did notice that in people uh in my family, friends, colleagues, uh I noticed that it does affect them, and that is the topic of being stuck in life, where you just can't seem to move forward, and people get stuck for lots of different reasons.
• 2:14
  And I started to think about it, and I said, I want you know, how come now that like I said, that has never affected me.
• 2:21
  I have never been then been somebody that just felt like I can't move forward, what am I gonna do?
• 2:28
  Since I've been young, uh, if I've had a problem, uh I dealt with it right away.
• 2:33
  If I didn't like something in my life, I figured out, well, how do I change this?
• 2:38
  What do I want to do?
• 2:39
  And I change it.
• 2:41
  Uh my career.
• 2:42
  Uh I did the same thing.
• 2:43
  I set goals, I move forward for my goals.
• 2:46
  When I decided I'm going to retire.
• 2:48
  I said, Well, what am I gonna do?
• 2:50
  Sit on a beach and do nothing, or am I gonna figure out another way to use my skill set?
• 2:55
  And I I said, Okay, well, I I don't want to just, you know, uh push a broom in a in a big box store.
• 3:02
  Although, you know, that's nice and relaxed.
• 3:04
  I have more to offer.
• 3:06
  So I write books, right?
• 3:08
  I write articles.
• 3:10
  Uh, I do this radio program.
• 3:12
  I do several radio programs, uh, I do podcasts.
• 3:16
  And I found that it keeps me active, it keeps me engaged, and I find it is quite satisfying because with a lot of the things that I'm doing, there also comes a paycheck, right?
• 3:30
  A paycheck.
• 3:31
  So it helps me to do the things that I want to do.
• 3:35
  So, like I said, I I've always been somebody who moves forward, even in difficult things, you know, there's you things are difficult, and you figure out, well, what am I gonna do?
• 3:46
  And I I didn't quite understand talking to my friends who were stuck in their relationships.
• 3:54
  Uh several of my friends, you know, through my age group through through my 30s and my 40s and my 50s, we saw very good friends of ours who you thought they had great relationships, and all of a sudden they're estranged, they're separated, they're divorced, they're they're just their families break up.
• 4:13
  And it was horrifying, and it was it was bizarre to me and my beloved Kathleen to understand, you know, what happened.
• 4:23
  And when you talk to them, you know, she would talk to her friends and I would talk to my friends, and you find out, well, they're just stuck.
• 4:29
  You know, this my my relationship is just stuck.
• 4:32
  It got it got boring.
• 4:34
  Uh it came to the end, we were no longer doing things together, and we had different interests, and that led to, you know, just not being able to get together.
• 4:46
  And they were stuck in a bad relationship.
• 4:50
  I talked to a lot of people who are stuck in their work life.
• 4:56
  Now, there's a lot of reasons, I guess, to be stuck.
• 5:00
  Uh you can be stuck because you have no choice.
• 5:04
  You have a job and there are limited options for you, and you have to earn a paycheck, and then you know, you gotta pay your bills, you gotta feed yourself or your family or whatever.
• 5:15
  And you're kind of stuck from making any kind of a big move.
• 5:19
  Um, even if you want to.
• 5:22
  So I looked at some examples of people who are friends of mine, contemporaries, and they just complain about their situation.
• 5:34
  They never change it.
• 5:35
  And I found that to be antithetical to the way I look at the world.
• 5:42
  Like I told you, when I was a young person, my father passed away when I was very young.
• 5:47
  I was 14, he was only 37, God bless him.
• 5:50
  Massive heart attack.
• 5:51
  But he taught me a lot of lessons.
• 5:53
  He was a union electrician, and he got tired of driving to New York City every day from Jersey, and he said, I gotta do something better for my family.
• 6:02
  So the first thing he did was move his family out of Jersey City down to the Jersey shore.
• 6:09
  Now that created a two-hour ride each way to work.
• 6:13
  But he was willing to do it because he wanted something different.
• 6:15
  He didn't like what he was doing anymore, uh, where he was living, and he wanted something better.
• 6:21
  So that was a lesson.
• 6:22
  Even though I was young, I heard about that lesson later on.
• 6:25
  Then, as a union electrician, he was doing pretty well.
• 6:29
  You know, we had a pretty pretty well pretty nice lifestyle.
• 6:32
  We it was not lifestyle of the rich and famous, but we had a nice house, we had a swimming pool, you know, it was it was pretty good.
• 6:39
  You know, nobody wanted for anything.
• 6:41
  We went on vacations, and then at some point my father decided that he was tired of going to the city and he wanted to strike out on his own.
• 6:50
  He wanted to be an entrepreneur.
• 6:53
  He wanted to put his own shingle out and start his own business, and he did it.
• 6:57
  Him and my mother decided together that they were gonna do it, and it caused, you know, financial problems for a couple of years here.
• 7:04
  Uh, I was a I was a younger kid, but I noticed the lifestyle difference.
• 7:09
  Uh, you know, dad's new job.
• 7:11
  He had a truck out front with his name on it, and you know, our our financial lifestyle was just different.
• 7:18
  For it was less for a couple of years, and I mean really less.
• 7:21
  If you go back and listen to previous programs, you hear some of the the stories I told, especially at the holidays.
• 7:27
  You could really, as a kid, you didn't understand why, but the holidays were a lot different when you have no money.
• 7:34
  And then all of a sudden, the business started picking up.
• 7:36
  And it's right, like I said, go back and listen to previous episodes where I talked about this, that all of a sudden things got better.
• 7:44
  We went from a junk box car, and my father had a uh a utility truck that he bought so he could do his own business, and it was an older one, it was a rattle trap.
• 7:54
  All of a sudden he's got a brand new van with shelves in it filled with all kinds of supplies.
• 7:59
  My mother who was driving uh, you know, a decent car, but it wasn't nothing great.
• 8:03
  All of a sudden, my mother's rolling around in a Cadillac.
• 8:06
  And then my father buys a Cadillac.
• 8:08
  So we have two Cadillacs in the driveway, uh plus a brand new truck, and then he has a crew of people.
• 8:14
  He's got, you know, seven, eight, nine of these young men showing up in the morning, getting their assignments, and then he got another truck and another van.
• 8:21
  Things really turned around.
