Episode 77: Dan Hammer: Come Back Tuesday: Identity Swaps and Finding Your True Self

A clear morning over Highway 17 can change a life. That’s how Dan Hammer first saw Santa Cruz—blue water, a small-town vibe, and the feeling of finally arriving. He left to study computer science, built a career as a bridge between engineers and executives, and returned years later with a sharper lesson: titles fade, but a life built on principles holds.

We dive into the real cost of calling a coastal town home—why Santa Cruz feels like an island in culture of real estate, how remote work reshaped who can live here, and when local pride crosses into localism. Dan shares inside stories from the Wild West of 90s internet to enterprise acquisitions, from data-mining at scale to what happens when buyers keep the people who understand the product’s soul. Through it all, the morning “commute” becomes a ritual: tea on the cliffs, dogs on the sand, and a reset that keeps ambition human.

The heart of our conversation is sobriety defined as action, not absence. Dan lays out a practical framework: do an honest inventory of traits, recognize how strengths can sabotage, choose principles over reactions, and lean on community to turn awareness into momentum. We talk fear and faith as opposing forces, altruism that expects nothing in return, and why esteem grows from esteemable acts. Instead of doomscrolling geopolitics, we commit to finding good at street level—neighbors, lifeguards, mentors, and the quiet repair of the world within reach.

If you’ve ever tried to build a life around a place, or lost a title and found yourself, this story will meet you where you are: thoughtful, grounded, and wide open to change. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review to help more listeners find honest conversations about purpose, community, and the Santa Cruz way of life.

Transcript

First Sight Of Santa Cruz

unknown 0:01

I ain't no G in the G in the game.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

I get the seed to believe believe in the steeds.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

If I'm belt from the internet that is the Unpacked Santa Cruz Podcast, I'm your host, Michael Howard.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Sitting here today with my set Mr.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Dan Hammer. Dan Hammer. Welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Yeah. So hey, uh you know, we were talking a little bit right at the beginning well, just before it came on the on the show here, but uh you know, you're describing a time you know, where where it's like you knew that you b you were here, you know, people saw you. But if you can just sit for a second, just remember all that emotion of having moved here. When I say what does Santa Cruz mean to you now, what's the first thing you think of when I say Santa Cruz now?

Leaving To Return: Career For Place

SPEAKER_01 1:12

I'll go back a bit. Right. When I first my first vision of Santa Cruz was I came over the hill and came down 17. And as I hit about Pasatiempo, it was one of those clear days where you could see all the way across the bay. And I remember clearly seeing that and thinking, Oh my god, this is paradise. This is what I've been looking for my whole life. My I was in my early 20s, and and I grew up the the best week of the year was the week that my family went to the beach every summer. And I remember thinking to myself, oh, this is where I need to be. And uh I think I fell in love with Santa Cruz that minute. And uh I came down to Santa Cruz and I was telling you, I used to live down near the hook, and and that was my introduction to Santa Cruz. It was it was a small town, it was east side, it was um back when when Pleasure Point was still a bit of a surfer's ghetto and a bit, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Might be a bit dangerous at dark. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

And and you know, you you pulled the wetsuit up to your waist and grabbed a board and hustled down to the point and climbed over the rail, and there was there were wooden steps back then. It was past the point where there was a rope. Yeah, yeah. But there were wooden steps, and you know, there was a couch on the cliff, and you know, it was just a a really interesting time. And uh I'm still on this side of town. Is this still what I think of when I think of Santa Cruz? Is small town, everybody's out doing their thing and enjoying the the beauty, yeah. You know, um that's why I wanted to be here. Yeah. Um the interesting thing in my story is that I stayed here for about a year and realized that I wanted to be here for the rest of my life, but I couldn't afford to do that. Oh, yeah. Right? I realized that um I was bartending and waiting tables, and I I I didn't aspire to live hand to mouth for the rest of my life. And I knew that that's what that was going to lead to. Um and I left. I I I went back to school and studied computer science and and tried to build a career that would bring me back to Santa Cruz. And, you know, 15 years later or so I ended up back in Santa Cruz. Wow. So this is my second trip through Santa Cruz. Gotcha. And and the reason that comes up is is you know, you asked what I think of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz was always my ideal place to live, and I made lots of career decisions and life decisions based on what would bring me back to Santa Cruz, what would allow me to live here. Um and then to this day, I love to travel, I love to see the world, I love to explore, but I never mind coming home. You could bring me to the most beautiful place on earth, and I never mind coming back to Santa Cruz. This is home. So, you know, and I guess to sum it up, what I think of Santa Cruz is it's home. It's where I always wanted to be. Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Well, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? You know, you are the Dan Hammer.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Oh God.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

The guy I met at Starbucks. Right. A little bit about myself. Um I told you it was the hardest question.

Identity Beyond The Job

SPEAKER_01 5:07

It is the hardest question. But it's but I but I gave it a little thought. And it really I there was a time in my so so in order to get back to Santa Cruz, I I studied computers and I got into the tech world and I made career decisions that would uh allow me to move back west and eventually move to Santa Cruz. And that's what I did. I I I went to work for a company um that had West Coast offices, and I when I got hired, I said, hey, you know, I I'd like to work with you guys for a long time, but I'd ultimately like to be on the West Coast. And they said, look, we could use a guy like you on the West Coast, start here, get up to speed, and then we'll move you out west. And that's what they did. And eventually uh our company got bought by a bigger company that was in San Jose and that was really close to Santa Cruz, and I moved down to Santa Cruz. It worked out really well for me. Um and I really at the time, a big part of how I defined myself was my career. I worked for this well-known big tech company, and um, you know, uh that was cool, and I was very proud of that. And eventually I lost that job and really crashed uh emotionally and and how uh uh uh internally how I saw myself, and I realized that I was defining myself by my career. And I was defining myself by who I worked for and and external approvals.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

And if you don't mind me asking, what what year was that? Just so I have a little bit of a landscape of uh It was about ten years ago.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

Okay, yeah. So I've been in Santa Cruz this time for 15 years, so it's about 10 years ago. Okay. So so kind of kind of 2016.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Post the 2008 apocalypse, but tech tech is still grinding, right? Doing well.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

And and I was really depressed. And I and I and what I realized at some point was that it was much healthier to define myself by the life I lead and by the kind of person that I am versus what my career is, right? Versus external approval, versus all those things that you get, oh, I made a lot of money, oh, I worked in this famous company, oh, I'm powerful. So I really what became important to me in terms of defining myself was how I felt about myself when I looked in the mirror every night. And my goal has shifted to become a person that I really like. Right? And and someone once said to me, Um if you do good, you'll feel good. They said to me, if you want to build esteem, do esteemable X. So how I define myself is I I I aspire to be someone who tries to do good and feel good. Right, and and the challenge for me, and I think for everybody, is uh finding those good things to do. I I can go downtown and stand on a street corner and wait for some old lady to help across the street. It won't be very efficient. I might be there for a while. And in Santa Cruz, sometimes if you help an old lady, they say, I can do that myself. Yeah, yeah, don't insult me by doing that for me. I had a I have a neighbor who's in her 90s and she lives alone, and a guy was renting a room for me, goes across, he mows my front lawn, and he decides he's gonna mow her front lawn. And she came running out the front door and says, Don't do that. I do that myself. That's my exercise. You have to be careful. You can't help people that don't necessarily want it. Yeah, right. But I've been lucky enough to be in a position to help other people. Um I've been involved in the uh drug and alcohol recovery community in Santa Cruz for a long time. And having battled with that earlier in my life, I'm in a rare position to be able to say to people, hey, I'm right where you were, I was right where you're at. These are some things that I did to help myself out of that situation. If you do those things, you might get a similar result. And it seems like Santa Cruz may have a deserved reputation as being a party town. And with the kind of partying that goes along at Santa Cruz, you end up with a a lot of people that either burn out or get sober.

SPEAKER_03 10:21

Yeah.

East Coast Roots, West Coast Home

SPEAKER_01 10:22

So there's a lot of people that if I put my hand out, will grab my hand. Yeah. And the opportunity to do that is the what I aspire to be the defining thing in my life. Yeah. Right? It's it's an opportunity to do good and to feel good. Um a wise man once told me that spirituality has to be grounded in altruism. And to me, altruism is doing something for somebody and asking for nothing in return. So I aspire to define myself by how much I can be altruistic. It's an aspiration. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Well, I'm excited that you've opened this door up. And before we really walk into that space, you got an interesting accent for those of us who are from the West Coast. So I got let's let's get a little origin story here before before you and I go deep.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

I go I grew up in Maryland right outside of Washington, D.C. Um, I definitely have some East Coast accent. It's very interesting because it changes. It gets more pronounced when I go back east and come back. Right. And if I as soon as I get back east, people think I'm from California. Uh and always did. Like before I, you know, uh in my 30s when I lived in DC, people would look at me and go, Oh, are you from California?

SPEAKER_02 12:03

Well, but there's there's there's a rumor going around that the East Coast generally just does not like the West Coast. And so anything California asks, you know, has a flavor to it. You know, it it's uh you know, my I had a longtime um actually just mentor, uh former naval commander taught at Annapolis, taught history and economics at Annapolis, and and and he would he would, you know, and he's from the East Coast originally, and he was like, you just don't understand DC hates California, period. Like it's a whole different country, and they like to have control of things.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

I feel like I feel like that was a hip hop thing. Yeah. I I actually lived in Annapolis. The last place I lived before I moved back to California to back to Santa Cruz was Annapolis. And uh very interesting town because um, of course, you have the Naval Academy. Yeah. Across the street from the Naval Academy is a uh a college called uh St. John's College. And if the Naval Academy is classic conservative military, in fact, it's the oldest, I think it's the oldest consistently in-use military base in the country. Across the street is St. John's College, which is one of the oldest liberal arts great books schools. They don't study uh uh um math. They just read Euclid. Right? We're not gonna do geometry, we're gonna read Euclid, right? And discuss it. They don't even do exams, they do orals.

SPEAKER_04 13:47

Yeah.

