Welcome to the Agenda Fluid Podcast. I'm Ben.
And I'm Donovan. So, Ben, we're going to talk about a particular topic in this one.
Purpose.
Purpose. Okay, that's it. Let's go.
Yep. Find a purpose.
And I guess, I mean, this is for, oh, shit, anybody.
Should we define what we mean by purpose?
I'll just, we were talking about purpose.
And I wrote down a couple of things.
Life-fulfilling stuff.
Okay.
Reasons for feeling.
And that's, I mean, things you do, not necessarily to have a sense of a better feeling,
but things you do that wind up giving you that feeling.
A reason to get up and get out of bed every morning.
Yeah.
I mean, there's, they could call it ambition.
They could call it motivation.
But those aren't the things.
I think the purpose is behind the scenes there.
You know, you have ambition or you have motivation because you have a purpose.
Well, how about let's take it back and let's say when we are kids, when we're younger, you know,
even before we start school or maybe even when we start school, what is our purpose?
We're told our purpose is to learn, to be a kid and to, I guess, get life skills so that one day,
if we're lucky and we're not killed in a school shooting, that we may become adults and enter society and become a contributing member of this collective.
Do you agree with that or not?
Yeah.
And that's a general, I mean, that's, that's the purpose that was given to you.
That's what you, that's what your parents told you your purpose was.
But that's true.
Internally, internally, I don't know how to explain childlike happiness.
I don't, I don't have a particular collection of ordered words to, to describe that.
There was no, I guess there was an inner driver, but it never wondered what tomorrow was unless it was my birthday or Christmas.
But yeah, we didn't think about tomorrow.
I mean, look at the kind of decisions we made up, you know, in our early twenties.
Fuck.
We live like there's no tomorrow.
And honestly, I'm starting to see that now.
To, to see the world from a child's eye or through a child's eye.
And when you, when you start to worry about this or that, or you're, you, you think about the future or you're, you're concerned with the past.
Fuck it.
The past is done.
It's immutable.
The future is not here yet.
I guarantee you no one has ever seen tomorrow.
Never.
Well, except those time traveling assholes that keep, you know, cropping up in social media, Instagram, that kind of thing.
Is that a thing?
Yeah.
That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a thing.
Is, can I find the links in the flat earth videos to those time travelers?
Hey, there's not to get off topic, but there's one I saw about a month or so ago where the guy gave, he said he was from, I think he was from the year 2055 or 2065.
And, and he gave, improved the flashlight yet.
Well, I mean, everybody's flashlight is now a flashlight, but what's, well, what's, but does it have a light on it?
A tiny one.
And what's the range on the cyber truck for real?
Uh, the range on the cyber truck, the cyber truck is no longer made, but they still exist because they're made out of fucking stainless steel and expired batteries.
Yeah, the guy, he seriously though, he gave, he gave like, okay, the end of the United States was essentially in the year like 2033.
And then he explains how it all happened and he gave all these milestones and stuff.
But anyway, that's, that's, that's off topic.
I mean, I mean, that's purpose.
Let's see if we can actually make it to the end of the United States, right?
Well, fuck, Nostradamus must be, must have a terrible agent because I've never seen him.
He's not touring, um, pretty good comedy routine.
Yeah.
You're right though.
I mean, I can tell you this as a child, especially whenever I was in school, before I got into my more, I guess, informative teenage years, my purpose was getting through the fucking day and getting home so I could watch cartoons.
That was my primary purpose or once I finally got a computer, it was getting home and getting on that damn computer and, and just, you know, futzing around or playing games or, or whatever.
And, and then a longer purpose was to get to summer, you know, looked forward to getting out of damn school and being able just to screw off during summer, knowing that in the back of my mind, that that was a very short time.
Even though it seemed a much, much, much, much, much, much longer time back then than the summer is today.
Yeah.
But I think it's, I think it's literally shorter now.
It's gotta be.
To have like three full months.
And I, I think Beth's out of, um, she's out of work for summer for nine weeks.
Well, they also go back, what, two, three weeks early or something before the school starts?
Well, no, no.
She goes back like two, three days early for pre-planning.
Oh, okay.
So it's, I thought it was at least a week.
So school fucking starts, uh.
In August.
And damn near end of July.
Yeah.
See, I, I distinctly remember school starting at the end of August, beginning of September and we still, we still were.
Yeah.
And we were still getting out around end of May, I think.
Memorial day.
Yeah.
So.
But yeah, that, that's, that was my driver.
It was getting home at four o'clock every day, get off the bus and take a shit and then go play with my best friend.
Yeah.
We were getting into something, fixing motorcycles or, or.
Uh, going somewhere, riding our bikes to some girl's house.
Yeah.
Uh, that was, that was just in the moment, whatever.
Oh, uh, Tony's called us to once go, once us to come and go swim.
So we'll go that day.
We'll go to Tony's.
We had no plan yesterday to go to Tony's today.
We just planned that on the way to Tony's.
That's the, I kind of like that.
I like that.
Not stressing and not worrying, um, over what the future holds.
Just, I mean, you can't just, you can't just be in a hot air balloon forever, but.
True.
You can enjoy moments and, and know that every, every crazy situation you've been through, you got through it.
No matter what it was and everything's going to be okay.
Somehow.
You might suck a lot of times, but.
Yeah.
I mean, my brother lost his son.
Mm.
In 2018.
And I, I, I can't imagine.
I, I, it's really difficult to see anything, um, beyond that at the time.
But, but here we are, here we are, uh, seven years later and we're okay.
We're not happy about what happened, but, but we're okay.
Yeah.
We made it, we made it through.
But it does, I can only imagine because, you know, I haven't lost a child, but I have lost both my parents.
And I, I can, I can only imagine that when something like that happens, you have no sense of purpose.
It's just like, what is, what is it all for?
You know, if, if at any given moment, and, and I got to say, I don't know if this is going to diverge from, from, from the idea of purpose or not.
But I got to say that something that I have done my entire life that just occurred to me is I've always been afraid to be happy.
Because I was afraid that as soon as I got comfortable with being happy, something or someone, some situation was going to come along and just destroy it and just fuck it all up for me.
I think that's entirely human.
So I'm not an outlier.
No, no.
Well, I, I think about it from the perspective of early humans and the Serengeti where at any moment of any day, you could be mauled by anything or step on the wrong plant or whatever.
So an, an innate hyper awareness of doom is probably a bit natural.
Yeah.
I mean, that, that's, that's true.
I mean, they definitely, I would imagine that they did not look and think about the future.
They were, they were thinking about the now, they see the lion and the now I need to get the fuck away from this lion or what have you.
Or that, uh, or that woman you got pregnant.
I need to get away from her now.
Yeah.
Now I'm going to go hunting.
Yeah.
So it's, uh, we didn't, we didn't, uh, it's funny.
I've got this, this theory that, um, we as a socially or behaviorally, we, we began the decline, uh, the, uh, at the time that we started to measure time until then there was nothing called tomorrow.
There was nothing that even approached a four 30 zoom meeting real quick.
Nothing, nothing to know for you to go.
Oh shit.
I can't do that right now.
Cause I've got to do this in 45 minutes.
Yeah.
Cause all you had to deal with, I mean, you knew that it got, it got light and you woke up and you knew that it started getting dark and you started getting tired and went to bed.
Yeah.
When shadow is long.
Yeah.
Lay down.
You didn't know it was Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday.
Every day was, every day was Saturday.
Yeah.
Every day was Saturday.
And you know, that is something that I can sort of relate to in a weird way.
So when Tyler was here, we spent, we spent two Fridays and one Saturday working on projects.
And so that one Friday where we were fixing the, the, um, rotted out bottom plate of one of the walls in the sunroom, that entire day, I was, I was just where I was as far as in, in the day, as far as time was concerned, was never really on my mind.
You know, you know, occasionally I'd look at my watch, but it wasn't like, Oh, got to get this done.
I was, I was running on how I need to get this fixed before I run out of steam, you know?
And then the following Friday and Saturday was even more ambiguous because we essentially spent from like 10 o'clock that morning to about six o'clock that afternoon on that Friday.
And then did the same damn thing again on Saturday, took breaks for lunch or what have you.
And I really didn't care about the time until we got close to the end on Saturday.
And I said, let's target trying to get finished with this by six o'clock, maybe a little after.
But the weird thing is as much, as much of a hassle, as much of the heat being tired, getting injured, you know, little cuts and scrapes and shit like that.
I was, I was in this weird moment of peace because all I had to do was focus on getting this shit torn down and getting the new stuff put back up.
I didn't have to worry about whose fucking email wasn't working.
You know, I didn't have to worry if they couldn't print to the goddamn printer from their fucking phone.
I didn't have to worry about any of that.
All I needed to worry about was how, how I was going to get this fucking nail out of this wall.
you know, almost just basic caveman mentality in a weird way.