• 8:23
  And I think that um that initiative that he took, even though he didn't sit me down at 10 years old and go, okay, Joseph, here's what I'm doing now.
• 8:33
  We are all gonna sacrifice blah blah blah blah.
• 8:36
  He didn't do that.
• 8:38
  I simply witnessed these things take place, and that is why in my own life, when I felt the job that I have is not what I want to do forever.
• 8:50
  What do I do?
• 8:52
  How do I get unstuck from this situation and make it better?
• 8:58
  Right.
• 8:58
  So I I remember as a kid after he passed, you know, the the company folded, and I was 14 years old, and I went and I had to get a job.
• 9:07
  I felt compelled to get a job to help my family.
• 9:11
  So I did.
• 9:12
  I still went to school, but I got a job uh up the street building caps for pickup trucks, you know, the cap you put on the back of the truck, and I I built caps for a guy who took me under his wing and taught me how to do it.
• 9:25
  Next thing I know, I have a skill that I didn't have before.
• 9:27
  I was getting a regular paycheck.
• 9:30
  Uh and it was funny because my mother would show up on Friday afternoons on uh payday, and uh my my boss called her uh the Bank of Italy, you know, Pangaro, Bank of Italy, and she would show up, I'd give her my paycheck to go deposit, and you know, at the time uh working part-time after school, probably every day from uh from noon till uh five o'clock, you know, what what was I making?
• 9:56
  200, which was pretty good, I guess, for a 14-year-old kid, 200.
• 10:00
  A week.
• 10:00
  But I would give that to my mother, and she would put it in the bank, and it would help to pay the mortgage, pay for the food, pay for everything.
• 10:07
  Bob, my uh the my boss, who was a very good man, he saw me doing this, and I I don't know, I'm not gonna say he felt pity for me.
• 10:17
  I think he thought he saw himself as a um I don't know uh uh a coach.
• 10:23
  He saw himself as um someone who could try and mentor me.
• 10:27
  I guess maybe that's it, as a mentor.
• 10:29
  He saw himself as a mentor.
• 10:31
  And on Fridays, you'd say, Oh, the Bank of Italy's here, and I would sign my check, run it out, give it to my mother, and every Friday, like clockwork.
• 10:41
  Uh, we would close the doors up at 5 o'clock, 5 30 if we had an order to finish, and Bob would come out and hand me a hundred dollar bill, you know, or 520s and say, here you go, here's the rest of your pay.
• 10:54
  You know, why was he doing that?
• 10:55
  He was doing that because he saw I was given my entire paycheck to feed my family at 14 and 15, and he thought, well, that's a good thing, but you deserve to have some cash in your pocket.
• 11:06
  So he showed me great examples of of doing the right thing.
• 11:11
  But my point was, I worked with Bob for I don't know, another three or four years, and there were some problems at the business.
• 11:19
  It started slowing down, the world changed from aluminum caps, started going into um fiberglass was the big thing now, and you know, the business was slowing down.
• 11:29
  Bob was drinking very heavily, um, and that was causing a lot of problems to the point that I was like, you know, uh, I really appreciate that this got me going for the last four years, kept me going, helping my family, but I need to do something different.
• 11:44
  I I have to get out of here.
• 11:46
  Um, it's not comfortable anymore.
• 11:48
  The tensions in the building were uncomfortable.
• 11:50
  There was word that Bob was selling the business, and I'm like, well, he sells it.
• 11:55
  Uh he's not telling me about it, but I am getting a sense that he's gonna sell this place, and then all of a sudden I have no job, so I better start looking.
• 12:03
  So a very good friend of mine, his brother had a landscaping company, okay?
• 12:09
  He had a landscaping company, and he says to me, Hey, uh, why don't you come and work with me?
• 12:17
  We're outside all day, we're getting exercise, we're in the sunshine, we're working with our hands, it's you know, but and I'm gonna pay you really well.
• 12:25
  And uh his brother, the my friend was my best friend, and he's like, he worked for him.
• 12:31
  He goes, dude, it's great.
• 12:32
  You're outside all day, you're feeling good, you're getting a suntan, and that was so different than what I was doing that I said, you know what?
• 12:42
  I'm I'm I'm gonna do this.
• 12:43
  So I had a heart to heart with Bob, and then that's when he told me, Well, I'm selling the business, uh I'll be done in another month.
• 12:50
  This place will be done.
• 12:52
  So good for you, good luck.
• 12:53
  Go ahead and take your new job.
• 12:56
  And I did.
• 12:57
  And I went out, and boy, I gotta tell you, I loved it.
• 13:00
  I loved it at first.
• 13:01
  Man, I was out every morning early.
• 13:04
  We were cutting lawns, planting bushes, building rock walls, you know, the three of us driving in a truck from one place to another, going to lunch.
• 13:12
  Um it was it was really wonderful for the first year or two.
• 13:17
  It really was.
• 13:18
  I, you know, and the pay pay wasn't as good.
• 13:20
  He wasn't, he didn't have as you know as much pay as he said he was gonna give me.
• 13:23
  But it was enough, and I felt better.
• 13:26
  And I was glad I made the change.
• 13:28
  I wasn't stuck where I was.
• 13:31
  Well, after two or three years of doing this, I decided that you know what?
• 13:36
  What am I gonna do the rest of my life?
• 13:38
  Well, I'm either gonna open my own landscaping company, like my father did.
• 13:43
  See, the lessons all start to come back to you.
• 13:46
  Because I can't just keep working for this guy, even though he's been good to me and I like it.
• 13:50
  I need more.
• 13:51
  I need triple the salary I'm making.
• 13:53
  If I owned the business, I might do it.
• 13:56
  But then I was concerned, you know, am I gonna jump out?
• 13:58
  And is he gonna be upset that I'm gonna take his customers?
• 14:00
  I don't know, I didn't want to do that to him.
• 14:02
  But then the thought came to me.
• 14:04
  I said, you know, I was inside a business, and then I'm out here in the in the weather.
• 14:10
  You know, in the winter, we're shoveling snow, we're doing plowing in the summer, it's a billion degrees.
• 14:16
  And I said, I I wanted I want to be more professional.
• 14:21
  I want to do something where in the winter time I'm in a warm building.
• 14:25
  In the summertime, I'm in air conditioning.