Localism, Belonging, And Change

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Right? So you've got these two colleges that are next to each other that are so extreme. Is this conversation cogent, yes or no, right? In fact, every year you might have to use math in it, but uh every year they do uh uh a friendly competition where the a team of plebs from the Naval Academy, a team of the Johnnies from St. John's, uh play croquet. It's hysterical. But so Annapolis is really interesting because there's this huge population of military, which is conservative and and by nature, and and maybe has a the hair on the back of the neck stands up when you think California, and then there's across the street, there's the Johnnies, and they're as liberal and hippie in California as you they they aspire to move to Berkeley, you know. Um so it's interesting that that he said that, but I don't necessarily agree. I think he was talking about the beltway. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and before I lived in Annapolis, I lived in Adams Morgan in the middle of DC. Yeah. And um the other interesting thing about having grown up there is DC and the area around it um has a very transient population that the personality often changes with the administration. And um there's a lot of younger people that blow into town to you know make their chops on uh uh whatever the administration is at the time. Right. And those of us that had lived there, it's a little like Santa Cruz, right? Those of us that have lived there for a long time don't really mingle with those folks. Yeah, yeah. Right. So uh I was married, and when I met my my wife, um, she had been, she had moved to DC, and she said to me, I thought everybody was this transient. I I introduced just some of my friends, she says, Where were these people that I never met? These are these are interesting people, and I said, Yeah, they're from here. They're from here. That's right. You have to be interesting to deal with all the people, you gotta have an interesting attitude to deal with the flow. Right? But but there was never I never felt that tension between East and West Coast. I I felt like, you know, it was almost a compliment when people would, it was definitely a compliment when people would say to me, Oh, are you from California? You know, but and then when I moved here, people were like, You're not from around here. Yes. It's because everybody knows everybody who's from here. That's right. Yeah, yeah. And you and I were joking about it, that uh the other day that you know I I know a guy who's 70 years old. He moved here when he was under five. He's not a local. He will tell you he's not a local. He's been here for 65 years. Yeah, I wasn't born here. Yeah. You know, there's a thing.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Yeah, and and uh I'm discovering the more that I do these interviews how weird we are about it. But like Santa Cruz is really weird about what it means to be from here. And uh, you know, as I've shared with you, you know, in the last few years, you know, stepping away from that thing, whatever that is, it it's it's really ill-defined. It's super territorial though. And you know, we we we've talked about these things, ad nauseum, you know, on this podcast about how it feels, but like to identify what that's actually from, it's very strange. Once I'm sitting outside of it, being like it was such an intrinsic part of me, and so much of my identity, just well, it I still safely live there, right? Yeah, I mean, what are you gonna say? It's it's like uh yeah, you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

As as much as I respect that, I also as an outsider laugh at it. And and you know, at this point, sure, I respect that you're a son of Santa Cruz, right? But the fact of the matter is I worked my butt off to get here. And and you were lucky enough to have been born here. You love it more, right? Maybe. Um, but you know, oh, you should you're a prince, right? You were born into royalty. Great. I don't care. Good for you, son. Right, that's nice.

SPEAKER_02 18:27

What do you do for a living? Right? What's that?

SPEAKER_01 18:29

You know, I I've been tempted on regular occasions to say, yeah, but I pay property taxes. What do you do? Right? You were nice, you know, you're lucky and and the fact of the matter is you were born here, your family may have helped build Santa Cruz, you may have inherited a leg up, right? You may have inherited a knowledge that I'll never have, um, a community that I'll never have. I mean, I'm lucky enough that I know enough guys that grew up here, and I'm I consider them family that uh we were laughing. My friend's visiting now uh at my house, and and he's from Santa Cruz and he's come back and he said, I'm gonna go see this guy. You remember him, he's the one that gave you all kinds of crap when you met him. I said, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to the coffee shop and uh he said, you know, who are you? I don't know you. And kind of and then I walked in with a guy who is as local as you can get, right? His mom went into labor while she was working down on the wharf, you know, and ran over to Dominican and he was delivering, walked in with Brian, and the guy looks, Oh, you're friends with Brian? Oh, you must be okay.

Tech Career: Bridge Between Biz And Code

SPEAKER_02 19:36

Well, it it it I want to sit here for a second because I think it's a conversation worth having. Because I think you have some insights, that's why. Uh I don't know if you share this observation, but I I noticed the big shift when my youngest, who is now 25, turned 12, 13 years old. Like it happened out in the water first, you know, where i it it was now mostly my generation of parents, you know, I'm on my last, they're on their first, decided that they didn't want their kids to go through what you used to have to go through out in the water. But I also noticed that the kids themselves were being far kinder with each other. And there's this temperature I've seen emerge over the last, you know, decade and a half of most people who are doing well by living here. And I don't mean that in a financial sense, I mean that in like a joyful sense. Have these communities that are emerging from that behavior with each other. And, you know, I get to see it a little bit more, you know, because I'm coaching baseball. You know, I my my persona's always been a little bit public in the sense that I get to be around a lot of people, so I get to watch more things. I've noticed Santa Cruz get really far nicer over the course of the last decade and a half. That being said, you know, since COVID's a little bit more intense and a little bit more isolated at the same time, and they're conflicting things, you know. But you know, I I don't I don't think the isolation from COVID and the behaviors that emerge from that are unique to us in any way. That that's my point. I think humanity's just kind of gotten to that spot. But of the people that are spending time together, you know, like I was at Manresa yesterday and uh really getting to know the South Side, and the beach was packed, and I'm sitting with a group of lifeguards, and they're like, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe. In March, like it's packed, pack packed. And and it was nothing but various groups of friends, not not a whole lot of individuals, but groups of you know, six or more families, people, just nobody doing anything funky. Just it was it was like a really kind experience at the beach. And it was cool. You know, like he asked me how my day was, because you know, he he asked me because I, you know, Dan knows I'm a little depressed here the last couple months. You know, not bad depressed, just kind of that didn't factor into it at all, believe me.

SPEAKER_03 22:41

I just asked you how your day was.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

It's Dan. Um but that being said, you know, it just was a really nice family day at the beach. And like, huh, all right. You know, like this is Santa Cruz now, which is I hope so.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

I I I have a a few conflicting experiences on that. Well, you go to 26th Avenue Beach, so I can be allowed to be. And I used to walk in through the kitchen. I didn't walk around, I just walked in through the kitchen. So I knew them pretty well. And um, and I walked in and and the waitress slash hostess, it was a it was a Monday on a three-day weekend, and I walked up to her and I whispered, Hey, how long's the wait? And she looked at me and she says, What the hell's wrong with you? Come back Tuesday. You live here, goddammit. And I thought, you know, you're right. Yeah, I I'm almost local. And whenever whenever anybody complains about tourists or complains about too many people out there, or complains about, you know, the groups on the beach on this beautiful Sunday afternoon, I look at them, I say, what the hell's wrong with you? Come back Tuesday, you live here. Yeah, yeah. Right. And I think some of that's carried over. On the other hand, I have definitely sensed um some increased localism around. You mentioned COVID. Right? Uh during COVID, many of us learned to work remotely. It wasn't new to me. I learned to work remotely a decade ago. But and and people realized that they needed to be in their office in San Jose or in Silicon Valley uh two days a week. So it wasn't a five-day-a-week commute over 17. It was a once or twice a week thing, and they could live in Santa Cruz and make that commute. And the funny thing for me is, you know, when I worked in San Jose, somebody asked me, Oh, you live in Santa Cruz? Why do you live in Santa Cruz? And my first reaction was, Have you been to Santa Cruz? And my next reaction was, Oh, it's horrible.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

It's a horrible idea. I just do it because you know my wife wanted to live there. You know. But but the point is that people have realized that they can live in Santa Cruz and the commute's much more manageable than they thought. And and that's opened up our community and brought um a lot of economically advantageous things to the community. But also there's some locals that are really upset that all these people who didn't want to make the sacrifice to live here before are now able to live here without making the sacrifice. And it's diluted the population in a lot of ways. I get it. On the other hand, look, if you really want old school Santa Cruz, move up to the lost coast, right? There's lots of places in California that are still like old school Santa Cruz, it's just not as convenient. Yeah. Um, but I think you're right. I think it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, people are becoming much more open to okay, tourism drives Santa Cruz, it always has. Um, we're lucky enough to be here all week. Let the outsiders come in on the weekends and play, right? It's it's good for everybody. I think there's certainly at some level society's become more open to outsiders. So uh, but on the other hand, lots of parts of society have not.

SPEAKER_03 26:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

We can be sure of that, right? Yeah. There's lots of tribalism and and localism in every part of society these days, and that's a shame. I mean, it's it's hard to watch. Um, but like I said, my mantra is always come back Tuesday. You live here, come back Tuesday.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Uh-huh. Yeah, I I I mean I'm I'm laughing because Yeah, the weekends were just a no-fly zone. You know, that's just part of my That's right. Always been part of my reality. It's it's like, you know, what did I do on the weekends? I went up north and surfed. Like you just get out of town. But what do you do in the summer? You don't go near the boardwalk.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

You just just don't go near it. Right. Why would you do that? Yeah. It's Monday, damn it. That's hilarious. What uh what exactly did you do in tech?

unknown 27:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Or kind of what kind of general I'll give you a broad overview.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

So so I was in school studying computer science. And some of my buddies said, hey, we started an internet company. You should come work with us. And I had never in college studying computer science, I'd never worked so hard in my life and been so broke. I was literally, you know, what was for dinner was a question.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah. Right? It wasn't what are we gonna make? It was are we gonna eat right? We knew I knew where all the happy hour taco bars were.

SPEAKER_03 28:05

Yeah.

