Unpacked In Santa Cruz
"Unpacked in Santa Cruz" is a homegrown podcast hosted by Michael Howard that dives into the lives, stories, and salty moments of people who call this coastal community home—or have been shaped by it in some way. Whether it's a deep conversation with local surfers opening up about mental health, or a peek behind the curtain of someone who started a one-of-a-kind food spot right here in town, every episode brings something real.
You’ll hear from folks who found healing behind the lens, built businesses from scratch, or chased massive waves thanks to a lifetime spent around our local waters. These aren’t just interviews—they’re conversations that reflect the heart and soul of Santa Cruz. Raw, reflective, and rooted in community, Unpacked in Santa Cruz brings local voices to the surface.
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Episode 58, Chapter XIIII: What Are You Waiting For? A Soliloquy
Have you ever looked in the mirror and suddenly realized you've been playing a role in your own life? After mysteriously disappearing for five months, I'm finally breaking the silence to share the profound revelation that stopped me in my tracks.
What began as a celebratory moment—watching my podcast metrics climb after a wonderful interview with Natalie—transformed into an existential crisis during what should have been a dream surf trip to Chile. Picture this: perfect left breaks (heaven for a goofy-footer like me), no responsibilities, just freedom and waves. Yet there I was, sitting on an isolated beach, watching my friend surf without me, confronting the uncomfortable truth that many of the pursuits I'd dedicated my life to weren't authentically mine. "I don't know if I've ever really been a surfer either," I found myself thinking, as I realized how much external validation had shaped my identity.
This podcast began as a way to process revelations I experienced through AA and shadow work—deep personal inventory that exposed the gap between who I thought I was and who I actually am. The interviews became a way to celebrate the remarkable "normal" people in Santa Cruz while practicing genuine connection. But somewhere along the way, I fell into the trap of valuing metrics over meaningful exchange, becoming an impostor to myself.
The depression that had temporarily lifted returned, but this time with clarity about its source. I discovered a "ghost in the machine"—a part of me seeking relevance through screen-based validation despite my authentic self wanting no such attention. It took months of sitting with this uncomfortable truth before I could speak about it honestly.
I'm sharing this vulnerable journey not to lecture but to reconnect with what matters: genuine human connection in a world where we've "become too busy to relate." My hope is that these conversations inspire you to grab coffee with someone you've been meaning to connect with, to practice the increasingly rare art of being fully present with another person. Because ultimately, the only thing that matters isn't download numbers or audience growth—it's the authentic moments we create together.
Welcome to the Unpacked in Santa Cruz podcast. I'm your host, michael Howard. This podcast is brought to you today by Santa Cruz Vibes Magazine and also by Pointside Beach Shack. So, hey, it's been a minute, and I realized that it has been a few months since I posted a podcast few months since I posted a podcast. And so today I want to reconcile those realities that of the now close to 22 countries that I'm in and almost 200 cities that you all are listening, that you were just starting to listen and then all of a sudden they disappeared. You were just starting to listen and then all of a sudden they disappeared. And so I guess I want to take this moment just to invite you in a little bit on the story that I'm in the middle of.
Speaker 1:This is my story, and I've tried to do this soliloquy at least twice a month since April and it just hasn't worked, and hopefully this time it might work. But normally during these episodes I will bring Brian in and I'll have him interview me and we kind of get to the personal side of things. But there are just some in-depth things that I want to address that are actually happening with me, and why that's important is that I really want all of you, the listeners, to understand the process that I'm allowing you to be in with me. So to get to that, I do want to back up a little bit to all my previous podcasts. For those of you who don't know that I was a pastor for 25 years and I still remain a hairdresser, father of three, married to a great lady for 34 years. Now there's a lot of normalcy built into this conversation that a couple years ago, as you heard me reference, I poked my head into AA and was really getting in front of a drinking habit that was not very helpful to my life. But, more importantly, there was something that happened there not specifically with AA, but through the process of working my 12 steps that really opened my eyes to a whole world that I hadn't seen yet. And it wasn't that I was unfamiliar with the 12 steps before, it wasn't that I hadn't worked them before, but the process of really doing massive inventory work, because it would be addressed that way.