• 14:28
  And I at that point, um, I had met beloved Kathleen, and we were building a family together.
• 14:35
  We got married, and we're saying, what are we gonna do?
• 14:38
  What are we gonna do here?
• 14:39
  Um, and we felt stuck.
• 14:42
  We felt really stuck, and we had taken a trip to uh Tampa, Florida, where my cousins lived too.
• 14:49
  Let's go to Florida.
• 14:50
  So we went down to Florida and we decided we really liked it.
• 14:54
  Let's stay here, let's get unstuck from New Jersey and the snow in the winter and the cold and the gray.
• 15:00
  Let's go to Sun Sunshiny Florida.
• 15:03
  And we just we did it.
• 15:05
  We just packed our bags, got some jobs, and came down there.
• 15:08
  Well, after being down there, it didn't work out so well because you're not you're not you're not vacationing in Florida when you live there.
• 15:14
  You're working there.
• 15:16
  And I felt stuck again.
• 15:18
  I said, Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do?
• 15:20
  All my friends are at home, my family's at home.
• 15:22
  What are we doing, Kat?
• 15:23
  And she says, Well, I don't know, what do you want to do?
• 15:27
  Do you want to go home?
• 15:27
  And I said, Well, if I go home, I'm not going back to the same thing again.
• 15:31
  I'm not going back to, you know, the kind of life we had before, before coming to Florida, we came here for a different life, and I'm not going back to New Jersey to go back to the same thing.
• 15:43
  And we talked about it, and I said, What if I went back to school?
• 15:46
  You know, I had a high school diploma, but that was it.
• 15:49
  I didn't have money for college.
• 15:51
  My mother didn't have money to send me to college.
• 15:53
  I went to work, you know, I worked.
• 15:54
  And I said, Well, what if we go back and I go back to school and get a degree and maybe do something professional.
• 16:04
  And she's like, hey, I'm all in.
• 16:06
  I'm gonna take care of the kids.
• 16:07
  Um, if I have to go to work part-time, I'll do it.
• 16:10
  Let's uh I think that's a plan.
• 16:13
  Right?
• 16:13
  So what did we do?
• 16:15
  We reached out and we told my in-laws this was gonna be our plan, and they're like, Well, you can come and live here.
• 16:21
  You can live at our house rent-free, and you can save money, go to school.
• 16:25
  So we were like, okay, we are unstuck once again.
• 16:29
  We packed our stuff, said goodbye, went back to Jersey.
• 16:32
  I started going to school.
• 16:35
  Well, while I was there, the police job came up, the opportunity to be a police officer.
• 16:42
  And I went and took the test, and I got hired.
• 16:45
  Next thing you know, you know, you gotta remember you you're talking about 1980, 1984, 1985.
• 16:52
  The average salary, like today, the the median salary, I think in New Jersey for for all people, is like $66,000 a year today, in uh in 2026.
• 17:04
  Well, back then, in 1985, the median salary was like $18,000.
• 17:10
  Well, I was making 14,000, $15,000, uh, you know, being a landscaper and this, and the police offered me this job.
• 17:20
  I passed all the tests, I studied real hard, passed the tests, did all that I had to do, and got myself hired to be a police officer, and the starting salary was $21,000, and health care benefits, and vacation days and holidays.
• 17:35
  It was like this was shocking to me.
• 17:41
  Because it was a different world uh than where I came from.
• 17:46
  Umbelievable.
• 17:48
  In three years, my salary went to $38,000.
• 17:51
  In three years, it went to $38,000.
• 17:54
  I was making almost double the median income in New Jersey as a 26-year-old person, 27-year-old person, and a house came for rent up the street.
• 18:05
  It was beautiful little beautiful little thing, and we decided it's time to move out.
• 18:10
  I thanked my in-laws, they couldn't have been better to us.
• 18:12
  My mother helped where she could, but she didn't have a lot of money.
• 18:15
  But she helped where she could.
• 18:17
  Uh, she was supportive of us, and uh we had my son, my my youngest son at that point, and we decided to we're we're gonna unstick ourselves from this routine, and we rented the house down the street, and from there, every single time we found ourselves in a bind, we had to think of a way to unstick ourselves, and we did.
• 18:40
  You know, um, I was doing police work, and it was I was patrol officer in uniform.
• 18:45
  It was in a town where there was a lot of activity, a lot of crime where I was from, there was no crime, it was it was it was quiet, you know.
• 18:52
  And here I am in a town where there is actual crime.
• 18:54
  I'm you know, I'm chasing people, I'm tackling people, uh, we got people committing murders and robberies and and sex assaults, and it was an eye-opening experience.
• 19:05
  But after a while, like six years in, seven years in, the whole shift work thing was really starting to weigh on me, though.
• 19:14
  I have to say that it was nice to be on three to eleven.
• 19:17
  I could be with my kids in the morning and then go to work, come home and sleep, get up at instead of getting up at the crack of dawn at 5 in the morning, I could get up at 7:30, be with the kids, get them off to school.
• 19:28
  Midnight's was a little tough.
• 19:30
  I hated midnight shift, I gotta admit.
• 19:31
  I liked the activity on midnight shift as a cop uh because the only people out there are cops and bad guys, so it was it was fun, but it was it was taxing on me physically, and I didn't like it.
• 19:43
  And then day shift was a chance to be normal.
• 19:46
  You know, I was I was up at five and I was home at uh at 3 30 in the afternoon, and I could be like a regular dad and husband, and we had family dinners and and it rotated every month.
• 19:56
  So it was okay.
• 19:58
  I just was kind of getting bored.
• 20:00
  With the same basic kind of thing.
• 20:04
  But the pay was fantastic.
• 20:06
  The benefits were fantastic.
• 20:08
  I love the men and women I worked with.
• 20:10
  I like the profession.
• 20:11
  So I was willing to stick it out.
• 20:13
  But I wanted more.
• 20:14
  I wanted something else.
• 20:17
  And I decided that, you know, I had been uh borrowed by the Detective Bureau many times, that I really liked detective work.
• 20:25
  And then I started pushing.
• 20:26
  I went to the head of the detective bureau and I said, okay, what do you do to qualify yourself as a detective?
• 20:32
  And he was a good man, and he said, listen, you do the work you're doing every day.
• 20:36
  Be uh curious about why people do what they do.
