The Blunder Years

I guess when social media first started getting to scale, I thought it might be a cool place to discuss issues like anxiety, depression, and bigger debate-type topics. Obviously that didn’t really happen, and social media is predominantly a vehicle for family photos, vacation photos, some news (and some fake news) and virtue-signaling. I’m not consistently good at withdrawing myself from that world, no, but overall it’s probably a more harm than good situation long-term.

My guest today is Drew, who himself is the anchor of the podcast The Anxious Truth and he has a new book about anxiety as well, called An Anxiety Story. So we talk a lot about male anxiety, depression, gender roles, the use of social media, algorithms, and more. It’s a pretty nice emotional talk and we get done in about 30 minutes, so give it a whirl. Here we go.

This is a conversation with one of my best friends, a dude in Texas named Clay. We met back in December 2014, right before Christmas. My ex-wife and I had lived in Texas since that July, didn’t know that many people, and on one random Friday night, we took an Uber to this bar. The bar had a nice ambience but it was mostly sour beers, which I don’t like. I am not very athletic as a person, but I was playing club soccer at the time to try and make adult friends, and randomly -- we didn’t plan this -- someone from my club soccer team was there. So we were talking to them, and eventually they left. My ex and I end up getting another drink and we start talking to this kid at the edge of the bar. That was Clay, that was December 2014, and we’ve been close friends almost ever since.

This conversation covers a bunch of different stuff, from sex robots in Japan to housing prices in the US to people you see at Staples. We mention someone named Jimmy briefly; that’s a mutual friend -- more his friend -- who got divorced post-kids. Mention a guy named Kerzee briefly too; that’s a guy from a gym we used to go to who says there are only a few paths through life for a guy after the age of 35. There might be some other inside references in here, for which I apologize in advance. But if you want to hear two close friends shoot the shit on a variety of issues in under 30 minutes, you’re in the right place. Let’s roll.

Probably sometime in the middle of 2017, I noticed that some random dude on the Internet named Vadim was liking and resharing some of my stuff. Within a few months, I realized he lived in NYC -- where I’m from! -- but worked for a company in Fort Worth, where I lived. We met at a hotel and had a free breakfast and shot the shit about life. About a year later, we ended up being co-workers at that place. I lasted maybe eight months there, none too spectacularly. He was there probably 2.5 years. Now we’re both gone, but remain friends, so we had this conversation or Episode 22 of my show here.

Most of this is about feedback, authenticity, work-life balance, and imposter syndrome. There was actually 8 minutes and 44 seconds at the beginning where we were discussing penis necklaces, but I took that out because … well, vague notions of professionalism. Then there were about 3 minutes and 51 seconds at the end where we were gossiping about people you probably don’t know, so I took that out too. What’s left is still fun. Let’s get to it.

I met Angelica Mata for the first time in January 2017 in Austin as part of a “Just Be Social” meetup that Joel Renner organized. She was cool, still is cool, and we’ve done a couple of different podcast thingers together over the years, including chatting on Twitter about various dumb crap repeatedly. So I had her on mine. She’s currently studying about World War II, but she used to work for Apple and in other creative roles, so she has dare I say “woke” takes on academia, management, the possibility of a Third World War, and more. We even get into some female empowerment too. It’s a cool discussion. Let’s roll.

I’m currently taping this introduction in a house with two dogs where it’s raining outside, so I cannot let said dogs out to play … in case that comes across as weird in any way, I apologize in advance. One of the dogs actually just stole a toy from the other dog, to boot.

This episode is with Ray Ziganto, a manufacturing unicorn out of the Chicago area. He actually lives in Aurora, which is where the movie “Wayne’s World” was set. We talk about a bunch of different stuff over 45 or so minutes, including pivotal moments in your life, doing volunteer work and traveling abroad when you’re younger, working for self vs. working for others, and why most organizations don’t respect the idea of “learning” even though it’s super important in modernity. I cannot believe I got to Episode 20 on this deal. Cool. Hope you enjoy it.

Since 2010, I’ve moved a ton of times in-city, but two bigger times: New York City to Minneapolis in 2012, and Minneapolis to Texas in 2014. I’ve actually struggled with parts of Texas, as any good Northeasterner would, and I got divorced in the span of being here, but I’ve stayed in part for any number of reasons, with one of them admittedly being that I got tired of bigger moves and reinventing friend circles when you’re north of 30. It’s not easy, and I don’t think anyone would tell you it is.

My guest on this episode is my man David, whose last name I cannot pronounce 100 percent correctly so I will not try, and he has a different life arc: he’s lived in the same place, that being northern California, for decades -- and he has kids, and he primarily works from home. So in that context of geographic stability + no standard office + your kids’ activities, what does his friend circle look like at 45? That’s one thing we cover, along with jobs in the future, Adam Sandler, life attitudes at 25, gender roles, and more. Hope you enjoy it.

I moved to Fort Worth in July of 2014; I started writing more and more about work stuff and HR stuff and recruiting stuff around the same time. After I had been here maybe a year, I realized that this dude William Tincup, who had recently followed me on Twitter, lived in the general area and I reached out to him. I think we met once, nothing really happened for a while, and then in 2017-2018, I started doing stuff with his company, called RecruitingDaily. I don’t do day-to-day shit with them as much anymore, but I’m still connected to those guys and decided to have Tincup on this episode.

I actually haven’t posted an episode for about a month, so I’m getting back into the swing of stuff. I went to NYC for a while, where I spent 42 dollars on a 2.5 mile Uber, then spent 15 dollars on an IPA after I got out of the Uber. So that was fun. Anyway, this is a cool, far-reaching discussion on Instagram, NFL owners, workplace technology, Barcelona soccer club, Jordan and LeBron, and even The Pill. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for giving it a listen.

In probably late 2016 or so, here was the general situation in my life: I had been freelancing for about a year at that point. I was actually doing pretty well and making good money, which was a surprise. My marriage was kind of going to shit in different pockets, which was less great. Somewhere in there, probably around that whole Presidential election we’re still dealing with, I connected with a local dude named John Hill. At the time, he had a business called Iron Egg that was mostly about website builds and revisions. We connected on, if I remember correctly, some health care project. It basically bombed on my end; my copy wasn’t long enough for their liking, but the clients didn’t have time to meet with me about their business. We worked on this deal for maybe three weeks and then it just faded away.

Thankfully, Hill is a cool dude, and we’re connected on some platforms, so we stayed in touch here and there. Now he has a company called Adapted Growth and another site called John’s Small Mountain, and this discussion is about sales, relationships, work-life balance, and the importance of getting to the gym -- or getting out of your head for a while -- during the workday. Ironically the day before I taped this, I think I had drank during lunch … and since I taped this, I’ve been pretty consistent about getting to the gym either early morning or mid-day. This podcast is all about shifting lives, you know? Let’s get into the discussion.

I had done a couple of work projects with this guest, Jenny Hill, before we taped the episode. I did not know her super well but this was a cool conversation around gender reveals (or should I call them anatomy reveals?), when women get more of a voice in the workplace, FOMO, and the like. I would actually say this is one of the episodes I taped where I felt “woke” -- and I know that word has negative connotations and repercussions -- and wanted to do more with this podcast in 2020. So thanks Jenny, and let’s get into it.

I spent too much of my 30s not focused on my career and drinking during the day. Here's a narrative arc and, hopefully, a renewed focus.