Speaker 1:Working the fourth step, I had a revelation about who I was as a person, and that really is what led to the podcast that the realities are the first I don't know like 25 or more were me really decompressing these revelations that I was having about myself, the uncomfortable realities of who I thought I was, who I really am, all these sorts of things. The early interviews were really me trying to tell my story through those people, and that's why I didn't make those interviews all that public no-transcript, or maybe it just didn't appear that way on the outside, but certainly was that way on the inside. And when I was doing those podcasts, what I realized is that total transparency wasn't fair to the other surrounding members of me telling or attempting to tell my story. And so, as most of you have started listening you know the hundreds of you that have begun to take the time to listen to the interviews that I've been doing you don't necessarily know this process that I've been going through and how it really relates to what it is that you're listening to with every interview. And so, if you don't know that already now, you know that when I backed away from the podcast format previously to one of a straight interview process, it was really a point for me of really sitting and listening to people and living in the curiosity that's always been inside of my heart about getting to know the wonderful people in this town that, in retrospect, different than the view that I had, in a lot of ways I really love my town. It's filled with lots of beautiful people who are just brilliant, kind, as obnoxious and crazy as Santa Cruz can be. It's really filled with a wonderful group of talented people. Santa Cruz can be. It's really filled with a wonderful group of talented people and really exposing all of you to these people that I see, that wouldn't naturally be sitting in front of a microphone being interviewed and in doing so I wanted to and continue to want to celebrate normalcy, that there are people that we walk by every day who actually really, really matter to you and you may not even know them and just having these little conversations, whether they go 45 minutes or three hours on some important topic, these people are important to all of us and it's not because of what they do but it's because of who they are and you know in those processes you know it really confirmed for me and it's confirmation bias.
Speaker 1:I don't really want to know what. I want to know why, on the one-sided way, trying to have a few is. I want you to know why. Why is it that right? When I was getting momentum, I pulled back and I'm going to tell you a little bit about the what to get to, the why.
Speaker 1:What has been going on really has been a real revelation, as I expressed, of what it is meant to be me and as any middle-aged person will tell you, there are just things that you come to realize with age and there are these benchmark ages in our life, whether it's you're entering into your 20s, entering early adulthood, where you find out you're an idiot by the time you're 30 and you didn't really know anything because your brain's finally being formed and you have enough data to make decisions. You know in your 40s, when you're generally deep in the soup, you know potentially married, raising kids, all that kind of thing, but where your schedule's now set, you know they're just things that you have to do when you hit middle age, as any middle-aged person will tell you. It's pretty weird when all that stops and you have to sit and see yourself and reconcile the facts of what's really, really true about your life and I don't want to diminish that part of it, because that is also true in what I'm saying to you that much of what I'm going through has to do with my age, but you wouldn't necessarily know about me in particular is that I've always tried to be very introspective and for the most part in my life I've been a little ahead of the curve on the empathy side and introspection side of most people. My age, like there's a you know what I would express as a spiritual maturity to the person that I've been that allows me to wade through deeper waters than maybe some people my age or my same age would, and being able to operate maybe in the wisdom of something someone would have when they're older. And I don't hold that of any really high value, it's just a thing, it's what I do, it's what I do, it's what I've always done.
Speaker 1:But on the other side of that, the work that it takes to continue to be that person, the wall that I hit really, really, in my mid-40s, was a time where there was just total emptiness, even though I had done so many things in my life and they were good things and I had been a good husband and a great dad and a good pastor and a good hairdresser and a great coach and all of these things that we all seem to aspire to or want to aspire to, but I was just left empty and I didn't know why that was, and I sunk into a really, really deep depression. Unfortunately for me, I guess fortunately for me also I'm one of those rare people that gets to say alcohol saved my life. But I have to live with that paradox that alcohol was also killing me, but it was also saving me at that time, and my relationship with alcohol is very different than that now. But there's a piece of information that I've been searching for which is why do I feel this way? And I've been doing something on the personal side.