• 20:40
  Uncover crime, be aggressive.
• 20:42
  If something doesn't look right, look into it.
• 20:45
  And I took that completely to heart, and I was very aggressive.
• 20:49
  Uh went out and solved crimes, caught bear guys and girls, and did a lot of good stuff.
• 20:54
  Next thing I know, I'm in the Detective Bureau.
• 20:57
  Well, that was great.
• 20:58
  I loved my detective bureau job.
• 21:00
  That was just like the cream at a crop to be a detective you were on, involved in all the good things that happened.
• 21:05
  Anything crazy you were involved in, and you made a ton of overtime.
• 21:09
  You know, they called you in for extra hours because something happened.
• 21:12
  You need to investigate something.
• 21:14
  I really enjoyed it.
• 21:16
  But at some point I said, you know, could I be more?
• 21:20
  Could I be more than a municipal detective?
• 21:23
  Is there another job that I could still use these skills because I had developed a lot of skills?
• 21:28
  And an opportunity to go to the prosecutor's office came up.
• 21:32
  Right?
• 21:33
  This position to come up as a detective in the prosecute.
• 21:36
  Now I would be a detective across the entire county.
• 21:39
  On anything big in the county, I would be involved.
• 21:42
  It seemed really good.
• 21:43
  I also looked at the DEA.
• 21:45
  I had an opportunity to go to the DEA, which would have been a dream job for me.
• 21:50
  I would have loved, first of all, I would love FBI first, then DEA.
• 21:55
  And the opportunity with DEA came up.
• 21:57
  The only thing is I'd have to move to uh Southern Texas and do my time.
• 22:02
  And I am, I believe me, my wife and children had no interest in moving to Southern Texas on the Mexican border.
• 22:10
  So I had to ditch that idea.
• 22:13
  But instead, I went to go with the county prosecutor's office.
• 22:16
  And it it's a it's a very highly rated law enforcement agency here in New Jersey.
• 22:21
  And I went through the process and I was getting hired.
• 22:25
  Uh the prosecutor sat down, interviewed me, and said, Yep, I want to offer you the job.
• 22:29
  Unfortunately, my my daughter had a liver problem when she was born.
• 22:35
  And she was healthy and all good.
• 22:37
  She had surgery when she was 10 days old because of this liver problem, but she was healthy.
• 22:42
  And they told us, but at some point she might need a liver transplant.
• 22:46
  And my insurance at the police department covered children's hospital in Philadelphia, which was considered the best of the best of where to go.
• 22:55
  And if she needed a liver transplant, that's where we'd be going.
• 22:58
  Well, the prosecutor's office that offered me a job that would be a great um enhancement to my career.
• 23:07
  I've been a step up.
• 23:09
  Their insurance did not cover children's hospital.
• 23:13
  And I had to think that through.
• 23:15
  And my decision was do I do I keep my job that I have that I like and put my own my own career goals on hold so to make sure that my daughter gets the health care she she she needs and deserves, or do I say, well, let's take a chance and I'll go to the prosecutor's office.
• 23:36
  And it was a lot of soul searching.
• 23:38
  Because this is something I really wanted.
• 23:40
  I really wanted to go there.
• 23:42
  Um I ultimately my wife says, she goes, I'll back you up, whatever you want to do.
• 23:49
  If if you want to go to the prosecutor's office, we'll make we'll make do with their insurance, we'll figure it out, we'll get the health care that our daughter needs.
• 23:57
  You know, you deserve this.
• 23:59
  Go ahead and do it.
• 24:00
  And I sat and I thought about it for a long time.
• 24:02
  I prayed on it.
• 24:03
  I prayed on it for a long time.
• 24:05
  And my decision, which once I made it, I never looked back.
• 24:11
  While I was trying to make it, I was hemming horn going back and forth.
• 24:14
  But I'm saying to myself, do I feel like I'm stuck at this police department?
• 24:18
  And I have to go forward.
• 24:20
  I have to go forward, right?
• 24:22
  And that's what I'm saying.
• 24:23
  When I look at this, this being stuck, I had the opposite feelings.
• 24:27
  Like I I didn't feel stuck.
• 24:31
  But I was concerned that I might be stuck.
• 24:33
  This might be a finally I'm stuck.
• 24:35
  I want to go to the next level.
• 24:37
  I want to go up higher.
• 24:38
  And what am I going to do?
• 24:39
  Well, ultimately, I made the decision after praying on this that my daughter and her health, no matter how good the other doctors would have been or places I could have.
• 24:49
  There was nothing better than children's hospital in Philadelphia for my daughter.
• 24:53
  And therefore, I would not endanger her health for my career.
• 24:59
  I wouldn't do it.
• 25:01
  And I called the prosecutor's office and I told the prosecutor, thank you, but I can't because your insurance don't cover it.
• 25:07
  And initially, he thought I was really just pushing for more pay.
• 25:11
  He's like, listen, I'll add more money to the job.
• 25:13
  We really want you to come out here.
• 25:14
  Blah, blah, blah.
• 25:15
  I was very, very flattered that the prosecutor would do that, but I finally convinced him that it really had nothing to do with the money.
• 25:24
  It had to do with the fact that I I could not go to bed at night, knowing that at any moment my daughter might need um specialized care, and children's hospital was the place to do it, and if my health care didn't cover that, I couldn't afford that, and she wouldn't get that care.
• 25:41
  So I had to make the family decision to say, you know what?
• 25:46
  I can't take the job.
• 25:48
  Now, I gotta tell you, the minute I made the decision, I never regretted it.
• 25:54
  And people have asked me through it, don't you wish you would have gone?
• 25:57
  Boy, you would have had a great.
• 25:58
  I said, I had a great career where I was.
• 26:00
  It turned into my training business, it turned into my book writing, it turned into my second career as a school security director when I left.
• 26:09
  It turned into this program.
• 26:11
  Uh I never regretted it for a minute that I did the right thing to take care of my family.
• 26:16
  But I was worried that I was stuck.
• 26:18
  Now I'm stuck here.
• 26:20
  And you know what?
• 26:21
  That wasn't true because I moved on.
• 26:24
  I got promoted.
• 26:25
  I got promoted twice.
• 26:26
  I ended up having a uh a great retirement and a great second career.
