Episode 80 - Nothing but Falling Out of Rhythm

Mike runs his mouth about turning 30, childhood birthdays as a triplet, and why adult life starts to feel slightly out of sync.

From cupcake logistics and snow days to workout routines falling apart and learning new rhythms at work, Mike reflects on how routines drift and priorities change as you get older.

Because life doesn’t actually fall apart — sometimes it just falls out of rhythm.

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Transcript

Two Weeks Vanish Overnight

Mike 0:09

Alright, so two months ago I was stressed that I might have to work on my birthday. Which is wild because last year I didn't even have a job. Now my birthday was two weeks ago, and I haven't recorded since then, which wasn't intentional. That's just life now. You ever have that happen where you blink and suddenly two weeks just disappear? You're just like, did I do anything productive? No? But is the cat alright? Alright. I feel like that's just adulthood. Things happen and then you just process them later. Birthdays have always been kind of weird for me, anyways, because I'm a triplet. So growing up, birthdays weren't just birthdays, they were logistical operations. It was three birthdays, three classrooms, three kids just expecting sugar. My poor mom pretty much is keeping Betty Crocker in business. Only way to tell which kid gets which cupcake is by the color of the frosting. I mean, think about it. When you're in elementary school, you gotta think 20-25 kids a class, right? That's anywhere from 60 to 75 kids my mom's gotta make cupcakes for. She was putting in some work. Actually, now that I think about it, why is it that every parent had to make cupcakes for everybody else's kids in school? Unless that was just something that happened with me when I was growing up. Is it just because like that kid couldn't have their own special day? Everybody needed to be involved, everybody's gotta feel special. Oh, that explains a lot about people nowadays. But I don't know. I think it's funny how a few months ago I was worried that I'd have to work on my birthday because you only turned 30 once and it was on a Saturday. And now I don't work weekends, so yippee! That's the level of excitement at 30. Anyone else feel that shift happen? You used to want chaos, but now you just want your schedule to make sense. And birthdays change too. You just can't go out whenever anymore. Now it's just like we gotta sit down by 6:30. And I'm talking we gotta order immediately. Because if I'm eating dinner at 8 p.m. now, that's when the agita hits, and then that becomes a long fucking night. Tell me I'm not the only one that suddenly just became sensitive to eating lately. Because that seemed to have happened like overnight. Like when you're younger, you can eat anything at midnight pizza, wings, cake, world at your fingertips. Now you eat something irresponsible at 815, and your stomach's just like, we're gonna discuss this tomorrow. And the switch from 29 to 30 goes crazy. All of a sudden, a week into 30, I fell asleep with my head angled. And now I can't even turn my head left for three days. It's kinda like a snowstorm. We all know it's coming, but you're like, ah, it won't be too bad. They exaggerate these things. Put the salt down in the morning, we'll be fine. Then the snow hits, and it's just like what the meteorologist said, and no one is prepared. All those years of not stretching, eating like your metabolism is faster than light, and now you're 30 and your bed may as well be a fucking gurney. You ever wake up with some random pain and you just think, oh, it's today the day? Like when did my body become so fragile? And I think that's the weird part about getting older. Life doesn't fall apart as you get older, it just falls out of rhythm sometimes. And birthdays are a perfect example. A kid's birthday that was chaos, especially when you're a triplet. My poor mom sitting there making 65 cupcakes, running a full bakery operation, and then you just walk into school like a celebrity. Oh, my birthday's Saturday. Everybody knew. Teachers knew, kids knew, cupcakes everywhere. Now you eat a cupcake too late at night and suddenly you're medically compromised. Not only does the agita hit, now you're bloated for three days. Kids eat cupcakes and run around the house, adults eat cupcakes and start googling anti acids. Nothing says adulthood, like needing a recovery plan for a fucking cupcake. And even when you were a kid, snow days used to feel magical. If you grew up here, you remember the Channel 12 scroll. Waiting for your town, praying, hoping, begging. Tell me that you remember that feeling. When your town popped up, it was electric. Now snow just feels different. Now it's just you gotta scrape ice off the car, there's fucking slush everywhere. Why are my socks wet? Some influencers posting cozy snow vibes. Meanwhile, you're just outside shoveling like you're in a prison yard. Oh, I used to pray for snow days. Now I pray that it just fucking melt before Monday. And winter messes with your head too. Tell me if winter does this to you. It's cold, it's dark, the sun sets at like 4 15, you leave work and it looks like midnight. Everyone's morale drops. Your life becomes work, dinner, sit down, repeat. You're basically living like a barren hibernation, but you got Wi-Fi. But then spring shows up, and now it's nice outside, and suddenly you still don't feel productive. But for the opposite reason. Now you're sitting at your desk staring at the window like a golden retriever because the sun's out, birds are chirping, there's a breeze you haven't felt since November, and you're stuck answering friggin' emails. Winter makes you unproductive because you're depressed, spring makes you unproductive because you want to escape the building. Anyone else? Anyone else feel that? And honestly, one place I've noticed this rhythm thing the most lately has been working out. Because I used to train like an absolute psycho. I would do an hour and a half, two hours a day, six days a week. In some cases, I was running in the morning and I was lifting later. I had a super clean diet, and I was just fucking locked in for like five years, and then my life changed because I got laid off, and then I started bartending, and you guys know the story, but then bartending completely flipped my schedule. I mean, at that time, I was coming home at midnight, I was falling asleep around like two, three in the morning, I was waking