Yeah.
And I was fucking exhausted both days, but it was just like this, you know, it's weird to say it, but this happy exhaustion.
It wasn't mental exhaustion.
No, it was, it was, my brain was fine.
My body was like, I'm checking out, you know?
Yeah.
You know?
So I, I get it.
I mean, I'm, I can work outside all day on a Saturday and a hundred degrees burning fires,
getting absolutely filthy.
I think I, like last Saturday or maybe Sunday, I, I mowed, I think for seven hours.
I ran two tanks of fuel through them.
Damn.
Yeah.
You haven't seen this place yet.
No.
It's fucking ridiculous.
We cut down a bunch of trees and just made more goddamn lawn to mow.
So now, you know, your purpose to mow.
Mow.
Uh, but I wasn't, I wasn't down, you know, on a Thursday at four 30, I'm ready to crash.
I haven't lifted a finger, but I'm ready to crash.
Yeah.
Cause my head's tired.
Exactly.
I haven't really had to figure anything out, but I've just had to deal with people and
finances and how to sell this or what, how to grow the business or people, what, what
kind of bullshit is going to happen next?
Or the phone, I get a text message.
I hear the notification and I go, Oh fuck.
I was just about to start something to, to improve something, but no, here it is.
That's the reason why.
Yeah.
Years ago, I had to put my phone on silent.
I could, because I would have this Pavlovian response to the phone ringing or the text message
sound to where my anxiety level would just shoot through the fucking roof because I'd be like,
what fresh hell is this?
You know?
And so I, and now my watch still rings, but it's, it's a different thing.
I mean, there's something about the default ringtone on an iPhone that is so iconic, but
is also so nerve wracking to me along with the tech sound.
And I know I can fucking change it, but I just went, how about I just make sure I let it vibrate,
you know, in my pocket next to my nads or something.
I don't know.
And, uh, that's like today I'm, you know, I'm still, I'm still finalizing this thing with
the VLANs, which I'm pretty sure I blew out some brain cells yesterday working on this thing
for three hours.
And I'm about, you know, I got something working and I'm about to write, write this
down as, cause I'm a, I'm a note taker.
I have to write shit down.
And even though I can type, I don't even know what I used to, I could type 105 words a minute.
I'm probably slower now because I just don't give a shit.
Uh, back whenever you had to train on typewriters, you know, accuracy was key.
But back in the olden days, but, um, you know, I'm writing this stuff down and I'm, I'm in
the zone and my fucking phone rings and I look over and I see who it is.
And I'm like, no, I answer the phone.
And I literally do not get back to what I was doing for 45 minutes.
When I realized, when I realized after I've taken care of what this whole phone call was
about, I got onto something else.
And then I went, wait a minute, 45 minutes later, I finally realized I need to finish
writing what I started writing on this damn notepad.
And that, I can't tell you how many unfinished projects there are in the Linux boxes that I've
decommissioned and all the VMs that are probably laying around my file system over here.
But yeah, I get it.
But I mean, that's our purpose right now is, well, well, I'm talking about a higher
purpose.
I mean, we, we do what we do to pay the bills.
Does it give us a sense of accomplishment?
Does it, is it life fulfilling?
That's no.
Yeah, that's probably why we're depressed.
Yeah, that it is not life fulfilling.
Is it life giving?
Maybe that's not the right way to say it.
It's, it's, it's basically what you, what, what you hit on there.
I mean, it's, we do it because it's our livelihood.
It pays the bills and make sure that we're fed.
Our families are fed.
We have a roof over our heads and all of that.
And some people would argue that that is a sense of purpose.
And I'm not going to discount that because I'm not saying that I'm ungrateful, ungrateful
to whom I, I don't fucking know, but I'm not saying that I'm ungrateful that I'm able
to do what I'm doing.
But if you're talking about a higher purpose, albeit maybe even a higher calling, if you
want to go to that level, but you know, higher calling doesn't mean religion.
Right.
But it's, that's, um, higher calling sort of speaks to an end goal, which speaks to, which
speaks to, you know, in the end of life.
I'm talking about the day.
Well, can you have a higher purpose every day?
I mean, I suppose there are some people out there that their higher purpose every day are
those people that, um, oh God, what's that thing that runs around here?
Peanut butter and Jesus.
I mean, I'm pretty sure those people think that they're there, they have a higher purpose every
single day and I'm not one to tell them that they don't, you know, do they go home feel
feeling good about the fact that they, they helped somebody.
They probably do.
Otherwise they wouldn't do it.
I think, I don't know, at the end of, at the end of the day, have you, have you done
anything that, that, that you'd want to do again?
Um, are there any days that you'd like to live over again because you just felt so good about
how it went?
Uh, well, I can immediately tell you there are some days I'd like to live over again because
it went so shitty that I want to correct it, but can't do that.
Right.
Um, but if you could recreate a day, I don't know.
I can recall, I can, I can recall a few days that I would say were not wasted.
Yeah.
I mean, and, and lately it's, uh, it's probably a day I spent with one of the kids.
I was going to say, or, or, or God, you know, did something in the garden with my wife.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I was going to say when Tyler was here, when, uh, us working on all this stuff, or even when
we're not doing that, but we're, we're in my office and we're just nerding out over shit.
Like that, you know, like that three hour Tiffin, uh, that three hour South Geek episode.
Yeah.
Like that, you know, like that.
Yeah.
I mean, I think this was last year we, um, we managed to, um, before I sold the place over
in Fitzgerald, we managed to secure my dad's old Adam, Coleco Adam computer, which is funny
because, you know, I was the first one to have one.
He, that, that was my computer back in 1982.
And when everybody else was getting Commodore 64s, I'd already had a Coleco, a gaming system.
And then they came out with a computer system.
And so Sears sold those things.
And I thought it was the coolest thing.
Turned out they were pieces of shit because they rushed them to market and all this other
kind of stuff.
Well, Tyler was really, really interested in this thing.
So we brought it here.
I've got about a two hour video of him disassembling the unit.
And I mean, days that, that was one evening I had two different phones set up.
I had my iPhone set up.
I had, uh, my, my Android phone that I, that I use for mainly listening to podcast and stuff
while I'm on the lawnmower.
And so the camera quality is not all that great, but it's not terrible.
And so, you know, I've got this and I've, I've put it all together.
I don't know what I'm going to do with it.
But, you know, that, cause he's interested in that kind of stuff.
I didn't necessarily care, but it was interesting to see the 1982, 83 motherboard and how, you
know, we're talking the size of a 20 something inch monitor, probably about a 20 inch monitor.
The motherboard's that big in the thing and the big integrated circuits and all this other
kind of stuff.
yeah, that's something that I would be like, that, that was, that was a good day.
I could do that one over again.
And it, it typically, it typically has to do with the kids too.
I mean, this past Sunday, you know, it being father's day and I'm not one I've told, I've
told my family this, I don't care for the commercialization of mother's day and father's day.
I feel like that I do enough during the year, uh, what I do to show my appreciation to my
wife and whether, you know, there are days, I don't feel like I get the same thing in return,
but you know, that's my own problem.
But, you know, but that's not to say that we're not going to quote, celebrate those, those days.
And so father's day, you know, we did chimichangas because they asked me, it's like, what do you
want to eat?
And I'm like, well, let's do chimichangas.
And they're like, well, that means you got to cook them.
I went, so I enjoy it.
I get to eat them too.
Yeah.
And then afterwards, Oriana surprised me.
She's like, can we watch monster hunter, which is a Mila Jovovich movie from 2020.
And I went monster hunter.
Yeah.
Neither one of us had seen it.
We talked about it and she loves Mila Jovovich.
She loves all the Resident Evil movies, except the last one.
We don't talk about it.
It doesn't exist.
But, um, and so we watched that.
And then afterwards, she's like, now, can we watch the, the latest Kong movie?
And I'm like, yeah.
So we spent the entire Sunday afternoon, the length of those movies, which was somewhere
between three and four hours total, just watching, just watching these movies, not doing
anything else.
You know, Lee was at her desk behind us because that's what she did.
She sits at her desk, the way the bedroom is arranged.
She sits at her desk and the couch is on the other side of her desk facing the television.
So she's at her computer, usually playing World of Warcraft or trolling Facebook or something.
And, you know, she can watch the TV with us.
And she even told me when Oriana went upstairs, used the bathroom.
She said, I think our daughter's enjoying your father's day.
I was like, yeah, so am I.
So that's definitely, that's a day that I could say, yeah, I could do that one over again because
it was a good day.
You know, my purpose for that day was, you know, to, to do something with my, my kid.
She wanted to do something.
She wanted to do it with her dad.
Hell, she's the only one I got left home.
The other two are on the other side of the fucking country.
So, I don't know, a purpose, I guess, would be a, a driver, a motivator.
Motivation for what though, I guess, would be my question.