Acquisitions, Data Mining, And Adobe

SPEAKER_01 28:05

And I didn't drink. Yeah. So I could go to the bar, have some free tacos, and move on, right? And and the guy said, When are you gonna come work for me? And I said, Well, you know, how about after Labor Day? And I went to work for this internet service provider back when people would say, Internet? I wanted the internet. It was like 1993, right? And I walked in um as a coder, as somebody who you know wrote code and and and knew how to program. And the guy who was the uh in charge of the the servers and the uh database stuff put in his notice the day after I started. And they said, Look, you got two weeks, figure out what he did. That's your job now. Gotcha. And um somewhere along as we grew, you know, this is the wild west of the internet. Um we would literally look at each other and say, This is crazy, they're letting us do this. Right? These companies are paying us money, and we're just we're making it up as we go along, really. And um so I started doing database integration between websites and databases and trying to build dynamic websites, right? And writing it in C code and Perl and early stuff. Um, and we quickly grew. And I realized that maybe I didn't really, maybe my boss realized, but I realized that I was an okay coder. I knew how to get stuff to work. But there was a guy sitting in the corner of the room who didn't like to speak to anybody. And if I could write an essay, he could write poetry.

SPEAKER_03 29:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

And if I could make it work, he could do it in half the lines twice as fast. But he didn't like to talk to anybody and he'd like to explain what to do, and he didn't like to listen. And I was pretty good at talking to the boardroom of our clients and understanding what they needed from a business perspective and what the software could do technically. And I was pretty good at translating that. So I quickly became a bridge between the business and the tech. And I started managing tech guys. Okay. Um later that evolved into um what was later called customer success, which is um account management of existing accounts. So they would give me a book of business and say these are the accounts that you're responsible for. And my job was to um make sure they got value for their investment in our company and um make sure we retained them um as clients, right? So sometimes they call that land and expand, right? We'd come in, I'd go in and I'd say, okay, why did you invest in us? What is your goal? How do we make sure you get return on your investment? And really the best indicator of that is if they do more business with us, the odds are they're gonna stay with us. Right. So I was good at identifying opportunities to increase our foothold in these companies. And because I was a tech guy, I got a lot of tech companies. So I worked with actually I ended up in two verticals. I ended up working mostly with tech companies and financial companies. So I did some big banks and big investment firms, and I did the big tech guys out here. I did Cisco and Apple. And gotcha. Uh Apple was obviously my biggest client. You don't get bigger than that. Yeah, but no, you don't. And well, you did back then, but now you don't. Right. And it evolved, right? Yeah, yeah. I I used to joke that I I was the companies I worked for were bought out nine times in in a decade, right? And and I was on the acquisition team more times than I can count because they'd bring me in and they'd say, Look, Dan's been acquired a bunch of times, and he's gonna tell you what to do, right? Don't worry. And I'd say, Listen, don't worry. It's always been good. And what you need to understand is that the guys at the top are trying to work out macro details. They're not concerned with your personal concerns just yet. They'll take care of that, be patient. Right? But but you know, it was a really interesting run where I went from employee number 12 to working for some of the biggest companies in the world.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yeah, I I mean it it sounds to me on the outside that you're in that aqua hire real estate grab, you know, where they're where they're just finding groups that perform well, you have enough real estate in the in the market, and like there's the next region that we're gonna develop with our larger platform.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

To a point, and also big companies, I think, realized that they that the the technology that they were acquiring was worthless without the intellectual property that went along with it. Yeah, yeah. Right. If you didn't know, if if you didn't hire the person that understood the technology, um you're in real trouble. I'll give you an example, right? I worked for a company that had a really, really incredible software package to do data mining. And um it was a unique data structure, it was a unique kind of database that worked really well at certain things. And it actually worked really well at analyzing data that was coming in in a stream as opposed to finding single records. Right. So it was really good at looking for anomalies in big data. Okay. Half a billion records was a small data set. Right. It was it was used for things like um the biggest investor was the intelligence community, and they use it to analyze chatter and look for things like terrorist stuff and things that popped out. And we got acquired by one of our competitors who had a similar but different market space, and it was a different product. And I listened to the people acquiring saying, Oh, I think I understand what this software does. It does the same thing we do when we do X, Y, and Z. And I heard them say that, and I realized they had no idea how what they had acquired worked. And the guys who had invented it were getting shut out. And I knew right then that the software they had acquired was gonna die on the fine. They acquired it because it was a competitor, not because it was the software.

SPEAKER_03 35:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

The alternative to that was when the company I worked for got acquired by Adobe. They kept everybody on and they wanted to understand how to integrate our software package with their software package to create a synergistic model, right? To pick the sum greater than the two parts. To this day, I know a lot of people that still work for Adobe that were acquired then.

SPEAKER_03 35:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Those are the alternatives. So, you know, it was an interesting run. Yeah. That that was a time when tech was growing and growing, um, when the internet was evolving quickly. And it was the Wild West. Yeah. I mean, we got to do what we wanted to do. Um anyway, I'm not sure how we got down to the city.

Work, Priorities, And The Santa Cruz Lifestyle

SPEAKER_02 35:56

No, no, no, no, no, we're good. Yeah, yeah. Again, you're in one of these lanes that I'm uniquely familiar with. Look, part of my core group of friends were all in the top 50 employees at Netscape. So I'm I'm I'm familiar. You know, I realize you were uh C is what you were programming with at first, you know. No, actually before that I was promoted to C. Right, right. But the point You get it. Point being that you know the it it was a Borlin crew that I know that all move chairs been.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Borlin was here. Yeah. Borland was Scots Valley.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

You know, those are my clients, and you know, I I'm sitting there watching it. Believe it or not, I was the uh second best programmer at at high school and somebody ended up being a hairdresser, which is very strange. Uh so so there there's there's a there's a nerd in that hasn't touched a keyboard since 1987, but uh Mikey knew how to do stuff with DOS. So um, you know, I I You get it. I I I see it, you know, like like just uh the the it it's an art, you know, it is what it is.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

I got into computers because I when when I was little I liked magic. Not because I thought it was magic, I understood that the magician knew the trick, but to everybody else it seemed like magic. And I felt like computers in the late 80s and early 90s was the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Right? I understood the trick, which made me seem like a magician. And that's why I got into computers.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

Yeah. I I I mean, I I I look back, the the you know, there was there was like four of us, you know, that were a few years apart, a couple guys younger than than, you know, there was two of us in the room at the time, you know, because we had the best computer science department, you know, at SoCal High. And you know, and the and the one guy's doing hard programming, I'm doing just weird shit. You know, and and but you know, but the computer science teachers like, how are you making it do that? I'm like, I don't know. It's just how how are you not? It's funny, it's fun. This is fun. The language. Yeah. You know, so so you know, it it's so entry-level. I, you know, I I me pretending like, you know, I understand the the the deep part of it is is nonsense. That being said, I I I see the nature of the language, you know, what it's capable of, and and have been and operated in that space over the last 30 years, just with various different projects. So and and and these guys are my friends. I I mean like one of my friends is the source code to Java. Yeah, you know, like so, so like it's pretty neat, it's it's not beyond me. It's pretty neat. I mean, but like I said, that's the magic, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Yeah, one ones and zeros, man. It's just it's weird. He's a magician, yeah, and and one of the better musician magicians in the world, yeah, right. He knows a trick that very few people understand. Yeah, it's still a trick. Yeah, and and to me, not only are those tricks interesting for what they are, but if you can't apply them to a use case, they're not very interesting to me. Right. To me, form follows function. Now, when you get function and a beautiful form, that's art.

SPEAKER_05 39:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Right. And and I look at computers the same way, right? You could make a really, really cool shovel, but if you don't have a ditch to dig, a cool shovel's worthless. Maybe pretty, yeah, but it's worthless. And it's that's I guess that's been my role in tech is to try and apply the cool shovel to find the right ditches to dig it. Yeah. Right. And and for that matter, to find somebody who has a cool project that we can then tailor our software to. Right. Um I I like to think of my job as being how do I help you be successful in your job? Right. Later, later in my career, it it has evolved, right? My my most recent job has been um leading teams to create proposals in response to big RFPs. So if it's a really complicated RFP, we have to get a team of players from my company to answer the portions of that. And my role has been to ride herd on that, right? To to be the MC, so to speak, or the or the liaison between our company and your company. And when you say, let's do a five-hour presentation to show you how what we're gonna do to meet your propos uh RFP request for proposal, uh uh, my role is to say, Oh, that's an interesting question. Joe, I think you're the expert on that. Would you answer this question for these guys and keep it rolling like that? Um, it's become a really interesting place to be. I've shifted from retention to pure sales. Yeah. Um but once again, I see my role as how do we apply our technology to help you meet your goals? Right? How do we what what's driving you as my client, and how do we make you successful? Um I see that very differently than I saw sales guys in my head when I was first starting out, which is you know, say anything, do anything, get it done, close the deal. Coffees for closers. Coffees for closers.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Put the coffee down.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

Get it. Um yeah. What do you get for number two? Steak knives.

SPEAKER_02 41:56

Number three, hit the bricks.

Remote Work, Rituals, And Balance

SPEAKER_01 41:58

That's right. It's a great movie. Yeah, it is a great movie. Gary Glenn Ross. Yeah. So well, let's switch gears a little bit. Um interesting, we got so deep into that when I said at the beginning that that's what defined me. Well, and now I try not to let that define me. Yeah, and and and but what's how I got here?

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Well, here's here's the thing. And I don't think, you know, and it's mostly because people are not here, right? There's a finite resource called real estate uh in and around the valley. I have proximity intellectual value in that the people that I became adults with ended up being some of the more important people in the world. And that was not their intent. It's just what happened. And as we aged, I just got to hear the stories, and I just happened to be in the room, and I I look I I I work for a uh very small capital group. I do due diligence for them, you know, for far smaller projects, none of them are in tech. Uh we almost funded one in tech last year, and it was weird to see how fast AI was monetizing to a banking structure. And it was a little alarming, you know, that somebody could fit in our investment portfolio that way. That wow, okay, so I have one person here and they're creating a satellite in the sky that prints money. And there's a banking metric we can look at how is this on my desk? You know, just just It was weird, you know, because my metrics are pretty simple. You know, I live in simple margins. All I'm doing is looking at entrepreneurs who are trying to get their company from, you know, five million a year north of that to sell them. You know, we're we're meant to be a part of that process and help them do that. And so my world is simple. You know, will will it fit on a shelf? Will it be picked up, smelled? Will it be rebought after it's bought at the right store? Like it like my life and my metrics and my heart are very, very simple and they live in in banking metrics. They don't live in, you know, the wild west of tech. But what I I think that the average person wouldn't know about the valley, and I feel the same way about Texas, is that we're kind of oddly the last form of pure capitalism that isn't completely controlled just yet. You know, there's a Wild West aspect of America that lives uniquely on the West Coast and uniquely in Texas that that I think is changing. I hope it doesn't, but you know, we're holding something for the rest of the world, and and it it it's I know that sounds probably pretty nebulous to all you guys, but but I I think Dan's kind of catching what I'm saying here. It it's it's just a it's such a unique spot to have become an adult in as I've watched markets get way too centralized.

