Episode 38 | None of This Tech Holds My Hand

Sunday Stroll 06 | What The Fuck Am I Actually Doing?

I'm 60 years old, sitting behind a microphone at 11 PM on a Sunday in St. Louis, humid as hell, not making a dime, and somewhere between a George Michael documentary and flipping someone the bird at a red light, something cracked wide open tonight.   And I fucking love it.   I've been homeless. A couple of times in fact. And the last stint was with my beloved wife. It’s that kind of shit that makes you wonder if you’re doing any of this “right”.    I’ve buried an infant child.    I've been married four times. Divorced four times. Four DUIs (and I wonder if that number matches the number of divorces in a deeper way… just sayin’)   I tried to leave this world on November 2nd, 1994 and I'm still here three decades later sharing what I have actually figured out in real time, and yet knowing that we still have those, “what the fuck that's supposed to mean” moment that seem to come whenever they please.    And tonight — not in a therapy office, not in a journal, not on a mountaintop — it got a little clearer.   This episode isn't about George Michael. Not really.    It's not really about road rage either. I mean, it might be, but I don’t think so.   It's about what happens when you stop using that question as a weapon against yourself and start actually listening for and to the answer.    Because "what the fuck am I actually doing" can destroy you or it can save you. It can burden you in ways that seem to beat the life and breath out of you, or you can sit with it and just let you and “it,” be.   And in so many ways, it really seems that the only difference is whether you're willing to sit still long enough to hear what comes back.   And yes, that can truly suck. Or not.   Other than that, it’s just a Sunday….

We Say The Shit Out Loud — When Two People With Different Wiring Choose The Same Day Anyway

I didn't want to record today. I said that into the microphone first because it was true — bad mood, grout cleaner fumes, two people with completely different internal rhythms trying to make something together on a Saturday when one of us wasn't feeling it at all. This is what relationship patterns actually look like when the self-concept work is real and ongoing. Not the highlight reel. Not the resolved version. A farmer's market neither of us approached the same way, $32 a pound garlic from a vendor who knows you're hot and captive, a Led Zeppelin cover that personally offended me, and a woman who farted next to Sharon and kept eating her ice cream without a word of apology. And inside all of that — the fumes and the garlic math and Sharon walking fast and then remembering she wasn't alone — two people with different inner voices, different relationship histories, different self-concepts choosing to be in the same day without either one pretending to be someone they're not. That's the work. Not the theory of it. The actual lived version of what happens when you stop performing okayness for your partner and start being honest about what's actually going on inside you. We also get into what happens to self-concept when you remove social accountability — what's really driving the behavior on the Carnival Cruise videos, the road rage clips, the person in the grocery store who stops their cart in the middle of the aisle and looks at you like you owe them something. It's not a race conversation. It's a self-concept conversation. About what people do when nobody's watching and the only thing left is who they actually believe themselves to be. Sharon thought this episode was practice. I deleted it before she finished the sentence. (hee hee) This is We Say The Shit Out Loud — the show where two real people in a real relationship say the things most couples perform around, avoid entirely, or dress up so nobody gets uncomfortable.

Family, Friends, Fakes & Frauds (Part 2) — I Photoshopped Out My Tattoos (yeah, I really did...)

Hey, if you didn't listen to Part One, why not?  Hmmmmmm? *shakes his head...* Go ahead and listen to the first part.... __________________ I photoshopped my tattoos out of my dating profile. Not because I was trying to deceive anyone. Because I genuinely did not believe I was worth loving as I actually was. That's what a damaged self-concept looks like in practice — you want the real connection, you want someone to see you fully, and then you show up as an edited version of yourself and wonder why nothing ever feels real. This is Part Two of Family, Friends, Fakes and Frauds. Part One was about the inventory — who's in your life and why. This one is about the harder question: why did I keep attracting fakes and frauds in the first place? Because I was one. I faked giving a shit about conversations I didn't care about. I committed fraud by hiding what I was actually carrying — the abuse, the molestation, the suicide attempt, the grief — because I'd learned early that certain disclosures made people back away. So I tipped my toe into the emotional pool first to test how much they could hold before I went any deeper. That pattern — performing okayness while privately drowning — is one of the most common relationship patterns nobody talks about honestly. It's how two people end up together, both faking it, both wondering why the intimacy never lands. The way out wasn't therapy or a book or an affirmation. It was Skype. A woman on another continent I couldn't impress with dinner reservations. Nothing to do but actually talk. And somewhere in those hours of real conversation, the fraud stopped being sustainable. Sharon is in the background of this episode arguing about whether 3:20 PM counts as dinner. She's also living proof that when you stop editing yourself, something real becomes possible. Two jacked up people don't make something whole. They make something twice as jacked up. This episode is about how I finally understood that — and what I did about it.

Family, Friends, Fakes & Frauds (Part 1) — And Why You Keep Them Around

I got my ass beaten with a rubber paddle while my father held me down with his forearm and my mother switched hands when her right arm got tired. They called it spanking. I call it what it was. That's where this one starts — not to revisit the wound, but because you cannot talk honestly about family without being honest about what family actually was. For me. In my house. On my specific body. This episode is about the inventory. Family. Friends. Fakes and frauds. Not the definitions you were handed — the ones you actually live by, whether you've named them or not. I'm going to tell you about the last time I saw my parents. My brother talking shit about my wife at our wedding while my mother stood there with her arms crossed. The choice I made that day and haven't reconsidered once. My father dying and finding out from my uncle because nobody thought to call me — and me not giving a shit, and being honest about what that says and doesn't say. I'm going to tell you about the friend who only calls when he's been drinking. The brother who's wealthy enough to charter a private jet and didn't offer to help when we needed it — and how I sat with wanting him to and him not. The person who spends thirty minutes unloading their life and then says by the way, how are you doing. And I'm going to ask you the question underneath all of it. Why are these people in your life? What does keeping them there tell you about what you believe you deserve? I didn't know families could actually enjoy each other until I married into one. That's not a punchline. That's the whole point.

Episode 39 | The Ever Changing: Who I Was, Who I Am, and What I'm Actually Doing Here

I've got a cold Guinness, headphones on, and Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings playing while I talk into this microphone. Very few people know I'm a classically trained flautist. That's not the point of this episode, but it kind of is. This one goes back to the beginning — not the beginning of the podcast, but the beginning of the pursuit. The Bible verses my father had me memorize while the belt and the rubber paddle said something completely different. The list of traditions I moved through trying to find something that made sense of what I was experiencing. Neville Goddard, Abraham Hicks, Eastern mysticism, the Church of Latter-day Saints, Elizabeth Clare Prophet — I needed answers badly enough to look everywhere. What I finally understood is that the answer was never in any of those places. Not because they were wrong, but because none of them could tell me who I was. Only I had access to that. You are the single constant variable in every experience you have ever had. Every single one. And until you're willing to sit with that — really sit with it — none of the books, the traditions, the courses, or the teachers are going to do what you actually need them to do. I'm not counting listeners anymore. I'm not counting anything. Someone is going to hear this and know exactly what I'm talking about. What do you hide? What do you submerge so other people will accept you? How much of yourself do you set aside just to keep the peace? That's what this episode is actually asking.