Still Here, Still Trying

The Middle Has to Move

What Kind of Community Do We Want to Be? Episode 50 of Still Here, Still Trying is about what happens when good people get tired of the noise, step back from public life, and leave the room to the loudest voices. Mike Baker reflects on leadership, local politics, healthcare, Idaho women’s health, and the cost of staying silent when the edges keep pulling communities toward fear and division. This episode is not a partisan rant. It is a call for grounded people to wake up, speak clearly, and stop letting cult-like thinking on both sides replace honesty, character, and real service. Mike also shares what it felt like to run for office, why the ugliness of politics can break good people down, and why he still believes decent leaders are worth supporting. From corruption and loyalty tests to healthcare access and women’s health laws in Idaho, this conversation asks a bigger question: what kind of community are we becoming? If you are tired of outrage, tired of cruelty being treated like courage, tired of corruption getting excused when it benefits the “right” side, and tired of watching good people whisper common sense in private, this episode is for you. The middle has to move. Not with fear. Not with hate. With courage, honesty, humility, and enough hope to keep showing up. Episode 50 closes with Mike’s song “Human First,” a fitting reminder that policy lands in real lives, leadership should serve something bigger than ego, and staying human still matters. Listen, share, and leave a comment: What kind of community do you want to help build?

Everybody’s Tired, But We’re Not Done

Everybody looks fine until you realize most people are surviving quietly. This week’s episode almost didn’t happen. I was tired, late, and running on fumes, which made me realize that might be the exact thing worth talking about. In this episode of Still Here, Still Trying, I talk about the kind of exhaustion people carry when life keeps asking more from them than they’ve had time to recover from. The kind of tired that doesn’t always look like falling apart. Sometimes it looks like showing up, answering the email, taking care of the people you love, leading through pressure, and laughing when you still have a little bit left. This one is for the quiet heroes. The people doing the real work without applause. The people who keep caring when cynicism would be easier. The people who are tired as hell, but still getting back up. We also talk a little playoff hockey, because Vegas and Colorado are about to beat the brakes off each other and somehow that feels spiritually connected to the whole episode. If you’re worn out, overwhelmed, or wondering whether you still have enough left to keep going, this episode is for you. You’re tired. You’re human. You’re not done. Still here. Still trying.

Beautifully Unfocused: How to Love Someone With ADHD

Episode 48 | Season 2, Episode 4 Beautifully Unfocused: How to Love Someone With ADHD If you love someone with ADHD, there’s a good chance you’ve misunderstood them at least once. And if you have ADHD, there’s a good chance you’ve spent a lot of your life feeling misunderstood before anyone ever asked what was actually happening inside you. This episode is a field guide from the inside. I’m talking about the shame of being the ADHD kid, the one who heard “could do better” so often it started to feel like a name. The kid who got called disruptive, lazy, careless, dramatic, too much, or not living up to their potential, when what they really needed was language, support, and someone willing to ask a better question. We get into the “too many tabs open” feeling, executive dysfunction, rejection sensitivity, disappearing when overwhelmed, and why a delayed text or strange tone can hit like proof of every old fear. We also talk about love. Because ADHD is not only chaos. It is deep feeling, big ideas, late-night creativity, strange brilliance, missed signals, real regret, and a brain that can build whole worlds while still struggling with the simple thing in front of it. This episode is also for spouses, partners, parents, friends, coworkers, and anyone trying to love someone whose brain does not move in straight lines. Sometimes when we share a song, lyric, image, or creative idea, we are not only showing you a project. We are showing you where the noise went. We are asking to be seen. And we talk about women and ADHD too. Girls and women have been missed for too long. ADHD can look like anxiety, perfectionism, masking, people-pleasing, emotional overwhelm, exhaustion, and holding everything together until the whole system starts to crack. This is not a medical lecture. This is not an excuse factory. ADHD does not give us a free pass to hurt people, avoid repair, ignore responsibilities, or make everyone else manage the fallout. But shame does not fix ADHD. Understanding helps. Clarity helps. Systems help. Curiosity helps. Repair helps. This episode ties into my album Beautifully Unfocused and closes with the song “ADHD Kid,” written for the younger version of us who spent too much time apologizing for a brain that was also building something beautiful. We are beautifully unfocused. We are learning. We are building. And somehow, through all of it, we are still here, still trying.

Build Your Life, But Don’t Lose Your Soul

Episode 47 | Season 2, Episode 3 Build Your Life, But Don’t Lose Your Soul Everybody loves the message: build your life, chase the dream, start the thing, stop waiting. I do too. But there’s a harder question underneath all that ambition: What kind of person are you becoming while you build? In this episode, I’m talking about ambition, power, men, women, leadership, and the ugly truth that some people chase success so hard they leave their character behind. We get into the difference between confidence and contempt, strength and control, leadership and ego, and why the people with power teach the rest of the room what behavior gets rewarded. This conversation looks at the way powerful men often model contempt as strength, especially toward women, and why the people around them who laugh, excuse, translate, and protect that behavior become part of the problem too. But this is bigger than politics. It’s about every room where power gets used badly: workplaces, families, healthcare, leadership teams, comment sections, and communities. And yes, we talk honestly about men. Men who interrupt. Men who dismiss. Men who turn accountability into a personal attack. Men who confuse being loud with being strong. But I’m not coming at this as some perfect man who has it all figured out. I don’t. I’ve moved too fast. I’ve missed things. I’ve talked when I should have listened longer. I’ve had moments where my intensity landed harder than I intended. I’m still learning, still catching myself, still trying to lead better and listen better. That’s part of the point. This episode is not about shame. It’s about responsibility. We also talk about the men trying to do better. The men learning to listen. The men willing to be corrected. The men trying to raise sons who don’t mistake dominance for strength and daughters who don’t have to fight to be heard. And we make room for the nuance too: toxic power is not only a male problem. Women can bully too. Women can tear other women down. Bad leadership, narcissism, insecurity, and cruelty show up in more than one form. Build your life. Please do. Start the project. Take the risk. Make the art. Apply for the job. Chase what keeps calling you. But don’t build a life that makes people smaller when they get close. Don’t build a life that leaves others carrying the emotional cost of your ambition. Don’t build a life people have to recover from. This episode closes with my song “Stop Making Amy Cry,” a reminder that the kindest people often carry the weight of a world that keeps asking too much from them. We’re still here. Still trying.

The Real Cost of Always Being Right

The Real Cost of Always Being Right What if the thing you’re most certain about is quietly costing you the people you care about? In this episode of Still Here, Still Trying, I get into something that’s been bothering me more and more. The way certainty has taken over how we think, how we talk, and how we show up with each other. It feels like strength in the moment. It feels like clarity. But underneath that, something else is happening that most of us aren’t paying attention to. We’re reacting faster, listening less, and deciding who people are before we’ve actually taken the time to understand them. Over time, that starts to change our relationships, our leadership, and the way people experience us. This isn’t about politics. It’s about what all of this is doing to you. I walk through what this looks like in real life, why certainty feels so good even when it’s hurting us, how social media and algorithms are feeding it every single day, and what it actually takes to break out of it without losing your voice or your convictions. This one gets honest. It gets a little uncomfortable. And it might hit closer to home than you expect. I close the episode with my song Manufactured Panic from the album Shut Out the Noise, which captures what it feels like to live in a constant state of urgency and how to step out of it. If you’ve ever walked away from a conversation feeling like you won the point but lost something else, this one’s for you. 🎧 Listen now and see what shows up for you. Here's the link to my shop with t-shirts and other cool stuff to help you live in the middle.. https://mike-baker-hq.printify.me