Santa Cruz As Brand And Island

SPEAKER_01 45:43

What I'm hearing from what you're saying is uh something I I think is what makes the United States unique. Right. Is that there's still this belief that people have that they can go out and build something and uh make a solid life from that. Right? In a lot of cultures you inherit the profession of your parent. Yeah. Right? You you take on the store, you take on the whatever the profession is, and I think still to a degree people tend to do that. Dad was a doctor, I see myself as a doctor. I'm gonna my my friend um is in medicine and all her siblings are in medicine while her father was a dentist, and you know, it's all what you envision yourself, what you envision yourself becoming later in life often comes from your family, but there's a a really interesting aspect to the United States in that there's this belief that we're a to a degree still a meritocracy, and if you work really hard you can build something and become successful at that. And and I don't think I think part of what you're saying is Silicon Valley has embodied that for a long time. Yeah. Um and it has. Yeah. I think we're the generation that sees that in on the West Coast, on in Northern California specifically, or North Central California specifically. I'm not sure it was like that in the 60s.

SPEAKER_02 47:53

Yeah, I I I don't think it was. I you know, I think it really, you know, clearly it got its start in the late 70s to 80s, you know, but that was hardware. You know, on the software side, which is really what we're talking about, right? You know, what can software do?

SPEAKER_01 48:09

What I was leading towards is I think that was the perfect storm.

SPEAKER_03 48:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

Right? It was it was here because there was uh a think outside the box counterculture movement in the Bay Area. And and uh as I understand historically, that summer of love in San Francisco in the late 60s sort of bled down to Santa Cruz, and a lot of those hippies uh uh alternative lifestyle folks, think outside the box folks, moved down to Santa Cruz along with the, oh, I don't know, electrocoolate acid tests that were first happened in Santa Cruz, right? That whole free your mind, think outside the box, that creativity, that perfect storm of that coupled with the invention of the personal computer and the invention of making that uh accessible to the general population. And that explosion, yeah, it happened right here. And I think you still see that. Um we we happen to be in a great time to do that. Yeah, right. Um it's been a wonderful ride to be able to experience that.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

Yeah, yeah. I um it's a fascinating moment to watch. You know, I get getting back to my uh history and economics professor at Annapolis that I got uh 20 years of 45-minute lectures once a month. Uh he you know, he he's a Sullivan from the Sullivan clan in New York. Okay. So of of of the people, one of the one of these guys. But you know, his grandfather was the first to depart from that portion of the system, you know, the gangs in New York portion. Uh he he he used to say, he's like, the great thing about California is that you know, if you if you took if you took America and just you know tilted it to its left, everything loose lands here. He goes, and then if you folded California in half and everything loose landed, it lands here in Santa Cruz. And he's like, that's what I like about it. You know, you know, to your point of like, yeah, it just attracts things that don't fit, you know, anywhere else. And uh it's an image I've held on to for 30 years, the first time he said it. You know, here I have a grandfather talking to me about what why he called this place home, you know, that he never felt like he fit in Boston. You know, that there was there was the reality, you know, is that you know, I was uh a political military family who wanted to be a singer. And this is the life that I ended up in. You know, he's he's an e economist by trade, helped little countries like France merge into this new global economy, you know. So he he he lives pure capitalist, uh never been around anybody like that in my life, as liberal as you get, but still went and blew things up and and understands uh capital markets like nobody I've ever talked to, and and and the beauty of capitalism and what it's capable of, while at the same time recognizing its dangers, you know, both foreign and domestic. And uh it's it's it's uh it's a you know, it's it was a strange uh middle ground. Well, it it was it was a very strange uh upbringing on my end, you know, be being 22 and hearing about a world that I only now understand at 56. Like, oh, that this is what Patrick meant. You know, these things.

Cost Of Living, Wages, And Commutes

Redefining Success Through Service

SPEAKER_01 52:00

There's no there's no substitute for experience. Yeah. Um but back to Santa Cruz for a second, you know, it when you described it that way, it brought up an image for me that someone once said, someone once said to me, I'm pretty he said it wasn't talking about me, he was talking about himself. He said, I'm I'm pretty conservative when it comes to the way I present in the world. I don't want blue hair or pink hair or red, you know, or or orange hair or whatever. He said, but I definitely want to be in a place where I can sit at the coffee shop and the girl at the next table has a rainbow haircut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And and and that's how I feel about Santa Cruz. Right. And the really interesting thing is I was up in San Francisco over the weekend, and it's really clear to me that an hour and 20 minutes away, the big city of San Francisco is a completely different culture than Santa Cruz. Yeah. And you were talking about real estate. Santa Cruz, literally, from a real estate perspective, is sort of like it's on an island. Right? We've got Wilder Ranch to the north, which isn't going to be developed. We've got, or or up the coast, we've got the the mountains north of Scotts Valley between us and San Jose, south of us, with the way the highway is set up, it becomes really difficult to commute from south of Santa Cruz up to San Jose. Um, as we expand the highway, that's gonna change a little bit. But still, most of that, you go 10 minutes south of Santa Cruz, even farmland. You're in cowboy country. I mean that's you're just in farmland. Yeah, and a lot of that is zoned so that it's gonna stay that way. Yeah. So we're not expanding out. Santa Cruz is basically an island when it comes to real estate, um, which is hard for people who want more affordable housing in Santa Cruz, but on the other hand, it keeps the culture of Santa Cruz. If if I dropped somebody who's, you know, in the Santa Cruz garb in San Francisco, I instantly can recognize them as not being from San Francisco. They're from Santa Cruz. Right. And and that's literal outside stuff, but attitude is similar. Yeah. There's a there's a go, go, go in San Francisco that you don't find here in Santa Cruz. It's more of a hey man, the surf's good today. I'm gonna take a couple hours off of work and go. You know, I was driving down the point the other day and pulled up next to my buddy who was just getting out of the water. He's a venture capitalist guy, he's big time and and you know, uh funds many multi-million dollar projects. And it was two o'clock in the afternoon. He was just getting out of the water. Because, yeah, the surf was good, yeah, and I'm gonna go back to work now. You know, the the priorities change. Yeah um because you have to sacrifice a little bit to get on to get on the island, right? You have to to to make that a priority. It's not so easy. Yeah. Um, but people that that's important to all share something. Um and to me, part of that is, you know, it's almost like living in a national geographic movie. We we go to the coast, we sit with our tea, and we look out and and see the otters and see the porpoises and see the the whales and the waves and the the beauty of where we live. Um why would you go off on a tangent? You know, I remember moving here, and um, when I was back east, uh Sundays in the winter were dark and cold, and it was a really nice thing to do to sit by the TV and the it with the fire going and the dog on the couch and watch football. And football games started at 1 and uh uh 3.30 or something like that. And so you'd have Sunday morning and then you'd go and curl up on the couch. And you know, I got to Santa Cruz and I was still kind of into football, and I'd get up at 10:30 in the morning, and I'd go down to the point uh uh restaurant or whatever the hell that was, and they had season tickets so I could watch the East Coast teams at 10:30 in the morning. I'm sitting at the bar on a beautiful Sunday morning watching football, drinking coffee. And that lasted for about a season until I realized it's a beautiful Sunday morning. Why on earth would I want to sit inside and watch football? Right? I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna get in the water and I'm gonna walk the point and I'm gonna, you know, play with the dogs on the beach, and and priorities change. Yeah, and part of that's driven by the fact that this is a beautiful place. So instead of sleeping in on a Sunday morning, you get up and enjoy the weather. And then if you're gonna do that, you gotta go to bed relatively early on a Saturday night, and it all bleeds in and it's a lifestyle change, yeah. Right. And that's to go back to the original question, that's part of what Santa Cruz means to me is it's that lifestyle priority. Um, you know, uh uh that's a beautiful thing. Yeah. And and it's a different level of it's a just a different priority, you know. It's I I I I told somebody once, I said, look, they said I don't have time for whatever it was. I said, I understand you're busy, but we all get 24 hours a day. Yeah. We all get the same amount of time. Yeah. Don't tell me you don't have time. Tell me it's not a priority. Yeah. I'll respect that. Yeah. But don't pretend that you don't have time. Yeah. You have the same amount of time as everybody. Just admit to yourself that whatever we were talking about is not a priority. And the shift in priorities when you get to Santa Cruz is, I think, really healthy. Yeah, I do too. Right. I think I think we're really lucky. Yeah. Um I mentioned earlier that uh uh I worked I've worked from home for a long, long time, and I found that I need a commute. I can't, it's not healthy for me to roll out of bed and pull up to the computer and start checking emails before I've taken off my pajamas. Right. And and one day uh I was married at the time and and I did that. I rolled into the computer and I started working and in my flannel pants and my t-shirt and whatever I pulled on when I woke up. And my wife had gone to work and she came home and she walked into my office and I looked up, I said, Oh, you came home early from work? And she said, No, it's six o'clock. And I realized that I had gotten sitting down in my pajamas and I was still in my pajamas, right? So I started to build in a commute. Yeah. And that's how we know each other. I built in my commute. I I put the dogs in the car, I drive to Starbucks. I get sorry to sorry for the plug. It's okay. It's it's been plugged before. And I get my I get my green tea and and I take the dogs down to the beach, and I either sit on the cliffs or I walk them on the beach and do my morning meditation and consider the day ahead. And I drive back around and eventually get back to the house, and that's how I start my day. Yeah. And it's been become important to me that if I'm gonna work from home, I need to draw a line. And at the end of the day, I take off my work clothes and I jump in the hot tub for half an hour. That's my evening commute. Yeah. But I need to turn on and turn off. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And and but that's part of the beauty of Santa Cruz is that my commute can actually be healthy.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:01