• 26:30
  So I was not stuck.
• 26:32
  But you know what?
• 26:33
  A lot of people are stuck.
• 26:36
  And when we come back, we're going to talk about my book called Unstuck and how it came to be and to help you if you're stuck in any way in life.
• 26:46
  We'll be back in a minute.
• 26:47
  Hi, this is Colonel Mike from the National Security Hour, calling all patriots to join me in Nashville on July 2nd, 3rd, and 4th for America Out Loud News 250 10th anniversary in Nashville.
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• 30:58
  Alright, everybody, I hope you weren't stuck on the break.
• 31:02
  Get it?
• 31:03
  Yeah.
• 31:03
  Okay.
• 31:05
  So I hope that this concept is helpful to some people.
• 31:10
  It might not be helpful to everybody.
• 31:12
  But the reason that I'm I think it's important, and then I bring it up is because the whole purpose of my my story to get me to where the point that I was in my career and my life was that I never felt stuck.
• 31:27
  I never felt stuck in my career.
• 31:29
  I never felt stuck anywhere.
• 31:31
  If I wanted to change something, I just researched it, figured out what is it I would want to do, and then I was blessed to have the support of my wife and my family, and I made a decision.
• 31:45
  How do I make things better for myself and my family?
• 31:49
  Even if it meant some sacrifice, what do I do that's best for my family, and how do I not feel stuck, right?
• 31:55
  So that's the whole purpose of the book, Unstuck, which I'm almost done with now.
• 32:01
  Well, just because I never felt stuck, as I started to meet other people, like I said, friend of mine was stuck in his career.
• 32:11
  To this day, we talk about it, and he's like, uh he's in the retail industry, and that's a tough industry to be in.
• 32:18
  And he's, you know, the manager hates me, these people are rude to me, I have so much more potential, and he does.
• 32:25
  He's very smart, very smart man.
• 32:27
  He could certainly do more.
• 32:29
  And 20 years ago, 20 years ago, when we were having this conversation, and he was telling me he was stuck in this position, and he was single.
• 32:40
  I said, Well, why are you why are you so stuck?
• 32:43
  You have no kids to worry about, no wife to worry about, just yourself.
• 32:46
  Find something that you want to do and do it.
• 32:49
  And he was so afraid to make a move.
• 32:54
  He was so afraid to leave his job that paid him, not very well, but it paid him enough to live his life, right?
• 33:01
  And I said, dude, I tried to impress on him how I did things.
• 33:05
  You know, you want a better job, go look.
• 33:07
  So much so that I went on one of these job sites, and I knew my friend's skill set, I knew his qualifications, I knew what he was all about, and I started looking for jobs in his area.
• 33:18
  And he lived in Massachusetts.
• 33:21
  And I started looking for jobs in that area.
• 33:24
  Uh, he wanted to go into some kind of a management field, let's just put it that way.
• 33:28
  And I started looking up management, entry-level management for people.
• 33:33
  And there were not one or two, there were dozens of these jobs in his area that were hiring urgently, will provide uh college uh education, will provide uh professional enhancements to help you, they really needed people.
• 33:51
  I started copying these all down, and I call them up and I say, listen, you know, I know you want to do something else, and you're concerned.
• 33:58
  Here are literally there was more than this, but if there were ten jobs that I thought he would qualify for to be hired almost immediately, that would be a change of the work that he was doing, change of his environment.
• 34:14
  It would it would enhance his personal uh skills, his abilities, it would be more rewarding.
• 34:20
  Everything that he said he wanted, I found.
• 34:22
  And I said, dude, they're right here.
• 34:24
  Here's ten of them, and I emailed them to him.
• 34:26
  Here, here they are.
• 34:27
  And he was, oh, this is great, I'm gonna call them, I'm gonna, I'm gonna this is great.
• 34:30
  I didn't never even thought to look that way.
• 34:32
  Okay.
• 34:34
  Fast forward six months.
• 34:36
  I get no phone calls from him about job opportunities.
• 34:39
  I get no phone calls about you know, interviews or doing this, that, and the other thing.
• 34:44
  And to be all honestly, you know, we were not on the phone with each other every single minute, even though we were childhood friends.
• 34:50
  I was in Jersey and he was in Massachusetts, and I was busy with a family.
• 34:54
  Well, six months down the road, we end up reconnecting on a phone call.
• 34:58
  And I said, Hey, how's the job search going?
• 35:00
  What are you doing?
• 35:01
  Those jobs look pretty good.
• 35:02
  He goes, Yeah.
• 35:03
  Yeah, they all did, but uh, you know, uh, one was one was 30 minutes away from my house, and they it's looked really good, but you know, 30 minutes right now on five minutes from work.
• 35:16
  Uh and I said, okay, well, what else?
• 35:19
  There has to be something else, other than a 30-minute car ride to change your life to get unstuck from what you're having a problem with.
• 35:28
  And for every one of the jobs that I had given him, he had an excuse.
• 35:35
  Why not to explore it, why not to go do it.
• 35:38
  And I got frustrated with him, and you know, I expressed that to him.
• 35:42
  How come, you know, you turns out he was just scared to death to make a move.
• 35:49
  Right now, even though he hated his job, hated the environment, hated the work, he had a paycheck.
• 35:56
  And it suited his life that he had this paycheck every week, but he was miserable every single day.
• 36:05
  And the opportunity to change that.
• 36:08
  I saw it, it's just a gigantic shining light.
• 36:12
  Here's how you can make the change.
• 36:14
  And he was too afraid.
• 36:16
  He was too afraid because he he was concerned that if he quits his job and he goes to this thing and he fails, then he can't get his job back, and then his whole life is upside down, even though he had very limited um responsibilities.
• 36:29
  He was responsible for himself and he was a grown man.
• 36:32
  And that was a lesson that really stuck in my head as I started looking at researching stuck and unstuck.
• 36:41
  Because I had someone who was stuck in a relationship.
• 36:44
  A friend of mine who was stuck in a relationship.
• 36:47
  That was really the impetus.
• 36:49
  Is that I was married very happily for 42 years till my Kathy passed last year, uh, unexpectedly and out of the blue.
• 36:57
  But until then, we had we had a a wonderful life.
• 37:01
  We had a tremendous life together.