Or, because you got to have an end goal in mind.
I mean, if there's, if there's no destination, this is the way I see it anyway.
I could be completely off base.
If there's no destination in mind, then what do I have to be motivated for?
I mean, we're on enjoyment.
That, true, true.
And unfortunately, sometimes my own enjoyment requires me to buy things that I can't afford.
So, yeah, I mean, that's like, I want to buy two of these 16 port POE switches.
I need one in the office.
I need one in the house.
That's almost $800.
Do I need them?
No, but I'll have a 10 gig link between the house and here.
I got nothing.
And then, of course, as soon as I realize how much money I've spent, even though I wouldn't
come out of pocket immediately, I'd, I'd put it on some kind of payment plan.
I'd be like, why did I do that?
You know, it gave me a sense of happiness and fulfillment when I did it because it was a
project that I wanted to do.
And now I've, it's completed and I'm going to use the things, but I guess it's the completion
of the project.
And it's like that, that happiness is now fleeting.
You know, the whole buyer's remorse thing people usually do during Christmas.
They spend a shit ton of money.
And when January comes and that credit card bill hits, they're like, why did I buy those
17 dildos and give them all to my friends for Christmas?
Because it was funny.
It was funny as hell.
And you had a blast.
Yeah.
You know, at what point does that become, do you cross over into irresponsibility?
You know, if you're seeking happiness, do you seek happiness as a, as your, your purpose
on a daily basis?
Is it okay to be irresponsible occasionally?
And I don't, I don't mean irresponsible to the point that you hurt somebody or you necessarily
hurt yourself.
I mean, because I've done that with alcohol, you know, I've chased that happiness and during,
and, and while I was doing it, I mean, I thought I was a fucking riot and everybody around me
was just enjoying everything I was doing.
The next day I realized not only was I a complete asshole, but I felt like shit.
Nobody liked me in that state, you know?
Yeah.
So I think, can you think of now, I'm, I guess I'll talk about the, again, the past that we
no longer have in the future that we don't have yet.
Can you think of a time when you were either, uh, frightened out of your mind or, um, enjoying
yourself to a point you've, you've forgotten that you haven't turned in your TPS reports?
I think those are, those are the things that, um, well, I mean, maybe not having a car crash,
but yeah, uh, skydiving or spending time that you enjoy with, with other people, which is rare
for me anyway.
Yeah.
I could name two instances where I've been scared out of my mind that I would definitely
never want to repeat.
One of them was many, many years ago.
Um, and I was robbed at gunpoint.
Oh, I've not heard this story.
Yeah.
So I'm trying to remember what year it was.
So would have been probably around 90, 93, 94, somewhere in there.
So I worked for, I say so a lot.
I worked for a guy who was a former AT&T microwave tower maintainer, and he bought a Radio Shack
dealership over in Fitzgerald, Georgia.
So if they ever listen to this, they'll know exactly who, who it is I'm talking about.
And, um, he, when he, when he left AT&T, he started, uh, an interconnect company and interconnect
is basically pulling any kind of cabling, whether it was, uh, data cabling, uh, installing telephone
systems, um, alarm systems, uh, uh, surveillance video, that kind of thing.
Well, this was in the early years before I was working for that side of the business full
time.
So I still ran the store and I can't remember if this was like, I don't remember what day
of the week it was.
So anyway, this, the store opened, I believe at like eight o'clock and it was me and his
youngest daughter.
And so I get there and I'm doing my normal thing that I do.
We, we had this, you had the building that had the showroom.
And then on the right-hand side, if you're facing the building, we had, we had a bay
because we did, we were the authorized all tail cellular installation center for Fitzgerald.
So anyway, I'd go in that door, go through the back, come around through the back of the
showroom place and come up, get the money ready, you know, count the till and all of that.
Well, I did that and I never, it never occurred to me.
I never had to worry about this.
I never locked that other door.
And so this particular morning, I'm up there, his youngest daughter's up there and she was
in her, she, she would have been 18 or 19 at this point, I guess, maybe.
And we're counting the money and I go to turn and at the, the door that goes out of the showroom
into the back area where you keep stocking stuff, there was this figure that was crouched and he stood up and started walking
toward us. And it was a black guy. Not that that matters, but facts matter.
And, you know, we're both frozen with fear. I mean, I actually, I saw that and I go, ah, like that, you know, and he starts walking up and he's got this, I guess it might've been like a 38 or something.
And it was like a short nose revolver type thing. And he walks up to us and, uh, he's like, give me all the cash.
And, you know, you always, you always hear, don't fight. Just, just give them, just give them the stuff so we can take off. And we only have a hundred dollars in the till.
So we pull out the money and my wife had just given me, okay. So this was probably in January.
She had given me a gold chain for Christmas and he's like, give me the gold chain.
And so, and I think he took some jewelry off of, uh, this guy's daughter too. And then he's like, come on, come back here with me.
And so he forced us to walk to the back, walk into the office and put us up against the wall where, you know, I was, I was facing the wall.
She was butted up right behind me. And the whole time that we're walking back there, he's got the gun in my lower back.
And so he's like, y'all don't turn around. And, uh, and so I, I count to about 30. I hear the door open.
And so I'm like, I'm fighting to try to get over to the phone so I can call 9-1-1. And she is, she's freaking the fuck out.
She's like, no, no, no, he's going to come back and kill us. And I'm like, no, he's gone. Okay.
So I finally get over there, call 9-1-1. And, um, of course the owner and the wife, you know, we get in touch with them.
They all come up there. They go get, uh, they go get some more money for the teal and all of that.
We get the, the cops are, of course, involved. They catch him right down the road.
So, yeah. And then his mother, this son of a bitch's mother had the audacity to request that we not, we, we don't file charges against him.
And I'm like, the fuck you're saying?
He's a good boy.
Yeah. Well, maybe, maybe yesterday he wasn't today. So, yeah, that's something that I, I do not want to, that's probably the most, that's probably the scariest I have ever been in my life.
But it was one of those moments where you, you weren't worried about the, you weren't regretting any decisions you made in the, in the previous years or months.
You were living in the moment.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
So that's what I'm talking about is, is focusing on what, um, Tola calls the now.
I don't know what that really has to do with our topic of purpose, but I think, I think a purpose could be to live now.
I mean, it's not the first time that I've heard that, you know, I, and I, I guess I could, I could see the connection because as you've already pointed out, I mean, we, we can't know the future.
And the past is past.
We can't go back and change it.
What's done is done.
You know, I always love that.
What happened happened and couldn't have happened any other way.
That's right.
I like, I like that, uh, determinism, they call it.
Yeah.
So sometimes I wonder if, see to me, and you and I talked about this a little bit this morning is there's a part of me that feels like my purpose, even daily should be to be vocal about things that are wrong.
in the world, whether it's at the local level, the state level, or the federal level.
But at the same time, I'm not entirely sure if that's not just ego.
If you, if you follow what I'm saying, it's almost like, I think I could be an advocate for X and I can do it better than somebody else.
Or maybe there's not enough voices advocating for X.
So why don't I get involved and throw my hat in the ring and, and, and do that?
And I'm so afraid that if I were to do it, okay, number one, we've, we've got the issue of livelihood.
Can't jeopardize that unless you can make this thing replace that livelihood.
And then some, as some people have done, but I'm not that lucky.
And then I, I, I, again, I have to pull back and go, am I just trying to stroke my own damn ego?
Is, is that the purpose of this feeling of having more purpose?
Purpose is one of those words where you almost have to define it by the word itself, you know?
Yeah.
And that's why I, I, I, life fulfilling stuff.
Yeah.
Which, I mean, I feel like there's certain things that I could do that would fulfill me more than trying to change a printer from being WSD to the actual IP address.
So it'll print faster and well, actually fucking print.
I think, I think, I think, uh, I think, uh, automating such a task would be wonderful.
That would be a sense of accomplishment and, and knowing that you probably will never have to do that again to anywhere.
Do you ever do repetitive tasks that, you know, you could probably automate, but you do them because you feel like that's something you need to do that gives you purpose?
No, that would just be ego.
I think.
Okay.
I'm going to do this because I'm the only one who can fuck that.
I'm going to detect it and correct it and never hear about it.
That would, I would do that.
And that wouldn't be for ego.
That would be because I don't want to fucking do that anymore.
I do not enjoy that.
I will automate it.
See, that's like, I have a process every morning where I have to get, I have to log into a phone server and.
Yeah, I know.
I told you that.
You've, you've, you've shown me the.
I don't think there's a way to, I don't think there's a way to automate that.
There must be.
I'm sorry.
The mosquito guys running around.
I was like, who just cranked up a fucking engine outside my door?
Yeah.
There must be, which is probably a topic for another show.
Yeah.
But I mean, it's stuff like that.
I mean, it's, it's not because I'm the only one that can do it, but it's technically, I am the only one that can do it because I can't hand the keys over to the client and say, here, you need to do this every morning.