Right? It can actually be, okay, how do I acknowledge nature? How do I look for God in my life? How do I look for a purpose? Uh how do I consider the day ahead and consider how I can be of service and then go to it rather than roll out, hustle, yeah, go to work, come home. You know, it's not healthy for me. I'm not, I can do that. It's not good for me. Um and as I said earlier, you know, career-wise, I did that. I've done that. I like to work hard, but there's a balance. And Santa Cruz helps me with that work-life balance. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:41

Yeah, you know, it's as I've expressed more than a few times, uh I believe Santa Cruz is a place where type A people move to or live in to learn to mellow out. You know, that there's a a safety in the structure around us as you were talking about the boundaries, that all of us are attracted to the differences or all of it in some way. And we need that boundary around us to keep us grounded because we're so type A. And uh, you know, I I I I've compared Santa Cruz to New York in some ways that if you can make it here, like that's something. You know, it it is not an easy place to own a business, to be in tech. Like, let's just start right there with the price. Uh I mean, I don't know if this is your experience of uh wage difference. Oh, you're in Santa Cruz, all of a sudden you're not getting the wages offered to you. That you even though you're putting three hours more in a day on top of the work that you have to do to survive in the valley, you know, whatever it is we're talking about. Like Santa Cruz lives in weird metrics, and the hustle culture here is as high as it gets. And uh, but it doesn't think of itself as a competitive town, and that that's that's its blind spot. That's where it has missed its shadow work of really sitting with itself and realizing, like, you know, it like to your point, yeah, that guy that you just surfed with, he's he's got a billion-dollar fund. Yep. You know, like it's that that's the billionaire, that's not some guy who's retired.

Sobriety As Self-Awareness And Principles

SPEAKER_01 1:02:35

We don't know ourselves. Uh you're you're absolutely right. Um, I I had I did have an experience with that. I I was the the studies had just come out that Santa Cruz uh had the highest cost per living in the country. Yeah. And the way they calculated that, I think is not completely fair. The way they calculated that was they looked at um income versus cost of living, which is an interesting metric and makes sense, except what they don't calculate in is that there's a large percentage of people in Santa Cruz that don't work in Santa Cruz County, right? They work over the hill. So, but still, cost of living in Santa Cruz is through the roof. There's no debating it. And I got hired by a company and they said, Oh, he lives in Santa Cruz, so he's tier two in terms of salary, not tier one. And I said, That's crazy. We're one of the most expensive places to live in the in the country. If not the most expensive place at times. That's right. And what I found out was they look at the entire entirety of Santa Cruz County, and that includes Watsonville, that includes, you know. So that includes the people that actually serve us. That's right. That's right. But the but the incomes there are lower. Yeah. The cost of living is also lower. Right. Right. So that the you know, buying a house in Salinas is much cheaper than buying a house here in Santa Cruz. So they calculate the whole can. So my hiring manager looked at me and says, I got this. And she says, Dan's desk is in San Jose. I don't care where he lives. You pay him like he's in San Jose. And I said, Oh God, does that mean I have to go to the office in San Jose? She says, No.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:32

It means your desk is in San Jose. Keep some files in it. She says, You don't really have to go there. But, you know, that seemed fair to me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:40

But you're right. You know, it's a weird pressure that people don't, but like again, most of my audience is like not from here. You know, that it's, you know, it I have one of my 37 countries now. Like that's cool. And what's cool about it is like it just shows the influence. You know, it's not me. It's everybody who sat here, you know, that that that you know, it's such an international space. And we're it doesn't look it that way at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:10

But one of the really interesting things about Santa Cruz that I've realized after traveling the world is that Santa Cruz itself is a brand.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:20

Oh, yeah. It's it and literally and figuratively. Like if you say, I'm from Santa Cruz, people go, Oh, that's cool. Do you know anything about Santa Cruz? Uh, it's cool. Have you been to Santa Cruz? No. Do you know where it is? Not really. Right? But but it's a brand. And you go all over the world, and NHS has done a great job with the dot.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:42

I was gonna say, if you make that logo more than uh 20% of it, you gotta ask Novak first. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

And and God bless him. But I've been all over the world. I was in Croatia and I saw a guy wearing a dot shirt, yeah, and I tried to talk to him. He didn't speak any English. He had no idea where Santa Cruz was, but it's become a brand. And it's a lifestyle brand. And that's a little bit of what we're talking about here, you know, what is Santa Cruz? Yeah. And people are really interested in that. And it's magic. And I can't argue, I moved here because it was magic. Right. And I, but as you said, I worked really hard to get here. Because it's not easy. Yeah. Right. And I've we'll go back to localism. I have nothing against the locals who all I see is that they inherited a bit of a leg up. Right? They knew people when they got here. They might have had friends that built whatever. They might have family friends that could give them uh the benefit of knowing who they are in the hiring process. It's always better to hire somebody as a known quantity. I get it. No problem with that at all. Um, maybe even nepotism. I have no problem with that at all. But they still, to make a life here, you still have to work pretty hard. It's not easy. There's a lot of competition because Santa Cruz is a cool place. Everybody wants to be here. You know, if if if if you can figure out a way to sit uh at Rockview every day and drink your tea with your dogs before you go to work, it's a pretty good life. Yeah. Yeah. But it's it's not free.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:28

No. No, I it it's uh, you know, I I coming into, you know, just a little bit more agency and gratitude. Uh the privilege, you know, that I have of partaking in coffee where we do, stopping on the drive before I decompress, before I get to my shop here out in front. That's my commute, right? It used to happen from a mile that way, and now it happens seven miles from there. But the the commute in hasn't changed. My commute doesn't start until I'm at 17th Avenue. And, you know, to your point earlier, like that there's a routine that I have to get myself into to be in a mindset because the grind is screaming at you, you know, because it is the nature of being here, you know, and yet comes off as this aloof little little town that doesn't get to be as aloof uh as it once was because nepotism, I don't know, it's the right word. That ability to be from here and function here has been removed, you know, and that's a fiduciary issue, you know. But that being said, you know, the the the that blanket that has existed for years is like, yeah, there is no bro who's got a room for 500 bucks a month. That's never gonna happen again. Well, here's the thing.

Fear, Faith, And Altruism

SPEAKER_01 1:09:06

NHS got the secret out. Yes. Right? Uh no blame on them. Yeah. That's but that's part of their success. Yeah. Is like I said, Santa Cruz has become a brand, right? Santa Cruz has become uh a story, right? That people tell themselves. And it's evolution. Yeah. You can't stop it. Yeah. Like I said earlier, if you don't like it, you can't go back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't fight that. You don't like it, leave. Yeah, yeah. There are lots of places that still exist like that. I can't blame you if if your vision of Santa Cruz is 30 years old and that's what you really want, Santa Cruz is no longer that. You can choose to be upset about it or you can move on. It doesn't help to be upset about it. You're not going back. Yeah. Yeah. Right? But but that's part of the deal. Yeah. Right. And it's not a bad deal. Yeah. Um, you know, I I just feel really lucky to have made the decision that this is what's important to me. Right. Uh you know, you ask about who we are, and and I gave it some, I thought about I like to tell people, you know, what do you do? I'm trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Yeah. Right. That's what I tell people all the time. I'm like, I'm just still not growing up, and I'm not sure I ever will. But you know, but the it goes back to, I think it's it's attributed to John Lennon. Somebody asked him in school, what do you want to be when you grow up? And he said, happy. And they said, I think you're missing the point of the question. And he said, No, I don't think I am.

unknown 1:10:51

Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:52

And and I'm kind of there at this point. Yeah. What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be happy. And most of all, I want to be happy with who I am.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:00

I want to look back and think I contributed to the world and made the world a better place. Right. I may have touched a few people appropriately with consent. But you know, I may have touched a few people nicely and in a good way, right? Um, you know, I I'm on a on a heavier note. Um maybe we're at that age, but whatever it is, I have three very close friends who are bad on the cancer right now. Yeah. And um, and I lost my dad a couple years ago. And um that mortality, that that kick in the face of nobody knows how much time we get um puts everything in a different perspective. What's important?

SPEAKER_03 1:11:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:49

Right. And what's important to me is not how I build a career. Yeah. Right. What's important to me is how I've lived my life, right? How I feel about myself. Um, you know, am I proud of who I've become? Not always. Right. I'm not I'm not living up to my own expectations on a regular basis, but I'm better than not. And in the in the balance, it feels good. Yeah. And in the balance, you know, that's what Santa Cruz is for me. In the balance, Santa Cruz feels good. We got our problems. But in the greater scheme of things, this is a pretty cool town. It's a pretty cool place to have problems. That's right. And Santa Cruz is a problem. And life is a problem. Well, life is a problem. Sure. You know, it's like And Santa Cruz's problems in the greater scheme of things are pretty good. Yeah. Right? I mean, I think the the loudest problem that we have, the one that people talk about most, I think, is homeless. The unhoused, I think, is what you're supposed to say these days. And at the same time, these folks that are in dire need and living hard, hard lives aren't sleeping on steam grates in the middle of the city because it's freezing at night. It's a relatively better place to have problems than a lot of other places in the world. Right. Right. You know, and and I think it that's a magnified example, but in a lot of ways. You know, oh, the traffic's horrible. Yeah, it took you 20 minutes to get from one side of town to the other. Have you been to Orange County? Have you been like I grew up in Washington, D.C. Yeah. Rush hour starts at six o'clock in the morning and ends at eight o'clock at night. Yeah. Yeah. Right? It just doesn't stop. Yeah. And and, you know, sure, there's some traffic issues here. But in the greater scheme of things, it's a pretty good traffic problem to have. Right? You know, there's some there's some unruly folks here, but in the greater scheme of things, it's not some of the neighborhoods that I went into in DC when I was growing up that were literally dangerous. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:57

Like you took one wrong turn. I was pulled over by the cops once and they said, What are you doing here? You need to leave. Drive that way and don't stop.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:10

I I I I was in the garment industry and I had an office in downtown LA back when it was there. Swear to God, at dusk, you could run every red light. The cops just waved at you. Like the running joke was if you had a car you wanted to get rid of, just leave it parked there overnight. That's right. You know, you know, I've I've not lived in those neighborhoods, but certainly been around those neighborhoods where it's like you are running to your car and just fleeing.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:41

And like I said, it's not to say there aren't some bad neighborhoods in Santa Cruz, but comparatively the problems that we have here are better than most places. Yeah. You know? Um and that's a nice way of saying Santa Cruz is pretty good. Overall, in the balance, yeah, we're pretty well off, right? And and let's recognize that. Yeah. Um I I just feel really lucky to be here and be a part of this community and and having had the opportunity to uh uh build a part of build this community around me, build a build a fellowship of people that take care of each other in Santa Cruz, right? I I feel really lucky to to have that kind of extended family here.