• 37:02
  We we were a team, we were best friends, we were lovers, we were jokesters, uh, we were mother and father to our children, and we were also boyfriend and girlfriend.
• 37:13
  And friends of ours, very close friends, were having these marital problems.
• 37:18
  And of course, I'm talking to the husband guy who's my friend, and we're going on and on, and they were married a long time, and he just was I'm not happy here.
• 37:28
  I know she's not happy here.
• 37:30
  You know, we have kids, we have a mortgage, we have our families, but we're not happy.
• 37:37
  We're not happy at all.
• 37:38
  We're stuck where we are.
• 37:41
  And, you know, uh I didn't have that perspective because I was not stuck in a bad marriage.
• 37:48
  I was I was in a very good marriage, but I understood, you know, that relationships, especially modern American relationships, are tough.
• 37:58
  50% of all marriages end in divorce.
• 38:01
  Uh in the first five years.
• 38:04
  In the first 10 years, like 70% of all marriages end in divorce.
• 38:08
  It's a horrible statistic.
• 38:10
  And it's created a lot of misery, it's created a lot of uh broken families, children who who are too, you know, two family children and they're shipped back and forth and custody battles and all kinds of stuff.
• 38:22
  It's it's not good.
• 38:24
  And I remember talking with my friend about this, and his honest thing was, you know, my wife and I both kind of agree that we probably would be happier if we split up and went to find what it is that would make us happy.
• 38:40
  But they stayed together for their children because they felt they were stuck in that situation.
• 38:46
  Now, my own personal beliefs, unless there's abuse in the family, I wouldn't really recommend anybody get a divorce.
• 38:54
  I recommend you work out the problems.
• 38:56
  But I also know that sometimes, you know, the term irreconcilable differences are just real, and people cannot be together, they're just they're miserable.
• 39:07
  I I don't know why they fall out of love.
• 39:09
  I fell more into love with my wife each year that went by, uh, even through hard times.
• 39:15
  You know, I I ended up loving her more each and every year.
• 39:18
  So I didn't understand that concept, but I saw how miserable they were.
• 39:23
  And these are the things that led me to start researching, you know, how people get stuck and how to be unstuck.
• 39:33
  All right, so that that's a that's a long tale that I just kind of told you to get me where I am.
• 39:39
  And I started doing my research and figuring out ways that people are stuck, and my own personal advice.
• 39:46
  I did research on experts, what they say how to how to change your life, how to change a habit.
• 39:52
  What do they say?
• 39:53
  To change a habit, you have to do something different for 30 days.
• 39:57
  Takes 30 days to change a habit.
• 40:00
  To do something different.
• 40:02
  And so I started putting that all together.
• 40:06
  And I and next thing I know, I have a bunch of chapters put together on the psychological effects of being stuck and being stuck emotionally, being stuck in your faith.
• 40:18
  How many people were stuck in their faith that I know?
• 40:22
  I'm a guy that goes to church.
• 40:23
  I'm more faithful now than I ever was.
• 40:26
  But my faith grew over the years.
• 40:28
  And I saw people who had much stronger faith than I did when I was younger, and their faith dwindled over the years.
• 40:37
  You know, and I was wondering, you know, how can well I'm stuck.
• 40:40
  I'm stuck going to church every week.
• 40:42
  I pray and pray and pray, and I never get what I want, and this and that.
• 40:46
  And I had to look at that and understand, you know, the purpose of prayer and the purpose of faith in your life, and what does it do for you?
• 40:53
  Does it get you to win the lottery?
• 40:55
  Is that what God is all about?
• 40:56
  That you pray and pray and pray, and God sends you the lottery winning ticket.
• 41:00
  I don't think so.
• 41:01
  And I kind of saw it for what I thought it really was, and it's why I think my faith probably grew over time as I got to understand God and God's um desire for me and what my responsibilities to God are, right?
• 41:15
  Not God's responsibilities to me, but mine to God, and that kind of changed my faith.
• 41:21
  So that's where I started putting all these topics together.
• 41:25
  And then it happened to me.
• 41:29
  Then I found myself finally at a point in my life feeling stuck.
• 41:37
  And it was very, very recently, and I kind of gave you a little foreshadowing here of what happened, and it led to a whole nother area of stuckness that I I researched and I've added to the book, and that's why I'm not ready to publish it yet, because there are more areas where people can get stuck that I want to add.
• 41:59
  Uh I reached out to people and I said, Hey, tell me your story of being stuck at whatever it was in your life, and tell me how you dealt with it.
• 42:08
  And I'd send them a series of questions, like a survey.
• 42:11
  Uh, and I use that information in the book.
• 42:13
  The purpose being not everyone is stuck uh uh on their job, but they might be stuck in their relationship.
• 42:20
  Not everybody's stuck in their relationship, but they might be stuck in their faith.
• 42:24
  Not everyone is stuck in their faith, but they may be stuck in their friendships, whatever it is.
• 42:28
  They're stuck in in their family interactions, all those kind of things.
• 42:34
  So what happened to me?
• 42:37
  Well, in the last I don't know, since 2018, um, I left my job as a school security director, and I was hired by a company out of New York to bring my skill set, law enforcement, safety and security, teaching, training, all of that stuff to this company out of New York, and it was a huge increase in salary, huge increase in salary, bigger than I had ever seen in my life.
• 43:06
  And I was deciding what do I do?
• 43:09
  Do I what do I do now?
• 43:10
  I'm comfortable with my school security job.
• 43:12
  I love the district, I loved all the people.
• 43:15
  It was a nice routine, I was home every night, I had responsibility, uh, you know, all the good things you'd want from a second career.
• 43:25
  But I wanted to increase my income.
• 43:29
  I still had kids in college and high school, and you know, we wanted to go on vacations, we wanted to do stuff, and I more money would be great, right?
• 43:36
  More money would be great.
• 43:37
  Money is not in my life the thing that you pursue just to have more money.
• 43:42
  You pursue money for a purpose, um, whether it's to give your kids better things or to uh go on a vacation or to you know take care of your home or help help an elderly relative or somebody like that.
• 43:55
  Um but this job that was offered to me was an amazing increase in salary.
• 44:03
  It would mean also I would have to drive to New York for a couple days a week.
• 44:11
  Uh, and the company was very good.