Speaker 1:Once I did this, what AA calls inventory work, where you just get radically honest with yourself about your life and you get to see it in a real time frame, the things that really affected you, the things that did you good, the things that did you harm. Inventory work is a very common phrase within AA. I think it should be a common phrase for all of us, to be honest, that we constantly need to be reworking the story we're telling ourselves about who we are, why our lives are the way that they are, all these sorts of things that we get particular moments wrong, that there are things that we either take wrong or we didn't see fully, and that will lead us down roads that just don't have the complete data, so we're not making the same decisions we would had we had all the data. I think that's the easiest way to put it. And when you're in psychology work uh, this is what uh young referred to as shadow work you know who is this person that comes with me that I don't really know. Uh, the real, easy, trite way to put it is is is what you were taught to not express when you were a child. You suppress and this thing just pops out. It's this person that you don't want to be, or maybe you don't have the same kind of control over consciously. That just keeps popping into your head and it, of course, has its own narrative about you.
Speaker 1:And as I'm starting to sound like a loon here, but I'm just trying to be honest we all have voices in our head. We're all thinking things, we're all working off of the narrative of why things are the way they are making decisions, and anybody who's really done a real look at the brain knows that our brains at most the way that we think of it. We're only making about 10% of the decisions cognitively. 90 to 95% of our decision making is subconscious. It's just the way that we think, and working on that subconscious is what shadow work is, and so I have been deep in this shadow work mode and I very consciously decided that it was time to get to the quiet voices the ones when I'm sitting, still, that I'm completely ignoring, or I think that I'm ignoring when I'm watching TV or something like that, but still distract us. But they're still saying the things that they say and come about the holiday.
Speaker 1:This last year, I decided just to stop doing anything that I felt like I had to do or needed to do, and we also got a puppy at the same time, and we also got a puppy at the same time. And these decisions not to read, not to listen to podcasts, not to watch TV, but to just sit with yourself and listen to the story you're telling yourself and allow it to get quiet, allow it to stop being the narrative is the process that I have subsequently put myself through this last nine months now, and it's not an easy process. I don't necessarily recommend it. I'm not advising anybody who isn't also doing the work that I'm not referring to in my words right now to do, because being still with yourself and getting honest with yourself about how you reason with yourself. It's not an easy process, but that is the process that I've been in, and it also happens to be at the same time that I rebooted the podcast, and so I didn't know this is what was going to happen.
Speaker 1:And when we decided to get firm on the podcast and go public, there's a set of metrics that I was working with, and every podcaster should be having metrics to see whether they're growing it the way that they want to, etc. These sorts of things. And I really set up a very simple set of metrics that lives in the kind of more guerrilla marketing side of things, which, for me, was I wanted it to be organic and I want to be sitting with people that I want to sit with, not necessarily that I like per se, but people that I want to get to know and so that you can get to know them, and then whatever grows from there not by publicizing, not by marketing it, not by doing all these other things just this organic, developing friendships, or whether it's new friendships, or going deeper with an older friend, whatever people show up to listen to that. That's what I wanted, and so that's what we embarked upon and, frankly, it worked. And, as I've expressed before in previous podcasts, you know as someone who suffered from depression and suicidal ideations for most of their life. It was very weird to me a year and a half ago almost two years now to have my depression go away and to be in this jovial, good mood most of the time. And all of that. And then you know we're doing the podcast and it's enjoying success. Look, I was at two listeners when I started and now I have a few hundred.
Speaker 1:It's amazing to sit and watch these numbers, but what I began to notice with myself is that, as you're measuring these metrics and looking at the data, you start looking at those things more. And, yes, we all get addicted to our screens, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But there are certain realities that you do want to be paying attention to this content and the content was sending me the information that I wanted to see. And, as this last podcast that I did with Natalie, which was just so wonderful, I hit one of my tipping points. You know we hit these numbers that I needed to see.
Speaker 1:I got a high percentage growth moment. You know it's all based in particular kinds of numbers, blah, blah, like all this stuff, and I just also happened to be going to Chile on a surf trip with a really good friend of mine, brian, and it was a really good moment because I had a great podcast. I got to let it run for a little bit longer without doing back-to-back podcasts. I had two more podcasts in the background that I could have dropped when I was in Chile. I didn't need to. My numbers were growing the way they needed to, sitting organically, like I expressed, and so it was a good moment and uh.
Speaker 1:But something else happened when I was in Chile and what I realized, uh, was I I've never been the person that I thought I was. And here I am on the surf trip, and any surfer knows that if you're talking Chile, you're talking the land of lefts. I'm a goofy footer. This lives in the dream trip category. The waves were firing really good and I'm with one of my good friends and we're traveling around in a car with surfboards on a rack, accountable to no one, and it's just a really beautiful, beautiful spot with beautiful people.