Community, Recovery, And Loneliness

SPEAKER_02 1:15:36

Um let's let's dive into that like like right here, sure. You know, because you know, certainly uh as you enter the conversation, you know, this is where you were going. Uh I'm I'm I'm gonna use not for the sake of AA, but really like in a in an anonymous way, talk about sobriety as a term. Uh I think if there was any agenda I had coming into this, it was kind of sit in that space a little bit of just talking about the clarity of sobriety. And and I I don't necessarily apply substance abuse to that term uh for my own sobriety. And and and and I want to be very careful that to mention that I'm not in the program, I am working a program, I got my program from the program, and uh and there's just this space that that we have danced around linguistically a little bit. I'm gonna for the sake of of the work that that that I'm sure that you do, even though we never really talk about this. Talk about sobriety I I think it it in its true point, which uh, you know, again, the best uh religious term I could use would be repentance. That would be seeing the world clearly for what it is, taking that deep breath in for the things you did not see, both the shame and the guilt and the knowledge that it needs to be different now that I see this this way, and the compassion necessary that you have to have on yourself to move forward, and the compassion that you extend because you have compassion on yourself, that would be repentance. Um, acceptance would be in the more eastern mystic side of the term, but this word sobriety that gets pushed around uh holds the same weight. It it is looking at the world clearly and and making choices now that you see things for what they are. And I think that's a nice, pretty loose chamber to I think discuss a perspective that that I I believe that we hold together.

Ego, Example, And Teaching By Doing

SPEAKER_01 1:18:15

Um I'm I'm very comfortable discussing that. I just want to back up for one second because you mentioned Alcoholics Anonymous. Um I want to be very clear that I I don't represent Alcoholics Anonymous. Uh I I won't even talk about I'm sure I've been to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Uh uh there's some of the framework of how I've tried to live my life comes from that. Um but I don't want to talk about that. Yeah, I want to just be very clear that that that's not where I'm coming from is is representing that at all. But from a from uh uh an inventory perspective, from a uh sometimes people call it character defects. I think of it as characteristics perspective, right? You're talking about shortcomings, right? All this uh uh I I think that really what we're talking about is personality traits that can manifest in positive or negative ways. Yeah. Right. What we're talking about is is sobriety to me, is is is a development of a self-consciousness and a self-awareness that enables us to act on principles rather than react to life. I think way too many people in the world bounce through life like a pinball and take actions based on external stimuli and don't and react based on external stimuli and don't take actions based on their principles and morals. So the first step that people need to take in terms of understanding themselves, well, maybe the first step is really identifying that this is causing you problems in your life. This pinball reactionism. And then the next step is realizing that there's probably a better way than trying to force your will on everything. But in order to evolve into someone who has some self-awareness, you really need to do some sort of self-inventory. And I think far too many people look at the inventory as I need to look at all my sins. I need to look at all the bad things that I do in my life. When the way I see it is, I need to look at my characteristics in an open-minded way to see how these characteristics can be manifest as positive and negative things. As an example for myself, I'm somebody who, when I get a problem, I tend to grab onto it and not give up till it's solved. Um, I tend to be pretty stubborn on stuff like that. In poker, that means I'm often looking to draw the inside straight. Means I don't know when to fold really well. Right. It's a bad characteristic. I don't play poker because I'm not the right personality to play poker. On the other hand, if you give me a hard problem, I'm really good at solving that. Once again, the downside to that is I need to tell my boss, I'm gonna go at this. You need to tell me when to fold. If you want me to keep going, I'll keep going until you tell me to stop. Sometimes it's an intractable problem, and you tell me to stop wasting resources on that problem. So I need to be really aware of how my characteristics present in a positive or negative light. And to me, if I had to, sure, by definition, sobriety is not doing any drugs, not doing not drinking, alcohol included. But sometimes in the recovery community, they talk about being dry and being sober as two different things. Right. And I think the difference is that self-awareness that allows someone to understand when they're just reacting to an external stimulus and when they're taking action based on their principle. And sometimes they talk about principles before personalities, right? It it can for me, it's a much more rewarding life to be able to act on my principles rather than react to your personality and how you address me. At the end of the day, when I look in the mirror, I feel much better about myself when I've lived up to my principles. When I've done, when I've been the kind of person I aspire to be, rather than pinball through life reacting to external stimuli. And that's like I said, that that self-awareness and that pause that sometimes I can take before reacting is that sobriety. Right. And and I think you talked about Eastern philosophy and and some of that, you know. As I understand it, that Buddhist meditative state is the ability to part of that is the ability to recognize your emotions before you act on your emotions, right? To to to not discount them, ignore them, not pretend they're not important, yeah, but to be able to take that split second and and sometimes I've heard people talk about restraint of pen and tongue. Take a deep breath. Realize that whatever just happened touched on some earlier trauma, touched on some earlier thing, and and I hate the word, but triggered you to react in a certain way. Be able to take a deep breath.

unknown 1:25:05

Right.

Choosing Local Good And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 1:25:05

And a lot of that comes down to fear. Right? Fear of not getting what you want or fear of losing something you think you need. And somebody once told me that fear and faith are conversely related. The more faith you have, the less fear you have. So we're back to that spirituality. We're back to that. If you can develop a faith in, you know, people talk about a higher power or a god, but really to me, faith is based on repetitive action that brings the same result over and over again. Right? If I've found a system of living that works for me, if I've found ethics and morals and and and a way to live up to my personal expectations, and that feels good, the more I do that, the more faith I have that that's gonna continue to do that. Not unlike when I come to a green light, I assume, I have faith that nobody's gonna run the red light, so I can go through the intersection. It's not a hundred percent true, but it's 99.9%. So I have faith. And it's the same thing. When you when I've been able to build a way of living based on principle, and we'll go back to the first thing I said, the the overriding principle is how can I be of service to others, right? How can I do altruistic things to raise that level of spirituality? I'll feel good. So I have faith that the more I do that, the more I'll feel okay. Um, that to me is sobriety, right? That to me is the difference between not drinking and being sober, right? Without the non not drinking, I don't know how to identify my feelings. I don't know how to identify what's driving me, be it that feelings of fear, being that feelings of whatever, because all I'm feeling is, oh, I feel X because I did Y. Right? Oh, I feel this way because I did this drug. Oh, I feel this way because I drank. So without taking that away, I can't really get into causes and conditions. Right. I really can't do a true inventory of who I am. Um so I think that's the first, the key to learning how to uh be quote unquote sober, right? Be qu be able to take action in life rather than reacting is to take away the external. Mask over how you're feeling. And then from there, if you stop at that point, they used to say, you know, if you take a drunk horse thief and sober them up. Yeah, you have a drunk horse thief. You have a sober horse thief. Yes. Yeah. So without changing the horse thief part, it's really hard. For me. Yeah. When I got sober, I tried really hard to stop doing bad things. When my only priority was to get drunk, I'm really good at singleness of purpose, right? I'm really good at one priority. You're focused. That's another, but that goes right along with that whole tenacity that I don't know when to fold, right? That's a tenacity. Um, I'm really good at, and my one thing back then was to get drunk. I could do other things as long as I knew how to get drunk first.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:54

Right. And and and there was a side of me that said, if you knew how bad I needed to get drunk, you'd understand why I was stealing from you.

unknown 1:29:04

Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:05

Why I was lying to you. Yeah. Why I was doing all these horrible things. So my goal when I first got sober was don't do bad things. How do I stop stealing? Somebody said, stop taking things that aren't yours. Yeah. I said, How do I stop lying? Well, stop start telling the truth. Right. After a while, somewhere it clicked that not doing bad things is different than doing good things. I had to stop doing the bad things first. Then I had to learn to do good things. And it that was a different level of learning. That was a different challenge. And and having developed a modicum of self-awareness by taking certain steps and doing following a prescribed recipe, it's put me in a position where I don't need to be a psychiatrist, I don't need to be a genius, I don't need to be uh uh really particularly intelligent, but I can point to this framework and say to people if you do these things, you will transform who you are internally into somebody that you like. It's a pretty strong message, yeah. Right? And and and it's a pretty clear message, and as long as I don't make it complicated, it works. Right? Uh I I told somebody the other day, I said, you know, if you want to get sober by the definition we just laid out, right? If you want to learn who you are and lead a life that you feel good about, find somebody who's done that and ask them how they did it. And if they have a really complicated answer, go ask somebody else. Yeah. Right? Because it's it's not easy, but it can be simple. Yeah. Right. And and that's the the short version of recovery message that I can give you. Is it's not easy, yeah, but it can be really simple. Yeah. Um, I I don't and I'm not above complicated. If you're a therapist and you're a trained therapist, and I'm not qualified for that.

unknown 1:31:37

Yeah.