• 44:12
  They said, yes, we need you to come to the office.
• 44:14
  It was in Long Island, we need you to come to the office uh three days a week, we will pay for you to stay at a hotel, we will pay for your meals, but we need you to be here on scene three days a week.
• 44:26
  It was an amazing opportunity to be an executive in a company and not just a law enforcement officer or school security director or CEO of a training company.
• 44:36
  I got to be one of uh ten managers in a multi-million dollar company where I dealt with my specialty, but I also got to have a voice in there was ten companies built into this uh place I was working for, and I got to have some some input into these other companies.
• 44:55
  I got to be an executive.
• 44:56
  Talk about you know, a challenge outside of your league, and I really wanted to do it.
• 45:02
  I really did want it.
• 45:04
  It was it seemed so exciting, but I had never been away from my wife and my children for two, three days a week, each and every week.
• 45:13
  I had never done that.
• 45:15
  It seemed really uncomfortable of an idea that I would go to Long Island uh for two, three days a week.
• 45:22
  And then business trips.
• 45:24
  We had business trips, we had conventions we went to.
• 45:27
  Um great when they were in New York or in Philadelphia, I was coming home every night.
• 45:32
  But when we had to go to Las Vegas, we had to go to San Diego, we had to go to Orlando, we had to go to these different places, which are beautiful places, a lot of fun to go.
• 45:41
  But I'd be away from home for three, four, five days at a time.
• 45:45
  This was not something I was accustomed to, though, like I said, the money would change my family's life for the rest of my earning years if I took this position.
• 45:59
  And I all of a sudden I felt I don't know if it was stuck, but I felt concerned where my friend in Massachusetts who didn't want to change his job for different reasons.
• 46:11
  I kind of understood it.
• 46:13
  And I'm not gonna say paralyzed, I've never been paralyzed, but I was really I was really in between.
• 46:20
  Kind of like making a decision about going to the prosecutor's office or not.
• 46:24
  You know, only this time there was no life threatening anything that prevented me from doing it.
• 46:30
  The upsides were very positive.
• 46:34
  The downside was travel that I never did before, away from home.
• 46:38
  I I didn't like leaving my family, right?
• 46:40
  And I remember me and Kathleen talking about it and going over it and over and over it, and when we waited out, we said, what a difference this would make in our life.
• 46:48
  Uh we we dealt with uh shift work, we dealt with that kind of thing.
• 46:53
  We can figure this out.
• 46:55
  Um so I ended up negotiating with the owners of the company, and I got it down to two days a week.
• 47:01
  Any two days a week I wanted I could come out.
• 47:04
  So the day I showed up, stayed overnight at a hotel, um, worked again, and then got in a car and went home at the end of the day.
• 47:13
  It was much more palatable to do two days like that, really.
• 47:16
  I was only away uh really one night, um, and then I was back, and I said, Okay, I'm going to do it.
• 47:24
  I'm not gonna be stuck here.
• 47:27
  I'm gonna move forward.
• 47:29
  And but it was it was an interesting back and forth in my head over do I take this?
• 47:36
  I had to weigh it out.
• 47:37
  I had to do what was tried and true for me to try and figure out how to make this decision, and that's something I tried to bring uh to this book on, you know, how do you how do you make decisions that are gonna get you unstuck from where you are?
• 47:53
  And I was all happy with that.
• 47:54
  I took the job and turned out it worked out great.
• 47:58
  It I mean, it really it worked out great.
• 48:00
  One of the things I got to do was I needed an assistant, an administrative assistant.
• 48:06
  I got to hire my wife.
• 48:08
  I got to hire Kathleen, and she worked from home.
• 48:11
  She was my administrative assistant.
• 48:13
  Now our kids were all older now, they were in high school or graduated and moved on, and here she was developing skills that she didn't have as an administrator.
• 48:23
  She was great at it.
• 48:24
  Uh, it was personally fulfilling for her, and she got to earn an income too.
• 48:30
  So I was thrilled, right?
• 48:32
  This this worked out really, really well for us.
• 48:35
  Then a year ago, to a year and a half ago, uh, my publisher says to me, Hey, your skill set as a manager in a corporation, we could really use you uh on a on a on a regular basis.
• 48:53
  Would you consider taking a consulting contract from us uh to help us run this business since you're already an author for us and you know the company and I said yes, a tremendous salary came with that, and I could manage, I could manage both things.
• 49:10
  They were in my off hours, I did one, and my on hours, I did the other.
• 49:14
  And it changed it changed our lives amazingly financially, and that moved us into 2025.
• 49:25
  Now, this is where my story starts to change, and I've told you my story in by previous people what happened to my beloved Kathleen, but the other parts of this story are the parts where I felt stuck in a way I had never been in my for in my life, never ever been before in my life, and how I've found a way to get unstuck.
• 49:45
  So what happened was I move into 2025.
• 49:47
  I got these tremendous uh jobs, very satisfying work, uh financially, fantastic.
• 49:58
  My wife is working, we go on business trips.
• 50:00
  And we would extend them by a couple of days.
• 50:02
  So we went, we had to go to uh to Napa Valley for a contract that I was doing.
• 50:08
  Well, I needed somebody to come with me.
• 50:10
  Well, Kathy got to come with me.
• 50:12
  Right?
• 50:12
  Everything was paid for, and we extended our trip by four days in Annappa Valley and used four vacation days.
• 50:18
  I paid for the hotels for those four days, and we paid for our food for those four days, but we had the plane tickets, we had the hotel for the first two weeks.
• 50:24
  It was we did that regularly.
• 50:26
  We did Dallas, we did New Orleans, we did uh Florida.
• 50:32
  Uh it's just absolutely amazing.
• 50:34
  Uh, New Hampshire, Maine.
• 50:36
  We it was great.
• 50:37
  We got to travel together, awesome.
• 50:39
  And that was 2025.
• 50:41
  Well, come March.
• 50:44
  Come March of 2025.
• 50:47
  My publisher says, listen, um, what we thought we were gonna do, we've decided we're not going to do.
• 50:56
  And that position ended.
• 50:59
  Okay.
• 50:59
  I, you know, I understood it was it was a business decision, and it was actually in the long run, it was a good business decision for them.
• 51:07
  Um, but I didn't have that position.