I need to do what?
No, it doesn't work that way.
Yeah.
So I don't, I don't know.
I don't know.
The, the, the days start to, to run together.
Mm-hmm.
Like, I can't remember what day it is.
A lot of times, I think it's Wednesday.
It is, I, you know, I don't remember the past two days because they weren't that eventful.
I know what I got to do in the morning.
It's Thursday morning.
So I've got to complete my grocery shopping in the Walmart app and submit it so that I can go pick groceries up Friday morning.
And I'll, this is probably going to sound weird, but you already know I'm slightly off.
I visualize my days in colors.
I've always done that.
Now, the color of a day has changed over time, but Thursdays are blue for me.
Don't ask me why, but they're blue.
Fridays are sometimes red, sometimes a yellowish red, but not quite an orange.
Saturdays are black.
Now, that doesn't mean that Saturday is a, is a bad day.
It's just the color that it feels like.
Yeah.
And then Sunday is yellow.
Now.
Yeah.
I mean, thinking about it, if you were to ask me, Thursday's green, Wednesday's yellow.
I don't know why.
Okay.
But yeah, go on.
So my mood is somewhat attached to those colors.
So like Monday is probably like a brown day for me.
And it's a day that, I mean, I don't, I don't like brown.
Now, not to, my wife's eyes are brown.
Of course, I love her eyes, but I'm just saying the color brown is not, not my favorite one.
So Mondays are, it's hard for me to be positive on a Monday.
But by the time I get to Thursday, Thursdays, I feel more uplifted, more positive, more jovial.
And then, you know, Friday, generally, except for last Friday, where I had to basically break my rule of not working on Friday and, you know, go deal with a dead computer.
But Friday and Saturdays are basically like the fucking wheels are off, man.
You know, let's party.
Woo.
Even if I don't have anything to do, you know.
Except cut grass.
I'm cutting grass this weekend, damn it.
And we got to paint the back of this thing, this stuff that we put up.
We've been putting it off because it keeps raining.
Of course, it didn't rain today, but anyway.
So, yeah.
And so, in a weird way, I guess, I don't know how that necessarily connects to purpose, but I feel like I have a better, more life-fulfilling purpose potential.
Let's put it that way.
Potential.
On starting about Wednesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are my purpose potential days.
Sunday, eh, you know, there's a chance that this Sunday I might actually be working because it's the only day that I can take a network down.
I don't know yet.
I haven't made up my mind.
But, yeah, Monday and Tuesday definitely are, of all the days of the week that I don't like, those are the two days that I do not like.
Because I feel like I'm ineffective and everything just is not going to go the way I want it to go.
Yeah, I get that.
Friday's pretty, usually pretty good for me.
I don't ever plan to work, but I end up working anyway for one reason or another.
Mm-hmm.
This past Friday, I just took off.
That was the day I spent seven hours cutting grass.
Saturday, it's usually pretty good outside of soccer season.
But Sundays, Sundays I try to do nothing, like absolutely nothing because of my anxiety towards Monday.
Somehow, no matter what plans I have on a Monday to complete a project or do some research,
whatever I've got on my agenda gets steamrolled by somebody's problem.
And so I sort of start the week out behind.
And then Tuesday, I'm just recovering from Monday.
Yeah.
Wednesday, I start actually getting stuff done that needs to be done.
Not my stuff, but the stuff I missed on Monday and Tuesday while I was otherwise busy.
Thursday, usually pretty good, but I'm like, well, I'm not going to start anything.
Week's almost over.
Mm-hmm.
And so that process just repeats.
And that's why days run together because I, a lot of times, they don't go according to my plan.
There's, there's very little time that I get to do things that are interesting to me.
Um, they just get filled up with, with password resets or adding users or, uh, look at this laptop kind of bullshit.
Or list bombing.
Or, or, or, or yeah, yesterday, but that shit started at six o'clock in the evening.
Yeah.
I know you surprised me because I was like, what the fuck is he still working?
It's after five.
I had started a movie.
I was watching, um, I can't remember how to pronounce it.
Apocalypto.
Ah.
And, uh, yeah, he called and he's like, dude, my, my email's blowing up.
I don't know if I clicked a bad link or I was like, oh, God damn it.
But no, he got list bombed and everything's okay.
But I'd, I'd go, all right, yeah, your, your accounts, uh, are we, we redirected that thing.
That shouldn't be coming in anymore.
We'll, we'll, I'll hash this out, you know, tonight.
And I went back to my movie.
Five minutes later, he called me back.
Dude, it's still blowing up.
Oh, stop the movie again.
Further redirect the alias and lock his mailbox down.
Look at some logs.
I'm like, I'm gonna let this shit calm down.
And I finally did finish the movie, but yeah.
And I watched another, but I just, I'm ending every day with just, I, I can't remember what
I was going to do that was so important earlier.
Cause I got run over.
Yeah.
I didn't, I didn't actually do anything.
I just fixed a few things for other people and it, it feels like it's something anybody
could do.
Well, you're not, I'm not, uh, I don't know.
I'm just not valuable.
I'm not useful.
While you were talking about that, it reminded me of something I saw today and I just looked
it up and there's several articles about it, but this one's on Axios and it's called Welcome
to the Infinite Workday.
Well, is this from 2005?
No, this is from, from, uh, June 17th, 2025.
And, um, it starts out, I won't read the whole thing, of course, but it's like working nine
to five was once a way to make a living in the parlance of Dolly Parton, but the workday
today, it never ends why it matters.
That's the startling finding of a report out Tuesday from Microsoft on the Infinite Workday,
which starts before many knowledge workers get out of bed, ends late at night and stretches
into the weekend.
Quote, the modern workday for many has no clear start or finish, write the authors of the Work
Trend Index special report, which looked at anonymized, anonymized rather, data from millions
of global users of Microsoft 365's productivity apps like Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint, and et cetera.
So, I think that connects directly.
And see, that's the reason why I've, I've tried my damnedest to, to put these barriers,
these boundaries around my time is like, just because you're working at 630 doesn't mean
I'm going to work at 630, you know?
And now that's not to say that I don't make special exceptions for certain clients.
You just, you just have to, but there comes a point where people,
people need to understand, I don't give a shit if you work to seven o'clock.
My day ends at five, maybe 530.
So, if this can wait until tomorrow, it's going to wait until tomorrow because I'll be damned
if I'm going to be one of the victims of this Infinite Workday.
And then that right there is where you start talking about.
I mean, your days start blending and it's like, what the fuck is the purpose of all of this?
You know?
Yeah.
And that particular case, that client, that's rare.
He never calls.
I mean, if he calls me after hours, it's probably something personal.
Yeah.
And that's usually why I just, I answer the phone.
But yeah, I don't get calls after five.
Um, and unless it's a special client, I don't answer after five.
Well, my business, my business phone goes to the, uh, the night attendant and my cell phone
goes to do not disturb.
So I won't even see the call.
So I will, I mean, I do check from time to time because I'm constantly on my phone, especially
right before I go to bed, which is probably not a, you know, a healthy thing, but I get
caught up on any emails that I missed and any chatter in the family, a group chat.
And I might say, oh shit, you know, so-and-so called at 830.
Oh, well, they didn't leave a voicemail or they didn't text me.
Okay.
It's just not.
Must not have been that important.
I, Donovan, I'll consider you a friend and I have, I have one other friend like that.
Um, and the one thing that you and, and my other friend are, makes you different is that
whenever you call, you don't need anything from me.
You don't need, the two of you don't need me to do something or you don't need to pick
my brain.
You just want to share something.
Well, I mean, you know, that means a lot.
I do need you to pick me up from time to time.
Yeah.
But that's not the only time you call.
That's true.
I got a, I got a former student.
We, we call ourselves friends and he thinks we're best buddies because we were both in the
military.
I don't think we were there at the same time, but every time my phone rings and it's him,
he doesn't want to chat.
we have very little in common.
He just wants to borrow the trailer or help him fucking move or help him move his daughter's
shit.
Cause she's moving in.
Yeah.
Or grind these stumps or I need to make a date with your grapple.
Hell man, why do you think I don't ever ask you?
I don't bother you about the stumps over here that we never finished.
I'm just like.
Well, you, you should know it's on my mind.
Well, I figured when you, when you decide you want to do it, you'll say, Hey, you want
to do these things?
And I'll be like, yeah.
There's.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's coming.
It's just, it's a pain in the ass to change the implements on the back.
Yeah.
But when I put the stump grinder on, I'm going to grind some around here.
I'm going to leave it on and I'm going to put it on the trailer and I'll see you.
I'll see you there.
It'll be pulling up at nine o'clock on a Saturday.
I'm here to grind some stumps.
Nah, three, three o'clock on a Monday afternoon.
That's.
There you go.