Closing Thanks And Credits

SPEAKER_01 1:31:38

But if you happen to find one that's really good, use them. Yeah. That's what they're for. And they're really they've been helpful to me. Um, it's been wonderful. I'm a big advocate of therapy. But but in order for therapy to work, you first have to get rid of the mask, yeah, which is the drugs and alcohol. Yeah. And and you have to start to figure out what's driving you. And and causes and conditions are great. That's what therapy is really good for, but just as important to that is identifying what the emotions are currently, not how you got there, that's great, but how where you are today and how that drives you. Right? And in order to be quote unquote sober, I think the more you can be aware of that, the better you can take that deep breath, pause, and then take action, principled action. Uh the better you can do that, the more sober, quote unquote, you are. I'm Lordy.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:57

I'm gonna have you check the time to see if you you you have enough of a moment here. If I do, okay, I'm good. We can um okay, I'm gonna frame this up a little bit. Again, I I I I share I want for my audience to understand this, that in the nature of AA, um what has made it survive so long is is that we don't have a bunch of people prognosticating about it. That it is its own thing. And it's not to be advertised, it's to be shared uh with other people who are in the process. So when when you hear someone like Dan seemingly dancing around uh like it's some sort of cult or something like that, it is not fair if you've ever been on the outside to believe it to be that way. It's an honoring of the system that somehow self-perpetuates because nobody is in charge in the best of ways. There's a weird authority path. And so I share that quality. That's uh, you know, I'm not as eloquent about it. I was not there a long time. I I got a very valuable tool from AA, and that's what I want to talk about as it pertains to this conversation. You had something you want to say about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:29

I do. Um, once again, I'll be very clear. I am not an advocate or a uh a spokesperson for or or anything about Alcoholics Anonymous. Um to be clear, the anonymity part of Alcoholics Anonymous is about the fact that nobody represents Alcoholics Anonymous. And and nobody uh no personality uh should be out there in the forefront as a spokesperson for Alcoholic Anonymous. What I can tell you is that I've witnessed, I've done a lot of research into how Alcoholics Anonymous works. And in fact, I spoke once on a panel about cults and alcoholics anonymous. So I did a lot of study on the system of Alcoholics Anonymous and and on what cults are and and uh uh how they relate from an academic perspective. And and the way Alcoholics Anonymous, funny story. Uh when I first went to treatment for drugs and alcohol, um I said to my mother, there's a lot of I think this is some brain washing. And she said, maybe your brain needs a little washing. Okay, fair enough. And and the point is there are some peer pressure, communal pressure things that are built into any society like that. In reality, when I'm fair about it, those societies are only designed to help people. And there are a few things that differentiate forget alcoholics anonymous, many of these recovery programs from a cult. So when I did the research, something that defines a cult is a very strong central authority, there's a cult leader. Those 12-step recovery programs are bottom-up organizations. There's no authority. Yeah, there's nobody in New York who can come down and say this is the way you need to do it. You know. So there's another thing, right, that that cults all do. Right? A cult not only does it have a central authority, but it asks its members to sacrifice their own wealth to the cult. They send their people to the airport to sell flowers. Yeah. Right? They they ask you to donate all your income, right? There's no membership fee.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:09

The real big difference between 12-step programs and a cult is that a cult becomes insular. A cult says if your family isn't in the cult, get rid of your family. We're your family now.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:24

A cult says you should dedicate your life to the cult. And 12-step programs say you should mend your relationships with your family. They say you should look to the spirituality of the religion you were raised in. Right? They say, you know, you should become a productive member of society and not hide in that 12-step recovery program. Those things are exact opposites of a cult. Right? They say, take what you want and leave the rest. I'm not sure I love that. Yeah. Um, but but you know, it's the all it's the absolute opposite of that. But what what those programs do is they develop a fellowship of people that can lean on each other in positive ways, right? Um they start by taking a common traumatic experience and and bringing people together that share that experience. Right? They say that, you know, and I'm sure everybody can picture this, right? If you survive a shipwreck, the people that you survived that shipwreck with, uh, you're gonna share a bond. It's natural, right? And if you if there were a society of people that all survived shipwrecks, you would be able to share this traumatic experience. It didn't even matter if you're on the same ship. You survived a shipwreck. The only people that really understood how you felt about surviving that shipwreck were other people that survived that shipwreck. And then you take those people and you put them on a path to recovering from that shipwreck emotionally, all in the same way, creates a very strong bond. Yeah. And that's, I think, what recovery programs do is they allow people to share a common trauma and bond with that and say, oh, these other people understand how I feel in a way that only people who share that trauma can understand. And then as they share a common path to recovery, the really interesting thing is it's not a it's a unique experience for each person, but the things they did to have that experience are the same.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:14

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:16

As they share that, they build a shared sense of purpose. Uh and I think, and I'm no psychiatrist, but I think that self-destruction is a really lonely place to be. Especially when it becomes comes back to that whole how can you get real with someone else if all you know about how you feel is that you drank the same way they did, or you did drugs to feel a certain way. How can you get real? How can you make a real connection? So as people share this growth together, they develop real relationships. And loneliness is a huge problem.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:10

And bigger than it's ever been. That's right. And to me, that's what the community is. That's what recovery is. Yeah. Is building a is taking people from loneliness to purpose, right? Giving them the opportunity to once again go back to do esteemable acts. You'll build self-esteem. But the thing is I'm trying to think of an example of an esteemable act that doesn't involve other people.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:47

Yeah.

unknown 1:42:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:48

I guess animals, right? I guess you could do esteemable things for animals, but is there really an esteemable thing you can do that doesn't involve another being? What's really esteemable if you just do it for yourself? Not sure. I'm having a hard time.

unknown 1:43:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:04

Sure, there are. I'm sure somebody can come up with an example. But so that's recovery to me, right? That's that sobriety is being able to uh take action based on principle, and and the principle, the base principle to all that is how do you do good things? Without being dry, without building a framework to live by, without building a community, you have very little chance uh of doing those esteemable acts. Does that help? Does that help answer the question?

SPEAKER_03 1:43:46

Well Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:51

And it changes my framework of you know even how to approach these things. Because it it for my listeners, they they they realize now, you know, things we have in common even though we don't we did not know this before the conversation. You have you listened to one of my podcasts yet? Just one. Okay. Well you you have echoed whether it's the dot to the boundaries to all that kind of stuff, things that keep getting parroted about this region, about the nature of it, about how it sits with people. This is another spot where I, you know, I've I've danced around some things. I'm saying it openly now.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:36

Uh being a good human.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:46

Uh how much of that structural framework is unfairly imposed onto parents. You know, that the there's the there there's this this thing that we believe as humans that somehow structures will save us. And you keep using the term principles. And you know, I I guess this is you know, ca because you you you pretty much just hit the ball out of the park and won the game. So we're we're we're I didn't know we were playing. Well, no, neither did I. I'm like, well, that was a home run. I didn't know that game's over, ninth inning, last at bat. Here we go. All right. No, no, no, no, but I that there is something in here. Yeah. And and because the you know, these are the spaces I will continue to move into with each consecutive interview, right? For whoever's really willing to sit and honor a common reality, you know, that what it means to be a good human, you know, is so self-defined because of this reality of how we we as individuals hold on to things and their meaning, you know, to that and and you know, the the the kind of carrot and carrot and stick approach that life just hands us, you know, if we're rewarded, you know, we're gonna believe it's because of the thing that we did. And goodness to me is something very different, you know, that just is and it's waiting. Uh I like the physicist, I forget his name that I recently listened to um talk in the 60s that that um, you know, he he had built he was he was part of the whole Los Alamos crew with Einstein and all that, and got in trouble because he went existential on everybody and uh found a physics equation that that answered a particular thing, that the universe was waiting for us to decide. And the universe comes back to us with reality, and that is what shapes us. Is is you know, we make a conclusion about something, and then we face reality if we're willing to, and find out that maybe our conclusions aren't as accurate as we thought. And the process of developing perspectives is to honor what reality really means, you know, what what what what actually happens when I do these things. And I do believe that, you know, again, this is where Santa Cruz is not unique in any way. That as a as a species, humans, because of we can blame tech, I guess. I think it's our propensity to want to know things without having to be with others, without actually having to have the vulnerability of being wrong by being around other human beings and having to change, have found ourselves in echo chambers for various reasons and developing perspectives that I know what I think I need to know, and that's all I want to move forward with, and not putting themselves in the position to be wrong even with their good things, which is the trap that I found myself in, you know, re-relating to the question I thought I had, walkie, or or or the or the space I wanted to talk about, you know, where I got to do my inventory work having lived a very good life, which was very awkward in a way, but I also got to work that inventory as a victim, which was very strange for everybody involved, including myself, because I had never allowed myself that space, but to see, you know, in that fourth post all these decisions I had made, and that's where my work began of who I decided to be because of things that had happened to me, that I kept putting myself in that spot where that thing would keep happening to me, and I would keep experiencing the same harm. And, you know, we're we're myself perpetuating that harm that was coming to me because of my quote-unquote good behavior, and realizing I was trying to solve problems that didn't want to be solved. And uh there was my big life lesson, you know, this is the hamburger I'm going to eat for quite a while of I'm going to solve problems because that's just who I am. That's who I want to be in the future. That, you know, whether it's teaching 13 Or 14-year-olds how to throw a baseball right now, and taking that time to do that, or learning to stand alongside my adult men that were used to be my children, letting them have the experience of what it's like to live, and knowing that there's not a whole lot of content that I can give to people unless they're in the experience and asking. That seemed to be the hurdle I kept placing myself in front of, thinking that I could know without experiencing it. And using content rather than the experience of other humans and experiencing God through other humans. Instead of trying to avoid problems. And uh the brief point I was, you know, in the program. That's what the program gave me. And now I have a lifetime of like working my program because it's not going to end because it's such a piece of my character wanting to do good and be good. But how not to feel like I have to avoid life to do that is not what we sell in the market, you know, which is you know, if there's anything that capitalism has has given to everybody, is like, oh, there's a way to avoid it. Buy this thing, do this thing, learn this thing, do all these things, and it's a pretty chaotic moment and a lot of echo chambers, instead of really just sitting and being with people. So much to unpack.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:09

I know. Well, but but I mean a few things stand out, but the biggest thing that stands out from what you just said is the aspiration for the death of ego.

