The Blunder Years

I let my podcasting slip in November because a bunch of stuff kinda came together at once: I was doing more paid work (good), I turned 40 (jury's still out), I got remarried (good), I bought a house (good/jury's still out), etc. I needed to pay more attention to what I was doing here, and I didn't, in part because my audience wasn't huge or anything. So, I'm gonna be back in January 2021 with a renewed focus on discussions about adulthood and transitions, friendships and relationships, etc... as opposed to going into work or other topics. I might hit up stuff about male friendships too, as that's clearly near and dear to my heart.

I know 2020 has been a weird year for many. Enjoy the end of it. Do your best. The sun shall rise again. 

This is an audio version (well, similar to) of this post. Just out here trying to grow as a human being where I can, ya know? Here's a video of the ceremony, too.

Got remarried about two weeks ago, then went out of town for a few days, so I've been sitting on this interview with Jim Monroe for a minute, and it's time now to release it into the broader world. He's the author of a book called "Don't Be A Dick Manager," and if you know anything about my seven years of blogging, that's a theme I hit on a lot. This conversation is about management, life, business models, California, the propensity of world-building executives to think of themselves as geniuses, and more. We get into some emotional labor near the end too. Hope you dig it, and I'll be back with some more consistent episode bases coming up in a second.

Here we go ... and how does that feel? 

If you want to understand the "A" to "B" narrative of divorce to new marriage, read this.

My ceremony is at 11am USA Central Time on Saturday, 10/17. I don't expect a lot of people to be around or remember it, because it's a second wedding, COVID, etc. If you want to shoot me a text or something, it's 860-967-7667.

Let's do some backstory to start, with some reading materials to boot. Start with me at this present moment. I'm sitting in a coffee shop typing. Well, on what appears to be December 10, 2013, I was also sitting in a coffee shop -- that one was in Minneapolis -- writing about the decline of male friendships. That was almost six years ago and I doubt much has changed.

As for reading materials: Here's a little ditty on "male loneliness killing millions," here's one calling the whole deal "an epidemic," and maybe the No. 1 thing in this canon, a Boston Globe article about how loneliness is a bigger threat to dudes than obesity. You also might enjoy "Why do we murder the beautiful friendships of boys?"

Based loosely on this.

Based on this and this.

Somewhat adapted from here and the experiences of people I know.

Why is appreciating employees for what they're worth as contributors to the brand so hard for bosses? Oh, right, it's not natural and no one seems to get trained on it. More on how to respect and appreciate employees can be found here.

What now for "the leaders of the free world?" Some references can be found in this post.