That's what I like about our business model.
Yeah, that's true.
That is true.
I really need to start making myself do more stuff.
You know, I, I'm here I am going, I set boundaries, but yet I still prevent myself from like getting
outside and doing stuff around three or four o'clock in the afternoon.
It's like, well, what if I get a call?
What the fuck?
So what if I get a call?
You know what?
Yeah.
Some people are busy.
Yeah.
Whenever you call them, sometimes they're busy.
And if they're just, if they're confident, you'll call them back.
No problem.
Yeah.
My only concern is, you know, I'll have one under a ransomware attack and I'll call them
back the next day.
Yeah.
And everything's going to shit.
But I should have more than one phone call.
I'll have alerts from monitoring and maybe hopefully notes from backups.
Yeah.
And EDR and yeah, all that shit.
So yeah, you just got a faith that it's all going to be okay.
I mean, I could always put a, I could put a phone on my, my wife's desk and just say, Hey,
you know, calls go into my cell phone or supposed to, they work about 60% of the time.
If I don't answer, sometimes I'll go to voicemail on the phone.
Sometimes they get forwarded because I've got the no answer condition set to forward to my
business line and just put a phone on her desk and say, if this thing rings, answer.
And if it's one of our clients going screaming, bloody murder, come get me.
Otherwise just take a message.
Yeah.
Just take a message.
Cause daddy's busy.
Exactly.
I'm cutting grass.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
The thing is my clients never call the office number.
Mine don't either.
I don't have them trained.
That's the reason why I had to do a no answer forward on my cell phone.
I mean, it doesn't, doesn't do shit for texts.
You can't, you can't do an no, no call, no answer forward on the text.
But if they happen to call, it will, it's like I say, if the call comes in and I deny it,
it shoots over 100% of the time.
If I just let it go about 60% of the time, it'll go to the, it'll go to the business line
40%, it'll drop to voicemail on the phone, which I've got a voicemail on the phone that
basically says, call the office number, you know?
Yeah.
I will say I have been enjoying my weekends more now that I'm, I don't pick up my phone
when I get up Saturday.
It, it stays on the charger till Monday morning.
Really?
Most of the time.
Yeah.
Well, I do say that you're, you're usually in not offline, but away mode and discord.
Yeah.
I, you know, most weekends I don't, I probably look at it, but I probably need to do that more,
but I'm just in this routine where every morning, whether it's Saturday or Sunday, I get up, take
a shower, I go fix coffee.
If it's Sunday, I start the coffee water and then I, I start getting all the clothes gathered
up and, you know, separate it out and start that washing.
And then while I'm waiting on the coffee to finish or I'm drinking coffee, I'm sitting
there reading what tragedies and, you know, who's trying to kill who, who's nuking who.
Doom scrolling.
Yeah, pretty much.
I mean, and I, I get a shit ton of emails that basically I do this, delete, delete, delete,
delete.
Cause they're, they're notifications of like virtual machine backup notifications and shit
like that.
It's just like delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.
And I don't set up a rule to just delete them because I need to make sure that they're
doing it, you know?
Yeah.
So if I don't see it and then it's out of sight, out of mind.
And then, you know, two months later, I'm like, oh shit, I need to restore that.
And the last backup I had is two months ago.
Yeah.
No, I get, I'm, I don't have it tell me when it's successful.
Um, I'll tell, I'll have it tell me when it's overdue, like it's taken too long or if
it failed for any reason or if, um, worst case, no backups have been taken in within 72 hours.
I probably should do, do something like that.
I don't want to see all the times that it's doing its fucking job.
I just want to know when it's not.
Yeah.
The VMs, I could probably get away with that.
I've got some backups that I have to check manually on the RMM because I, the machine that
was being backed up died.
So I had to move that backup to another machine, but yet the first machine kept notifying me
of failed backups and I had to tell it, stop notifying me, not realizing that it wasn't just
going to stop notifying me on that machine.
It was, it stopped notifying me on all backups that had been created up until that point
that I had scheduled up until that point.
New ones after that now notify me, but I can never, and I, I'd ask tech support and I, yeah,
you can't, we can't, you, you just have to stop, delete them and start over.
And I'm like, that's crap.
That's a product we bought and integrated poorly.
Yeah.
That's what that means.
Yeah.
It's, it's crazy.
But yeah, so there's been a few times in the past two or three years that I'll go to
bed, um, just content with the day.
Okay.
UPS guy.
I didn't hear it.
No, but I was, I was staying silent because otherwise he's going to knock on the door and
come in.
This is, this guy knows that I'm, I'm in here most of the time, but he saw the door was
shut.
So he put it at the door.
So anyway, I'm sorry.
Say that.
So you go to bed content.
A few times in the past two or three years, I've gone to bed content.
And honestly, I think it might be since the pandemic, you know, the pandemic started and
I was like, fuck.
Yeah.
I don't, I don't have to go anywhere.
I got a perfect excuse not to go on site.
Now, now I think I'm happier if I do leave the house, if I just go and see people and be
seen and interact with, even though most of the time I just, I hate people, but I go see
people I know.
I mean, I go see clients and employees of clients and just, you know, stay, stay up to date.
Um, I have, I have, I have a bad habit of not wanting to go somewhere.
I was, I was always an introvert growing up, you know?
Yeah.
I was always awkward.
And, uh, I could not speak in front of, could not speak in front of crowds or anything like
that.
And, um, you know, a lot of that's gone away over the last 20 years in case I have
to, but I was right there with you, man.
I mean, as much tragedy of what's happening around the pandemic, I was kind of like the
same thing.
It was like, I don't have to go anywhere much to my detriment because I'd start drinking
at three in the afternoon.
Oh, yeah, that's probably not good.
Can you hear me?
I can hear you.
Your camera's frozen.
Yeah.
I don't know if I can restart the camera or not.
You should be able to.
You can turn the video.
I think you can turn the video off and then turn it back on.
There you go.
Yep.
There we go.
You got tired?
Back certain.
Yeah.
Mine's starting to.
We're, we're at about an hour 20 with just our, a little bit of bullshit at the beginning.
So, but have we, have we come to a conclusion?
See, I never, I never figured we'd actually get to the conclusion, an actual definitive conclusion
on purpose because purpose to me is such a, it's, it's such a wide topic.
Yeah.
And I don't know.
God, if we just had a psychologist or a psychiatrist here, that'd be great.
Right.
I think I know somebody that.
If we only had a counselor.
I know.
Right.
Somebody that could probably talk about these things is actually getting a degree.
I don't want to talk about it.
I don't want to talk about it from a clinical standpoint.
I know.
Cause that, no offense to Sam, but that's boring.
I know.
I mean, it's book work.
It's not, it's not.
Believe it or not though.
And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not advocating for him to do this.
I'm just saying he would probably surprise you that he would actually come at it from the
non-clinical aspect.
Yeah.
So I did write one more thing.
Why are we talking about this?
Because we're fucking depressed.
We need a, we need a sense of purpose.
We need, um, a reason to be here, a reason to not kill ourselves.
Exactly.
My only reason, I got more than one reason, but my biggest reason for not.
For sticking around.
Yeah.
My biggest reason for sticking around is because, um, after reading all the stuff I've
read, I've, I've come to the realization that this is the only experience that I will ever
have.
Yeah.
I can't, there's no fucking do-overs.
You don't get a mulligan in life and I'm still alive.
I'm pretty fortunate to, to live in this house and, um, to have two healthy kids and a good
marriage.
I, I don't, um, you know, it could be worse.
I'm not suffering.
I'm just fucking bored.
I guess I'm bored and I feel like it could be more useful, but I'm stuck because money or life.
I heard something the other day that I thought was very poignant and it's actually attributed to
somebody else that said it.
And I don't know who it was who actually said it, but let me see if I can get this right.
A healthy man has a thousand problems.
A sick man only has one.
Yeah.
And I think perspective.
And I think, yeah.
And I think from that perspective is what it was getting at is the fact that it's almost
like we go looking for problems.
I'm not saying that's what we're doing.
No, I mean, we, we, we do.
I mean, the problems we have are not to do with survival, which is what we would be as cavemen.
Yeah.
Um, we, we've, you know, life, we got life figured out.
We can feed ourselves.
We are clothed and we are safe and dry.
We have hot water.
Yeah.
Toilets that flush and indoor plumbing.
Yeah.
Grocery stores.
We've got that part figured out.
What else are we going to do?
This, if we do nothing, we'll just be fat and probably diabetic.
You know, cause sometimes I'd actually, I feel ashamed of, I don't know if ashamed is the right
word, but there are times where I want to complain about something and I do my fair share
of complaining, you know, that, but it's almost like I'm ashamed of complaining because it's
like, look at, Oh, woe is me.
You know, I can't, I feel this way or I can't do that or I don't have a purpose.