up around 11, I was trying to squeeze a workout in before work, and then go into a six-hour shift on my feet, and after a few months, your body just goes, Hey man, what's the plan here? And then live came into the picture, and then it became well, do I work out or do I spend time with my girlfriend? And that's when you realize something about routines is they're fragile. One schedule change, and the whole thing starts drifting. Turns out it's hard to train like an athlete when you're living like a friggin' vampire. And the other thing I realized when I started to get back into working out is that age also changes rhythm. Because when I went back to the gym, I just did what I always did. It was the same structure, same intensity, just friggin' balls to the wall. And my body is just like, whoa, we need to relax. Because in my 20s, I could do two workouts a day, no stretching, minimal recovery, and it worked. I mean, I was fine. But then I took this break, and suddenly I could feel the wear and tear a whole hell of a lot more. And I think this is the weird part is I if I had never stopped working out, I probably wouldn't have even noticed it as much. But once you pause, your body's just like, hey, we need a second to recalibrate. And now the adjustment isn't just physical, it's mental because your brain still thinks you can do what you did when you were 28, but your body's like, uh-uh-uh, we gotta stretch now. We warm up, we gotta build back into this. In your 20s, I felt like I could recover overnight, but in your 30s, oh my god, it seems like you recovered sometime next week. And that's another rhythm adjustment. Learning to listen to the body instead of just trying to overpower it. And the funny part is that rhythm adjustment shows up in other places too, like work, because what I'm doing now is completely different from bartending, but at the same time, it's actually like not that different because every new environment just has its own rhythm that you gotta learn, right? When I started bartending, it was the same thing. First, you learn the layout of the bar, then you learn the POS system, and then you learn the drinks, and then you learn how to cut talk to customers, obviously. It's all rhythm, and now I'm in a completely different job, and it's the same process. Instead of learning the layout of the bar, you gotta learn the layout of your organization. Instead of learning drinks, you're learning the language that people use. Instead of talking to customers, you're figuring out how different departments also talk to each other. And I'm still trying to also figure out that rhythm, which is another reminder that adulthood is basically just constantly recalibrating. And that's the thing about rhythm: things don't explode, they drift. My alarm goes off, I grab my phone, I scroll, the cat jumps on the bed, and now I'm petting the cat while I'm scrolling Instagram. Then, all of a sudden, I'm running 10 minutes late to work all because the cat wants her friggin' little snuggles. Tell me I'm not the only one that's done that. You grab your phone for one minute, and then suddenly, all of a sudden, 20 minutes just disappear. My phone and cat have formed an alliance against my six pack. And even if you go back a year, my life could look completely different. At this time last year, I was unemployed, I didn't really know what the next six months looked like. I genuinely thought that bartending might be my saving grace because it was the only thing that came my way. I was pretty good at it, and it it was paying the bills. But now we fast forward a year. I've got a more stable job, a more stable schedule, and a stable relationship. And somehow I'm still like finding a way to struggle with consistency. Ugh, how many people can say they've had that happen to them? Where life gets better, yet you're still trying to find your rhythm? And honestly, that I think that applies to other things too. Like a couple years ago on this podcast, I defended Trump a few times, and lately I've caught myself looking at the news and thinking, was he the clown? Or was I the clown for believing him? Maybe he was just the more convincing liar. Getting older, I think, means admitting when you were wrong about things. It's about reassessing and moving forward. But the thing about snowstorms is eventually the snow does melt. Monday eventually comes, the sun comes out, roads clear up, you shovel a little, and life starts moving again. And that's the weird part about getting older. Life doesn't fall apart, it just falls out of rhythm sometimes. Birthdays change, snow days change, your routines drift, your body slows down a little. But that doesn't mean the song is bad. You just gotta tighten the timing a little bit. So I think that's what this whole year has been for me at least. Just trying to figure out the rhythm again. Because the weird part is nothing in my life is actually falling apart. I've got a staple job, I've got a great relationship. Things are actually pretty good, but the rhythm is just different now. And I think that's the adjustment nobody really prepares you for. When you're younger, the goal is to just go harder. You gotta work harder, you gotta train harder, you gotta push harder. Everything is intense. But eventually you realize life isn't about intensity, it's also about timing. Working out taught me that. You can't just go balls to the wall anymore. You gotta warm up and you gotta recover and you gotta build back into it. Work taught me that too. You don't just walk into a new place and dominate day one. You gotta learn the rhythm first. You gotta learn how people talk, how things move, where things fit. Even seasons teach you that. Winter slows everything down, spring wakes everything back up. Everything in life moves in cycles. And I think the mistake I was making for a while was thinking that if I lost momentum, something was wrong. But sometimes you don't lose momentum, you're just between rhythms. Like when a band pauses for a second between parts of a song, the music didn't stop, it just reset. And that's kind of what last year has felt like just figuring out the next tempo. So yeah, life doesn't fall apart as you get older, it just falls out of rhythm sometimes. Your body changes, your schedule changes, your priorities change. But that doesn't mean the song is over. You just tighten the timing a bit and start playing again. Alright, well, that's the episode. Thank you guys for listening, and we'll catch up next week.