Speaker 1:And I got about two days in and something was beginning to overwhelm me, and it wasn't a bad overwhelm, it was just I knew I was going to become conscious of something that was going to be uncomfortable, I guess is the best way to put it. And we got two days into the trip and my buddy looks at me and goes are you okay? I'm like, yeah, I think so, but you can't measure what you're going to do next off of me. You know, like, if you want to go surf somewhere, just go do it. I'll decide whether I'm going to go out or not. Go out, but something's happening to my heart and I need to sit with this and I need to not be busy here either. And he's super adaptive and has known me for a long time, so he just kind of shakes his head and whatever the whole thing.
Speaker 1:But I was sitting on a beach in Chile where, 20 kilometers from another vehicle, this beautiful spot and I'm looking at the data points that I'm getting back from Natalie's podcast and I'm watching my friend surf in perfect waves and I don't want to go out and the depth of because it wasn't depression, it wasn't fear, it wasn't any of those things, it was just this reality that I have driven myself for so long that there are just things that I believe, that I want to do, that I don't even know that I've ever wanted to do them. I just did them because I was good at it. And it was a really rude awakening, especially to be in the middle of vacation to realize how, in many ways, what an imposter I've been to myself, that these things that have driven me much of my life, most of my life, were not even me. It was some external thing that I held on to, and it wasn't about my skill set surfing. It wasn't about any of that. It was just this voice inside of me that needed to be something. And it was weird to be alone on a beach filming my friend surfing, realizing that, huh, I don't know if I've ever really been a surfer either.
Speaker 1:And what happened after that? You know, the trip was great, I got home, and it was about a week after getting home this is early May and again I have these other few podcasts that are sitting in a line and I realized something that I've run into my shadow. I have actually run into the thing because my depression came back and for the first time I really got to identify why I was depressed and what it was, at least from my vantage point right now, is somehow in my heart. I thought that the data point and the numbers was more important than the interviews I was doing. And the reality is, the only real thing that happened and really in the last month was that for the case of our conversation, I got to sit down and get to know Natalie and that was a really wonderful experience for two hours, but the rest is just code on screens.
Speaker 1:Not that your ears don't mean anything to me, but we don't know each other. Ears don't mean anything to me, but we don't know each other. And I realized how much disrespect I have for myself, number one, in having a need for you to listen, I guess in some way, and how much disrespect I would have for any of you, for me having that need for you to want to listen to me. And it's a real juxtapose, right, because here you are listening to me and here I am talking to you in some strange way, and so it was hard.
Speaker 1:It was a hard thing to see that, wow, there's this really deep desire in me to want this kind of attention, and I can tell you categorically it's not me. I am not the guy that necessarily wants to be in front of the crowd. I am. You know, when good things happen or I do good things, I don't like to be celebrated. It's not some false shyness or anything like that. It's like the good thing already happened. We don't need to celebrate. I'm not the good part. The good part's the good part that I was. There is just a privilege. There really is, I believe, a deep humbleness inside of my soul that doesn't want or require that kind of attention. Of attention. That's what I'm conscious of. That's the person that I choose to be. But to find this other ghost in the machine for whatever early childhood trauma, whatever security issues, whatever, that is that somehow these pieces of data on screens is somehow even relevant. It was a real blow to see that, wow, I really do look to this for relevance.
Speaker 1:And so I waited and that is what's been happening and of the dozen or so times that I have tried to do this soliloquy, until I can do it consciously and I feel right about it when I listen back to it. I wait. I wait till I can get the words out right, because I don't want to bring this infection to one more interview, because I want to be genuine and I think for the most part I'm a fairly genuine person, but I want to be present with people when they're sitting on the other side of our microphones here. That really the only reason that I want to be doing what I'm doing here in this microphone is to be able to sit with the person on the other side for the hour or so that I get to sit with them. That's the only important part in my heart, to me in the way that I want to learn how to think, and so that leaves us here. Right, it's a little weird for me to be admitting this thing out loud, that here it is this thing that I'm doing that is getting attention. That's great, but the moment that I want is actually with the person that I'm interviewing and living in that paradox that what I'm attempting to do is give you a little peek into my life, not as a way of promoting me, but as a way of seeing ourselves, and seeing ourselves in each other, seeing ourselves in the communities that we have, seeing ourselves so we can feel like ourself again.