And then there, and I know this is a stretch, but then there are people literally getting deported
out of the fucking country to places they've never even lived.
And I'm like, I don't have any problems, but then somebody comes up.
It could be worse.
Yeah.
And then somebody comes along and says, no, it's okay.
It's okay to feel bad.
It's okay to wish things were different, even in your own life, even if everything in your
life seems great.
Yeah.
It is a matter of perspective.
And, and I think there are some aspects of, of our, our, I won't call it depression, but
our malaise.
That's a good word.
Could be, could be overcome just by changing our minds about it.
Just sure.
I don't, we don't have those new switches to play with.
I, my sports car is not really fast.
It's fucking hot outside.
Yeah.
I don't want to go out there because I've got to put two layers of bug spray on just to keep
the gnats from tickling every orifice.
Yep.
But it could be worse.
I'm sitting in an air conditioned room.
Yeah.
I don't have to go out and kill my supper.
Right.
Um, we have clean water.
We assume I have not tested it.
We have cold water.
We have ice.
We have, we have stuff that we can heat up food.
So we don't have to eat it at room temperature or raw.
Yeah.
I mean, it is perspective.
You know, church would tell you, oh, we have so much to be thankful for.
Like, yeah, but what the fuck am I doing here?
I'm just going to do this and then die.
So yeah, that's the reason why, that's the reason why even as, even as alluring as religion
can be, you know, and sometimes my mind will wonder and I'm like, would my life just be
better if I would just embrace some form of religion, but my intellect will not let me
go.
My end goal is so that I can live a great life and get to heaven.
No, fuck that.
You know, I just can't do it.
I would, I would encourage anybody over the age 25 to, to try psychedelics because I will
tell you, Donovan, I found God.
Oh, did you?
Yeah.
But the God that I found is not the, the entity others speak of.
So it's not, uh, sentient.
It's not omnipotent.
It's not conscious.
It's made of everything in the universe.
Every particle is God and it's all in perspective.
It's what, I mean, God is what, what we made up.
Mm-hmm.
The Bible's a story is made up by men.
That is true.
So therefore God is whatever I decide God is.
So they say God is all knowing.
Yeah.
Sure.
God is everywhere.
Yeah.
There's every particle in the universe and we are made in his flesh.
We're, everything is God.
Anyway.
Yeah.
Psychedelics will open your mind so you can have that as a sensation, as a part of the universe.
And it, it makes me feel weird saying it that way.
Cause I feel like I'm one of those hippies.
We're all just one, man.
We're all connected.
But you, you, you begin to feel that.
And you go, holy shit, that tingling I feel in my fingers as my blood pumps through him.
But that sensation, that's the universe that the atomic level.
Yeah.
Skin is the same as air.
I could see it.
So that's just, yeah.
I mean, if it was good enough for Steve Jobs and it helped him create Apple.
Cause he was on LSD.
I need his, yeah, I need his, uh, his regimen.
Cause that shit that I'm getting is expensive.
But psychedelics are not a daily activity.
Yeah.
I mean, I've heard about people years ago about going on ayahuasca trips where you, you would
go to a compound or something and you would have, I forget what you call them, but it was
the guy that was in charge, like the medicine guy or whatever.
Yeah.
And they would watch over you.
And, and I, I have heard some stories where people like, man, it was the most eyeopening
thing I've ever, ever experienced.
And other people are like, I puked my fucking guts up for the next two days afterwards.
And I'm like, that would be me.
That would be me.
I'd be the guy that would be fucking throwing up for the next two days.
I wouldn't see God.
I wouldn't see anything except the goddamn toilet.
Well, I mean, if you're expecting an image of God, you know, gray hair, gray beard and booming
voice and giving you messages, that's not going to happen.
No, I expect Morgan Freeman.
With, with gray hair and a gray beard.
Yeah.
They probably were in a brown suit with a blue shirt.
Yeah.
That's what I expect.
Not going to happen.
I know.
So they talk a lot about set and setting.
So they, you got to be in the right environment.
Yeah.
Um, but yeah, my, my dabbling was all solo, but I didn't, all I just, I just told, I just
told Beth, I don't, I don't need you there.
I just need you to make sure I don't get up and walk and try to go get in the pool.
Cause I will drown where I'll be.
I just need to stay in that room.
That's all you need.
And that's all I need you to do.
Yeah.
I think I'm okay with my super sevens.
That's the one thing I was going to say is when I take the little bit that I do take and
now it's, it's too late.
So I can't, I can't take it and get up in the morning, but when they finally do kick
in my, it's like, there's a weight that's just lifted off my brain and it's like, everything
is good.
And that's, I think that's why I was doing it every night.
I mean, I wasn't getting stoned.
Yeah.
But I was just relaxing, but I do think it was eroding my ambition to, to do anything.
Cause I got to a point where I was like, you know, I've not told anybody that I'm
going to be anywhere any, any time today, whatever I could do, I could wait till tomorrow.
And that, that stacked up a lot of shit.
My to-do list was pages.
Yeah.
That's, that's definitely not good.
Definitely not good.
Yeah.
I thought it was good for me because it allowed me to relax and I could respond to emergencies.
I could fix things.
I could keep it together long enough to, to tell somebody what went wrong and get it, everything
right.
But if nobody called, I called nobody.
That's kind of the reason why I kind of do it.
I try to stick to doing it on Friday and Saturday nights.
Yeah.
I mean, I was doing it every night.
Just like, all right, this is my, my go to sleep routine.
Yeah.
This guarantees that within 15 minutes, I'll be unconscious.
Yeah.
Otherwise I'll lay here for two hours and then do it anyway.
I, I think it was last week or week before I was, I was doing a couple of times during the,
during the week.
There was that one Monday.
I don't know what happened, but I, I took it like between five and five 30 and within a
half hour, I'm sitting in the couch and the TV is, I'm like, is this TV?
Am I watching TV?
What am I doing?
And I finally just had to get up.
I said, I, I got to lay down.
And I woke up when Oriana came to tell us good night at 10 o'clock.
And I was like, oh, I got to go lock the door.
And Lee's like, she's already taken care of it.
You just, just go back to bed.
So I got out of my clothes and got in the bed and woke up the next morning.
I was like, damn, that hit hard.
But, and all Lee had to say about it was, well, I think you needed the rest.
I'm like, I think you might've been right.
Well, it is, it is different from alcohol.
Yeah.
I tried to go back to whiskey, trying to get to sleep, but that wasn't, that quit working.
I ended up drinking two glasses and I would go to sleep, but wake up with a headache.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
They tell you that the worst thing to actually try to go to sleep is, is drinking alcohol.
And, and the right cookies only go so far.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true too.
Well, I'm glad I'm, I'm like, I forget the days, but I'm over two years dry now.
So, or as my alcohol retirement, as I call it.
And yeah, I probably, I'll probably never go back or I might be 65 and go, I want a beer,
you know, but for the now I, it didn't solve all the problems in my marriage, but you know,
you got to stop and think, dude, you, how many people do you know that have been married
as long as we have and me and Lee, 35 years.
It's, it's very uncommon with Gen Xers, very uncommon.
And, um, I mean, we, we were well on our way to probably a divorce if I'd, if I'd continued
because it was just exacerbating small problems and the big problems.
And so getting off of it allowed me to basically get my head right and figure out that, okay,
she's not 100% at fault.
I'm, I'm definitely at fault on some of the stuff, but she is still also at fault in some
of this stuff.
And, you know, we've slowly worked through that stuff too.
I bet it.
I bet a lot of it goes, comes down to communication.
Communication and sex.
There's no way to get.
Sex requires, sex requires communication.
It does.
And it doesn't help when you have a, have a wife that is going through the, the, uh,
the pre and menopausal.
Yeah.
So I can, I can understand that.
It's a natural part of life.
It is.
And to be fair to her.
And I've seen this from my own, my own eyes.
The information out there from all of the medical community is complete horseshit.
You know, nobody really knows you've got, you've got this doctor over here.
That's like, well, I can do, you know, hormone replacement therapy therapy, therapy, and it'll
do this.
You got, um, you know, another section of doctors over here saying, well, we do this.
Then you've, then you've got the homeopathic of, you know, snort this and shove that up your
ass and everything will be hunky dory, you know, that kind of stuff.
And these women aren't, I mean, she can't even talk to her own mother.
Her mother will not talk to her about this.
So, you know, there are these communities online and you know how that goes.
You're going to have a bunch of fucking crackpots in there.
And so I get it.
It's, it's a lot.
And for us men, we're never trained.
We're never taught.
We're never told that at some point in your life, your significant other, if she's, if your
significant other is a female, you're going to wish that she would run over your ass with
a lawnmower because of all the shit you're having to deal with being with her while she
deals with this shit.
It's just fucking phenomenal.
And I mean, I still love her as much today as, as I've always have, but it, it is stressful.
And I joke with her about this too.