• 51:09
  Well, I got cut down on a huge paycheck.
• 51:11
  But you know what?
• 51:12
  We were still good.
• 51:13
  We were still very good.
• 51:15
  Um, and we were now planning my youngest son's wedding for October of 2025.
• 51:22
  We had uh relationship stability, we had financial stability, we had family stability, we had work stability, everything was going along swimmingly.
• 51:34
  Uh and as we started to round the corner into May of 2025, we were looking forward to the wedding and all the events that go on with that.
• 51:42
  We were looking forward to our next vacation.
• 51:45
  Uh the previous year we went to Canada, then we went to Italy.
• 51:48
  Uh we went to Ireland, we went to the Nassau Bahamas.
• 51:51
  We we had actually finally, as adults, got to do some things other than just take care of children.
• 51:57
  And we were going to be empty nesters.
• 51:59
  My son was uh graduating college, had a job, and was going to get married uh out of state.
• 52:04
  So we were all set, and we were looking forward to it.
• 52:08
  It was very exciting time, very exciting time, and then towards the end of the month of May.
• 52:16
  My Kathleen says, I got a pain in my leg.
• 52:19
  And we thought, well, we were cleaning up the yard, we were getting ready for the you know for the summer and opening the pool and doing all that stuff, and we were working hard.
• 52:25
  And we liked our garden, we love all that stuff.
• 52:28
  Well, her pains grew and grew and grew to the point that the poor thing couldn't walk, and she was very physically fit, she was healthy as a horse is unbelievable.
• 52:37
  And that led us to a bunch of doctors, and within three weeks we had a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia out of the blue, out of nowhere, and my angel Kathleen ended up in the hospital where she suffered for three weeks, and she died in August of 2025, unexpectedly out of the blue.
• 52:59
  Um it devastated all of us.
• 53:03
  And as we were barely being able to breathe as we moved into September, uh, the owner of my company called me up and wanted to tell me that he sold his company, he sold all 10 companies for hundreds of millions of dollars, and that he was going to retire, and that was the end of the company, and with it the end of my job.
• 53:27
  And with uh August, I lost my wife, September, I lost my job.
• 53:32
  Suddenly, out of nowhere, I went from riding high and uh feeling like hey, the world is my oyster, I can do whatever.
• 53:42
  I was devastated.
• 53:44
  Now I was worried financially.
• 53:46
  What was I gonna do?
• 53:48
  I lost both jobs that I had that were great.
• 53:51
  I lost my wife, my partner.
• 53:54
  How was I gonna function?
• 53:55
  I had grandchildren that needed needed me.
• 53:58
  Kathy spent so much time with these grandchildren, helping out my kids take care of them and you know, taking them places, doing things.
• 54:06
  This is where by the end of September, I felt myself not only in very deep grief that I had never experienced before, but I found that I could not move forward.
• 54:22
  I was stuck, and it felt like this was the stuck that was gonna last forever.
• 54:29
  Uh it was one of those, I don't remember the first couple months, but they were a blur.
• 54:34
  And then all of a sudden I got you know, the mortgage bill is sitting there.
• 54:37
  I gotta pay the mortgage.
• 54:39
  Um, I gotta go buy groceries.
• 54:42
  My father-in-law is 92 years old, Kathy's dad, and he's very healthy, but we take care of him.
• 54:48
  And I gotta make sure he eats and guts to the doctors, and she took them everywhere to doctors, to you everything, you name it.
• 54:54
  She was uh number one caretaker.
• 54:57
  Well, now that's on me, and I don't even feel like getting out of bed.
• 55:01
  I just want to stay in bed.
• 55:02
  I, you know, I'm uh I go to bed at 12 o'clock at night.
• 55:05
  That's what I'd stay up all night, I do stuff, I'm gonna I was going to bed at 8:30 just to shut the world off to get in bed and and turn out the lights and go to sleep and shut it off.
• 55:16
  And it felt like that was gonna last forever.
• 55:19
  And as I worked my way through September, then we had my son's wedding in October.
• 55:24
  I had to have a wedding without my wife there, without his mother.
• 55:27
  It I gotta tell you, I felt like I was in concrete up to my shoulders.
• 55:32
  I could not move, I could not function.
• 55:35
  We worked our way through it.
• 55:37
  My my wife and I mean my kids and I, we worked our way through it, but we were all feeling the same thing.
• 55:42
  We were all stuck emotionally.
• 55:45
  We what are we gonna do?
• 55:47
  What am I gonna do the rest of my life without my angel girl?
• 55:52
  And without these children's mother and their grandmother, and I had no idea what I was gonna do for money.
• 55:59
  I had no idea how I was gonna afford my mortgage and take care of my father-in-law.
• 56:04
  I was stuck for months.
• 56:07
  And it wasn't until right after Thanksgiving, right before Christmas, uh, and talk about the holidays in grief, right?
• 56:15
  Right before Christmas, I had a little bit of a breakthrough where I was going through my computer, and I saw the manuscript for unstuck, and I started reading it, and it started reminding me that this was not me, uh, you know, I'm just in grief.
• 56:32
  I had to understand.
• 56:33
  So I researched grief and I understood where I where I was and why I was being so affected, and I decided to add an entire section in the book on grief because I had no idea how many people this affects.
• 56:46
  How many people are stuck because of grief?
• 56:50
  Well, the more I researched it, the more I learned about grief, the more I compared it to myself and my own life, and I prayed, and I still do every single day, multiple times a day now to help me get through this.
• 57:02
  I've seen the fog begin to lift, and just now, just now I see the fog begin to lift, and I am back to work.
• 57:12
  I received a couple of job offers.
• 57:14
  I received a couple of contracts for the kind of work that I do, and basically my life, other than losing my wife, has gotten back on track.
• 57:23
  I'm still in grief, but I'm not stuck.
• 57:28
  I found a way to get past the stuck of grief.
• 57:32
  And that's what I added into the book.
• 57:33
  So well, I'll tell you when it's coming out, but it's coming out hopefully this year, but uh, it's called Unstuck, and I hope it helps anybody out there who finds themselves in this kind of a position.
• 57:44
  So I hope you're stuck on this show, everybody.
• 57:47
  Thanks for letting me talk.
• 57:48
  It really helps.
• 57:49
  We'll see you down the road.