Speaker 1:And a lot is being said about tech and time and AI, and I will certainly have more to share personally about these things, because they're not topics that are beyond me, but the reality is is somewhere along the way we stopped learning how to be friends with people. And, more than anything, my hope is that with every interview, you get to be reminded of what it was like to pick up a cup of coffee with someone new and find out what it was like to get to know somebody. The conversations that transpire. Some people open up, some people just want to talk about business. It's okay, but, as I've expressed, I live in this wonderful community we call Santa Cruz and I have the privilege of being around a lot of really, really cool people, and so, yeah, I'm going to expose you to the people that I see and there's certainly cooler people than who I bring on and whatever any of that means.
Speaker 1:But, more importantly, the importance of the conversation of two human beings connecting that's really what you're experiencing and my hope is that, through that experience, you'll actually go grab a cup of coffee with someone you've been meaning to experience. You'll actually go grab a cup of coffee with someone you've been meeting to. That, in listening to the stories that transpire in these microphones, you can sit and listen to others and also have them listen to you about who you are as a person, so that we can really kind of get out of this trap, and the great irony of podcasts is that it's kind of voyeurism, right, we're letting you into this private moment, and anybody who's had a very personal conversation at a coffee house knows that's a very uncomfortable reality, that you really don't want the people to know what it is you're talking about. Yet here we are having those types in a way of conversations Not that anything has been so dark yet, but there is a reality that I'm sure, if you've listened to a few of mine, that I can go deep fast. And isn't that what we want, though? People that will go deep with us and more and more.
Speaker 1:I really want to continue to believe that this is what we all need. Not that every conversation has to be deep or whatever, but we just really need to learn to love the communities that we're around, love the people in those communities, and learn to treat each other with as much respect as we can or the other person will allow. You know that there's a kindness that lives in all of us and again, for whatever reason, we've become too busy to relate to that anymore. Become too busy to relate to that anymore, and hopefully, in you taking the time to listen to this. There's a way to re-relate to those moments. So that's what I've been going through and whatever piece of vulnerability this is, I'm not meaning to lecture anybody, if that's how it sounds. I hope it doesn't sound that way.
Speaker 1:What I want to do is continue to be a genuine person to all of you and to respect you that way, and that I don't want to be coming with an agenda to grow my podcast. I want to grow as a person by being with people that I'm hearing from. That's what I really want and I needed to take this time to attune my heart and I apologize that God. It's been five months and so it's a little rude without any info coming behind it. But here I am, I'm back and I got a good couple three interviews lined up here in the next week and we'll get back on schedule here. But I do want you to know this thing about me that, unless I become delusional, I want to continue to be forthright genuine and I want to be that guy that loves, or at least is attempting to love, the humans that are around me.
Speaker 1:There's a song I've had in my heart about me, about this thing, and I want to leave you with this. It's from the Kingsley Own Radioactive and I want to leave you with this. It's from the Kingsley Own Radioactive and you can go ahead and look up the lyrics, but it really speaks to this reality that I'm in, this awakening that I had, that when you really see things for what they are, you kind of want to flee, but in reality it's time to drink just a little bit more from that cup that. You know. This place is good and I hope that you're in a good spot. I hope that you're in a good place and I hope you have a good rest of your day. But I'm going to leave you with Radioactive from Kings of Leon and hopefully I won't get in trouble for it. But here we go.
Speaker 1:When the road was caught up yonder, I hope you see me there. It's in the water this way it came from. It's in the water this way it came from. When the crowd began to wander and they cried to see your face, send the water's. In the story Of where you came from, the sun's adored and all the glory Is gonna save her, and when they clash and come together, the sky will rise. Just drink the water when you came from. Together your rose. It was cold from yonder. Never sold yourself away. Send the water, send the story when you came from your sons and daughters in all glory. It's gonna shape them and when they crash and come together, it's gonna rise. Just drink the water when you came from. Where you came from, it's a war. It's what you came from. Where you came from, it's a war, it's what you came from. Where you came from, the women lost and come together. It's not a horizon. This ain't the water when you came from. Where you came from, you can't go.