I'm like, you started hitting this stride right when I quit drinking.
God damn.
Timing is everything.
I was like, shit.
Now I've got two things I love that I can't get on a regular basis.
Damn it.
Oh God.
You know, we probably should wrap it up right there.
Well, what, what can we do to reduce depression?
Even if we can't solve the whole purpose thing.
One thing I've read with consistency is exercise.
Yeah.
And of course diet.
I can't, I can't change my diet anymore.
I mean, I'm barely eating as I'm not saying you, I'm not saying you have to improve it.
I'm just saying it has an impact.
So if you're, if you're eating fucking fast food and donuts every day, you know, you probably don't feel like exercising.
Yeah.
We, we rarely eat fast food around here.
Yeah.
I ate McDonald's yesterday because I was on the road too long.
Yeah.
And I knew as soon as I ate it, I was like, fuck, I could have made it home.
I don't care.
I, when we do eat fast food, we, we're, we're kind of particular.
Um, we like Arby's.
I know some people shit all over Arby's.
I don't care.
I eat Arby's.
I just hate that they don't have a side item that's not fried.
I mean, I love the curly fries.
That's my jam, but I try to stay away from fried stuff.
I eat fried foods all the time because I'm, I'm just like, you know, fuck it.
This is, this is what I like.
And I've, I tried to go toward more of the, let's do the bake stuff.
I didn't feel any different, you know?
So, but I also made sure that like, whenever I cook, whenever I cook fries and tater tots
here, I cook an actual lard.
I do not cook in like all these fancy damn sprays and oils and shit, because as, as much
as they tout that stuff as being healthy, I've read too many reports that said, yeah, this
shit's not good for you.
And, you know, I may being a little pedantic here, but if it was good enough for my grandmama
and my grandpappy, they cooked shit and lard and they live to be like, you know, 70 something.
That's long enough for me.
Yeah.
I figure if I make it past 72, I'm, I'm living on borrowed time anyway, but, but who knows?
I don't know.
I mean, I've tried, I can't do the exercising thing.
And when I say, you know, can't in air quotes, uh, there was a, there was a time that every
afternoon I would go and I'd, I'd walk around my backyard while listening to a podcast and I'd
walk for about 40, 45 minutes.
And I found that I really did enjoy that, but then it got fucking hot.
Best time of doing that is, is, you know, like February and March.
And then what now, November and December, what the four months we actually have cold weather.
Yeah.
Or you could just get out there at 5 a.m.
Yeah.
I'm doing good to get up at, at, you know, a little after five every morning.
So, I mean, if I was going to do that, I would actually be, I want to do my morning radio show.
I'd be up in here, I'd be in here at five 30 doing a two hour radio show.
So do it on a treadmill.
Yeah.
The only treadmill we've ever had, we gave away to brother Charlie several years ago because the
belt kept slipping on it and I couldn't fix it.
So I said, fuck it.
And gave it away.
Somebody else's problem.
We, we moved in here and we moved the treadmill upstairs.
It's, it's been, it's going to be sold with the house.
The fucking thing is not coming back down.
The only way it comes downstairs while I live here is if the house burns down.
Yeah.
I hear you.
It's just some things aren't meant to be upstairs.
I mean, that's like trying to put a fucking baby grand piano upstairs.
Why?
Why would you do that?
That shit goes on the first floor.
Yeah, you're right.
I want a pool table and the only room we have for it is upstairs, but I'd be damned if
I'm going to be one of the one, one of the ones, one of the 12 motherfuckers it's going
to take to get it up the stairs.
You have a window big enough.
You just bring in a crane.
We might crane it in.
Crane it in.
You might just crane it in.
Yeah.
That's, that's probably what you'd have to do.
Or you have to build it in place.
Get one of those that you, you could have it torn apart and then put it back together.
Yeah.
Cause if you get, if you get the regular kind, you don't have, you won't get the kind, if
you get the traditional type, they'll just have the nets.
They won't have ball returns.
Yeah.
I don't want one of those.
Yeah.
So they're, they're a little bit easier to put together.
I mean, you can, I think if you shit, man, Sears used to, you know, when they were a thing,
used to sell pool tables in their catalogs.
I always thought that was wild.
They did the small ones and then they, then they actually did the regulation ones.
My friend ordered one off of Amazon.
Yeah.
And he ended up sending it back and then he bought like a decent one, but he, they craned
it in.
It was on an upper level of the house.
Yeah.
There you go.
As long as everything's engineered to hold it.
Um, and I think maybe getting out and seeing people or, or spending time with people whose
company you enjoy.
Yeah.
Oh, I like that guy in the UPS store today.
You're not being invited to a party.
Oh my God.
I don't want to talk about people, but let's talk about, no, um, he won't be missed.
Wow.
He was definitely, uh, special, you know, when someone just starts interjecting into your
conversation like that and suddenly, I mean, immediately, immediately he was an expert on
everything.
Yeah.
And you didn't have to tell him that we're in it.
I never tell people that shit.
Yeah.
I probably, I still have a little bit of an ego problem.
So when people start trying to talk, talk to me, like they know some shit, I'm trying to
politely tell them you need to stop talking because this is what I do for a living.
Now I just, yeah, I'd rather, I'd rather them accostome me with their stupidity than find
out what I do and then ask the dumbest questions.
Yeah.
I mean, it, Oh, I have this Facebook problem.
I got to learn.
Oh, right.
Oh, well, shit.
You should have said something.
Let me call Zuck.
We'll get this sorted out.
Yeah.
I got it.
I got to do better.
It's Farmville you say?
Farmville?
Yeah.
We'll get right on that.
Yeah.
Don't you worry.
I got to do better about that.
I got to keep my damn mouth shut.
Ego be damned.
Yeah.
I've, I've already started making up shit to tell people when they ask me what I do, if
it's, if they don't already know, like I'm at a party at a neighbor's house and I meet
people I don't know.
What do you do?
I'm an Olympic sprinter.
Yeah.
I'm a retired astronaut.
Hey, you can always, I don't know how this would go, but, and we both can say this, but
you can say, I'm a podcaster.
Yeah.
What are you doing?
I'm a podcaster.
Or, I'm an influencer.
Yeah.
That's, that is, uh, somehow not any better.
No, that's not any better.
So, because then you get a, really?
You on TikTok?
YouTube?
Where, where you at?
Yeah.
Just, yeah, go and search, uh, Hubba, Hubba.
Yeah.
You'll find it.
We're super popular.
At least people now know what a podcast is.
Back when, back when Leah and I were doing the, uh, Uncorked podcast, she was telling, she
would tell the cashiers, you know, they'd be like, um, asking about the wine.
And she's like, my husband and I do a podcast where we, we, um, we rate the wine.
And they're like, a what?
So, she would explain it to them.
Now you just say, yeah, I'm a podcaster.
Really?
What kind of show do you do?
Oh.
Yeah.
I think I, I can't remember.
I told somebody, because I was, it was the day we were doing one of the South Geek shows.
And, um, I said, yeah, I'm going to do a podcast.
Like, I wanted to, wanted to do something that night or, you got any plans for the night?
Or some shit like that.
I was like, oh yeah, I'm recording a podcast.
And they seemed like they were impressed.
And I was like, oh, okay.
So you're impressed.
I could always go, I'm a, I'm retired CIA.
Cause then I can't talk about what I do.
That's true.
What I did.
That is true.
Yeah.
And I don't have to prove it either.
Yeah.
I'm retired CIA.
Didn't you used to work at CityNet?
That was just a cover.
Yeah.
Did you see me there every day?
Weren't you fired from there?
No.
Also.
I had to go deep undercover.
That was part of the ruse.
Yes.
Fucker.
Don't tell my wife.
Oh, that's hilarious.
I don't know.
I think you're probably right.
I mean, my wife would love, she's constant.
She's like, you never take me anywhere.
I'm like, where the hell do you want to go?
It doesn't cost money, you know, but.
LSD, man.
Probably would be beneficial for both she and I to get out more together, for sure.
I mean, go fucking, go to America's or wherever that is and see the telephone museum.
Why would I want to watch, why would I want to see the telephone museum?
I saw Danny Sterling's.
This one's bigger.
Yeah, you've seen one, you've seen them all.
Around the corner from the hotel in Albuquerque, when, a few years ago when we went, there was
a fucking telephone museum.
And we went into there.
What is cool is in Seattle, there is a huge, I think it's a telephone museum.
Tyler actually took pictures of it, I think.
It's like two, two stories.
And just, man, I was like, that's, that's cool.
Plus, I think they had some computer stuff in there, too.
Maybe it was a hodgepodge of both of them.
It was just like an, you know, old electronics type stuff.
I'd have to ask him again, because that's been a couple of years.
One, I don't know if it's America's or, hell, it could be in Plains, but it's in that area.
It's not a professionally curated, I mean, it's a personal collection, but it's vast.