SPEAKER_03 1:52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:30

You know, I aspire to take my ego out of the equation. I'm not very good at it. My ego is huge. What are you saying, Dan? I'm at least aware that my ego is huge. That's right. And it's all ego. But but in order to remain or become teachable in order to observe, in order to learn, I first have to remind myself that I don't know best. Right? In order to, I'm not a parent. You started off by talking about parents. I'm not a parent, I don't know. What I can tell you is that when watching young people who have been through the trauma of addiction try to get it together when their parents have instilled in them a strong moral compass through example, they have a much better chance of returning home to that moral world. Yeah. Right? When when they've witnessed what doing good looks like, they understand how what doing good is. Right? On the other hand, when they were raised in a situation where they believed that getting over getting over on you before you get over on me is the way of the world, it becomes much harder to take that ego focus, that that focus on themselves and turn it outward and say, what can you bring to the world? And and when you were just talking there, it kept coming back to how do I change my focus from internal to external? How do I change my focus from ego to other people? How do I become selfless? One of the things that you hear around recovery is a misquote. Sometimes people say it's a selfless, it's a selfish program. It's a misquote. Yeah. It's not a selfish program. It's a selfless program. When I can take selfless action, I become a much better person.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:30

Do me a favor here. Why don't you describe selflessness for you? For me.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:45

Fair, fair, fair, fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:46

It's really hard. It's a paradox. It is. Because again, this is this is a space. I have led a very selfless life, Dan. You know, the and and uh we have a unique moment where we don't have to therapise each other, you know, in the sense that we agree. You know, there's no next layer to it. As my friend used to say, we are in violent agreement. Yes. Yeah. But but but I again I think selflessness is a hard word to digest because it's a paradox. We're thinking Mother Teresa, you know, when it comes up and it's like no, no, it it's it's different than that.

SPEAKER_01 1:56:33

It selflessness altruism is a synonym for selflessness, right? And and some people say selflessness or altruism is impossible because you're always getting something in return. It goes back to if you do good, you'll feel good. Yeah. But to me, selflessness is a focus on what's important for someone else. It's a focus on expecting nothing from the receiver in return. Right? I can do something for someone else and expect them to give me nothing back. Sure, I feel good. It's not, there's no vacuum.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:22

Right? It's not like I put it out there and get nothing back, but I'm getting nothing back from them. It's a it's a focus on how to help others without focusing on what does that bring to me. Sure, it does. It's an offshoot. It's a, it's a, it's a it's a side note. It's unavoidable. It's the reason that selflessness is so good, right? It's like, you know, do you practice mindfulness through meditation and clearing your mind? I mean, it's a paradox, right? Yeah. Do you do you do good things and be selfless to get nothing? You get something back. But the real point is it's a it's a focus. Am I always focused on what's for me, or am I also more importantly, am I focused on what does this bring to the world? Be it another person directly or the greater good. And and I don't know that I know what true selflessness is. It's an it's an aspiration.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:33

Can I interject here just a little bit? Of course. So we wecause I like to think of it this way. You know, remember when it used to be sugarless gum? Sure. It's not sugar-free gum, selflessness. You know, and and this is how I used to describe it, you know, when I was in church world. It's like selfless is not self-free. And you know, I have the same approach with coaching. It's like I'm I'm here to beat those 12, 13-year-olds with these 12, 13-year-olds. Like the like the ego is still sitting in there. I'm I'm not here for the children. I'm here to win ball games, but the disguise to get to wear in the other 99% is the selflessness that I bring to the table when I am coaching. And that's by degrees per day. There are some days where I'm a little bit more angsty in the dugout, and there are some days where I'm chill. And it's funny because I'm most chill when we're losing, and I'm more angsty when we're winning. And I don't know what that is in me. It's less than what it was, but it's not free from what it was, and that is my ego. That is that is what I'm bringing to the table. I know how to teach kids how to throw baseballs, and I think they should learn from me that that is the you know, there is the ego portion because there's a list of good characteristics that live inside of me that are only brought out when baseballs and kids are around. And and and placing yourself in that position, you know, and and we and we can put that to to a bunch of things. You know, it's like I I keep my pastor stories down because they're private.

SPEAKER_01 2:00:33

So I'm gonna take your analogy a step further, though. Having played baseball, having been passionate about playing baseball, having had a baseball glove in my crib when I was eight days old. Someone taught me to throw a baseball. I actually remember the person that taught me how to throw a ball. I remember the time they taught me to throw a ball. I'm sure you're a good teacher and you teach these kids how to throw a baseball, the motion. I also know that I spent thousands upon thousands of hours throwing baseballs in order to become a good at throwing a baseball. And you, as their coach, can teach them a framework by which they can learn to throw a baseball. You can't really teach them to throw a baseball. The same way you were talking about experience versus thinking about it.

SPEAKER_03 2:01:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:51

Right? I can read how to do something in a book. I'm really good at reading how to do something in a book. In fact, these days, more often than I'm really good at watching a YouTube video about how to do it. But until I get elbow deep into a motor, I really don't know how to rebuild a motor.

SPEAKER_03 2:02:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:12

Until I spend the countless hours throwing a baseball, I really don't know how to throw a baseball. And my ego wants to say I can help other people get sober. I can help other people live a good life. All I can really do is try to live a good life. Maybe someone will learn from watching me. The same way parents can show their children how to live a good life. Yeah. So I mean, the ego in me wants to say I'm a good teacher. But the the truth is I can aspire to be a good example. You know.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:11

Let's let's uh let's close this out. Good, because I have to go to the bathroom. Yeah. Four minutes and thirty-nine seconds. One of the things I've really been sitting in contemplation about, you know, that uh I, you know, I believe that, you know, there are just kind of measures of intelligence that get cultivated and and uh, you know, whatever we're calling intelligence, whether it be emotional or or or intellectual, life is more experiential than I want it to be. You know, that I can know a bunch of stuff, but until I'm in it doing it, you know, the easiest framework to talk about this is you don't know what it's like to have a kid till you have a kid, period. And you can read every book in the world and be a child psychologist or whatever else, but until you have your own child, you don't know. But it ends up all of life is that way. And this is an uncomfortable truth that I'm sitting with, you know, that there is no way around doing. And if I haven't done, then I don't know. I don't know the feelings, I don't know the things. And you know, I I I'm uh really allowing myself in this next year to live in that spot. You know, this this is on the on the list of New Year's resolutions of walking my dog in the morning and that's it. There's my resolution. Have I done it enough yet? No. And sitting in that contemplative state of I don't know. I just don't. You know, what is this wall that I'm looking at? And it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable because I have uh I have an idea of what it is I think I'm looking at that's sitting right next to this, and and Dan can attest. It's a beautiful wall. It's cool. I have a lot of presumptions about that wall. A lot of presumptions, you know, because I'm looking at the surface of it. But I don't even know what that wall is. Uh so you know, it it I'm looking forward to this year because there's a lot I am looking at that I don't know what that is. Um, and that's going to be my approach, you know, as as we hit this new circumstance of all the things we've understood really coming to an interesting head. Not sure what the outcome will be, but we will see. Uh, but I'm not sure that we'll know either once it's done. You name it, geopolitical issues just go down the list. Like I do not I do not know what I'm looking at. And I know a lot of stuff about a lot, a lot of this stuff. Um that being said, I know what's driving me forward. What's driving you forward as you approach this next year?

SPEAKER_01 2:06:30

I have a uh a standard flippant answer, which I'll give you first. I'll take it. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. As we all are. And and and that's a bit of a joke because I don't really intend to grow up. But you know, I'll go back to what I said earlier, what John Lennon said, which is I want to be happy, right? And and I want to be fulfilled. And in order to do that, uh I think I need to find ways to make the world leave the world a better place than I found it. Uh there's a there's uh uh an ancient Jewish uh tradition which is called tikuno lam, which means repair the world. Uh and that's the the belief that we should leave the world a better place than we found it. You know, we didn't talk about geopolitics at all. We didn't talk about politics at all, thank God. Say that for another one. Thank God. But, you know, that stuff can be really uh sad and depressing right now and scary. Yeah. And I've made a conscious decision this year to look locally and to look not just locally, but internally for the good, the good stuff. Yeah. And there's plenty of that around Santa Cruz. Yeah. There's plenty of that around here. There are good things happening here. Um and and I try I'm very aware of geopolitics for lots of reasons.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:08

All the stuff you and I don't talk about and just make eyes. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:13

Once again, we're in violent agreement. But but I'm very aware that I mean, having grown up in Washington, D.C., where that stuff is breakfast table conversation, um, and where I know people that have been involved in that stuff. But but I'm trying to temper that with finding the good locally. And that's my my new year's resolution this year was to really try and temper that by finding local good stuff. And uh like I said, Santa Cruz is a good place for that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:46

So Dan, thank you for coming on the show. Really enjoyed it. I thank you for having me. I don't know who else is gonna enjoy this conversation, but I really enjoyed it. You know, you you'll be surprised. It it it's a funny thing. It's a funny thing how this is all working out.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:59

I'm I'm I'm a little nervous about watching the comments and see what people have to say because it'll be interesting.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:05

There are no comments. Fantastic. I you know, I'm I'm I'm adjusting my approach to uh Instagram here here based on a couple uh yeah, yeah, I I got sandbagged and uh goes without saying yeah, yeah, it's it's it's uh it's interesting once again how how this whole thing works, but uh but the social media thing, you know, uh the figuring out a way to um advertise and yet not not involve yourself in people's uh traumas is is uh is the brave new world that we're in. We're back to trying to live by our principles and not let the external world dictate what we do. So anyway, thank you. Yeah. Alright, people. Uh thank you so much to Santa Cruz Vibes magazine for allowing this program to be in existence. Also, I want to thank uh points by B check for their help and uh Nathan Menderson music and Elite Technique. You all have a good rest of your day. Take care of yourself.