You never saw Danny's, did you?
He's even got some cars in there.
No.
His, I have to go back and see if I can find the old pictures, because it was in the
main plant building over there on 82, and it took up an entire huge room.
And I asked him, I said, can I take pictures?
He's like, yeah, go ahead.
So I've got them somewhere in a photo roll, probably right next to the porn.
But yeah, get out and see something.
Just take a drive.
Yeah, you're probably right.
Take a place and take a drive.
Yeah.
No, I don't like events.
I don't like live sports games.
I don't like concerts.
I probably wouldn't mind a trip to see a symphony orchestra.
I'm not going to do a theme park, but I'm looking forward to this trip we're taking next month.
You ever thought about going to any of those rock the block stuff that they do here in Tifton
on Friday nights?
Nope.
Yeah.
I thought about it, and then I had another thought to just beat the shit out of that one.
And I was like, I don't want to get all up in that crap.
Yeah.
I don't want to be with people.
I don't mind being with people I wouldn't mind being around, but you never know.
Yeah.
I don't know who I'm going to run into.
I did.
A couple of weeks ago, I went and played pickleball for the first time.
I've been interested in that.
My daughter's gotten into it, so she goes two, three nights a week.
And Beth and Brayden were out of town, so it was just a Annika year.
And I've always declined her offers to go because I just don't want to go.
Pickleball's not interesting.
But it was just the two of us that week, and I decided I'll go.
And you know what?
I had a pretty good time.
I met a guy about my age.
Nobody asked me what I did.
I didn't ask anybody what they do.
They were just there to play pickleball.
And they weren't super egomaniacs.
We had a good laugh, did our best, sweated a lot, and it was a good time.
And everybody there was approachable.
Yeah.
So more of that.
That's an outdoor court, not an indoor court, outdoor court.
Yeah.
I thought it was so cool.
I mean, you basically take ping pong and tennis and combined it into just a different sport.
Yep.
I was like, yeah, I might want to try that one day.
It's physically demanding.
It was more, it required a level of fitness I no longer possess.
Don't we still have the axe throwing place here?
I don't know.
Shit like that doesn't last.
Yeah.
I remember it was a couple of years ago, two or three years ago, it opened up.
It was, I think it was around the time that they did that Christmas movie here where they
had to base, they did it in the middle of summer.
And so they had to, they had to fake the fact that it was supposed to be wintertime.
And I want to think that they actually did something in that place.
But anyway, I don't know if it's still there or not.
I have to look it up.
Yeah.
I haven't, I haven't been across it.
Wasn't it downtown?
No, it was, I thought it was on like the outskirts of, of the county or something.
So honestly, I don't, I don't remember.
It could still be there, but I've never heard anybody talking, going there, but I don't talk
to a lot of people.
I hear you.
I talked to you.
I talked to my wife.
I've talked to my son and I talked to some of my clients.
I haven't even spoken to Walt in almost a year now.
And I haven't, I haven't spoken to my brother all year.
His son, his, his son just graduated college.
His, his younger son just graduated college.
I didn't go.
I mean, I would, I would, I would go months without talking to my mom, you know, and after
my mom, maybe three times this year.
And after she passed, I was like, you, you stupid son of a bitch.
You know, it's like, why didn't you take more time?
Because it was always an irritant for me.
I mean, I loved my mom.
Don't get me wrong, but I got so sick and tired about hearing what was going on in the, in the
extended family that I didn't give two shits about, you know?
I can relate.
You know, so it's something, something going on with extended family, um, a work story.
She's retired, still telling work stories, um, or some criticism about me.
Yeah.
That's, that's, uh, it's not adding value.
I mean, after Devin moved to California, almost every conversation I'd have with my mom was,
have you heard from Devin?
No, mom.
Well, that rascal won't call me.
He said, and I try to call him and I just leave a voicemail and he won't ever pick up almost
every single time.
And I finally, I was like, mom, he's a grown ass man.
I can't make him talk to you.
Well, he promised.
He said he'd, he told me he'd have his phone.
He could always talk to me.
And I'm like, he got out there in a completely different culture and check the fuck out for a
while is what I felt like he did.
Yeah.
And, and I was like, I can't help that mom.
You know, I can't make him talk to you.
Shit.
He didn't talk to me for a year.
I said something.
I, I, I, I said, I sent him a message and I said, look, do me a favor.
Talk to your grandma.
She's, it was either the grandma or talk to your mom.
It was one of the two.
And he got pissed off because I was treating him like a child and just stopped communicating
with me for a little while.
He's since gotten out of that somewhat, but I mean, I haven't actually spoken to him
vocally, uh, eight years, probably eight years.
He's in our family chat.
He might, he, he might say something in there two or three times a month now.
It's very fleeting, but yeah, probably just getting out and being more mobile and seeing
things and, and quite honestly, that you're, you're not telling me something that my wife
hasn't been pushing me on, especially with this whole Tifton talks thing.
She keeps telling me, if you want to grow it, you got to get out and actually meet people
and talk to people and, and take pictures and do videos and stuff.
And I'm like city council meetings.
And go to fucking city council meetings, which I used to school board meetings.
Yeah.
That's the part of it.
I probably will never do.
I'm, I'm, you know, if I could ever afford it, I'll be like, Hey, you want to, you want
to make 50 bucks?
Go record this damn meeting and bring me the video footage back.
You know?
I feel like I would sit in there and just be entertained.
I've sat in enough council meetings.
I don't need any more, but.
Well, the simulation is optimized for entertainment.
It is.
All right.
When I say we wrap it up here, it's, uh, it's targeting seven 30 now.
And we're about 90 minutes in now.
Mm-hmm.
Well, we're two hours total, but I'm going to cut out probably about 20 minutes of the
first because I was recording from the time we, we got on the call.
All right.
Well, to anybody who's made it this far, thanks for sticking around and sorry it was so long.
It'll probably be long again next time.
Probably.
I mean, if we ever, if we ever published this fucking show.
I don't think the first two are going to make it.
I'm on that page.
Yeah.
I think this one might be the first one because we were legitimately talking about something
that we still can't answer 100%.
I don't think anybody can.
And maybe that's what's relatable about it.
Yeah.
I think some other people would listen to it and go, I feel the same way.
I don't know.
That's why we get a good friend group going.
Yeah.
We'll just see.
I don't know.
Yeah.
We haven't said anything novel, but.
I don't think it's about that.
We're just reaching out and it, yeah.
We're just reaching out and say, yeah, we, we probably feel the same as others.
We just don't know it.
Nobody talks anymore.
That's true.
That is true.
And nobody wants to admit the kind of shit we're, we're talking about.
Yeah.
That's one, one final thing I'll say on that is I have, as I've gotten older, I think I've,
I've opened up more than I used to.
I used to be really guarded and afraid to talk about these types of things.
Now, we didn't want to be seen as weaker or whatnot, but I think ego, my ego has collapsed.
Thanks to, thanks to drugs.
I think that's a good thing.
And so I'm, I'm a lot more candid.
Yeah.
I also, I'm not as hateful.
So that's probably a plus too.
Well, I'm an, I'm an elder, uh, an elder Gen Xer.
So I just don't give a shit anymore.
I mean, that's the whole motif of, of all of us Gen Xers, Gen Xers.
Whether you were born in 65 or whether you were born in 80, we just don't care.
It, I think it's just where we are in life.
Probably.
And society at large.
Yeah.
Because if you'll notice, there's more and more and more stuff on social media and, and the, the interwebs about Gen X now than there was two or three years ago.
And, uh, it is so hilarious to see some of the videos on YouTube where millennials and zoomers, they, they do these, they do these videos.
They're like, Gen X was hardcore guys.
Did y'all know that they did this shit when they were growing up?
It was like, yeah, yeah, we did.
That's the reason.
And, and some of the funniest ones are like, you just don't fuck with a Gen X man.
Just don't do it.
Yeah.
It's, it's hilarious, but I don't know.
Hopefully, hopefully we'll publish this one.
We, I feel like we need to, I don't think we, I don't think we said anything in this one that would,
would harm anybody.
Nah, I don't think so.
It's just, it's just truth.
It's our truth.
I mean, that's all that matters, right?
I don't think any group's going to get together and riot about it.
So.
I don't know.
Apple stores are safe.
It could be another rendition of the no Kings protest.
Whatever that was.
I read one thing about it that said might've actually been effective because everybody was
peaceful and nobody got hurt.
Well, one person died, but I didn't read that.
Yeah.
Cause I only read one tweet about it.
Fuck Twitter.
You actually have to go to real news sources, dude.
No.
Anyway.
Cause Elon Musk keeps saying that X is the number one app in the news category in the UK.
Well, if you want misinformation, yes, it is.
I don't know.
It depends on who you follow, man.
All right.
I'll stop recording now.
Bye, everybody.
Bye.