Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

#41 I Share My 2017 To-Do List

• David Walton • Season 1 • Episode 41

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I just discovered one of my to-do lists from 8 years ago. Fascinating what gets done, and what doesn't.  Does this ever happen to you? Let's explore why we do things, and why we don't together in this week's episode.

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Speaker 1:

Oh boy, I'm so sorry I'm late. Good evening, by the way. Very happy salutations. I hope this finds you well. Love and insincere platitude. How are you, oh good? Oh, I'm late because my son just got injured. Now it's a special kind of shame when your wife leaves for four days and you go. Sweetheart, I got it. You just enjoy yourself. Enjoy your press for your movie in Los Angeles, don't worry about a thing.

Speaker 1:

And within nine hours your son face plants into the big green egg grill undercarriage, slicing his ear wide open. Blood everywhere. Let me rewind. I was grilling. We had a new door. There's a new grill location Sorry, a door we never use.

Speaker 1:

It has like five stairs, maybe it's hovering. The porch is hovering four feet above the ground, five stairs down. One of the stairs was loose. The second stair my daughter goes while I'm grilling. Dad, this stare is loose. I go, don't you worry about it? And then, within five seconds, I hear a scream and my son is fully contorted face just eating the undercarriage of the grill, the big grill, the second grill, the grill I don't use which is inexplicably at the base of the stairs.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, I panic. Well, I don't panic because he stands up and he's clearly not going to die. But any parent will relate to this. You're like, am I going to urgent care? And you're just like my son's alive, that's all I really care about. But how much is this night going to suck? Like three hours in a summer night, you know where every kid is being an idiot and just injured, broken arms and just lacerations. You know summer fun. And you just immediately think like how fucked is this night? And I examine the ear there was a cut there but it wasn't so bad. But it starts dripping blood. So he's scream, crying, and then the blood starts coming out and like splattering on the stones and that's not a good feeling for a kid. So he just wigs.

Speaker 1:

Interesting, my reaction to my own fear. I'm being very cavalier but I was concerned and my friend who was there was way more concerned than me, which was wigging me out. But he ran to my son and I did something kind of inexplicable that I'm going to have to talk to a therapist about. But I started just yelling at my oldest child, taking out my fear on my child, and I was like how could you let him do this? You just said that the stair was loose. How did you let Louis step on it, and of course this poor girl wasn't even looking, you know, and it's not her responsibility, it's a hundred percent.

Speaker 1:

The whole thing is a hundred percent my fault. A man should take care of his house and he should have his stairs secured, especially stairs that his children are using, and a board like a cartoon should not fly up and fling their son three feet down and just eat big green egg undercarriage. And so I feel lucky that he got away with just a laceration. That, and you know, look, ears are great, aren't ears good, they don don't bend. So you know it didn't need a butterfly, but even if it did, it's like it's not a knee or an elbow which is going to constantly open. That ear is just going to be fine, and he kind of looks like a fighter now. So anyway, that's why I'm late. But all is well that ends well.

Speaker 1:

But there was definitely a little adrenaline in the house tonight and just a lot of shame, a lot of tail between the legs, just having to call your wife after just like looking her dead in the eyes and being like I got this, everything's going to be great, and within like eight and a half hours you're like your son is face planted and wants to talk to you Because he's scared and wants his mama. It's all good, she was cool, it's all. It's all great, it's all good. Could have been a lot worse, anyway. So here I am and, uh, what, what an exciting episode. I'm, I'm very excited. I haven't recorded anything. We're doing, uh, uh, occasionally, especially in these summer nights, we're giving ourselves just a time constraint. You know, creativity loves constraints. You know that old saying. So I've given myself a one hour time constraint and I'm just going to record and then that's it. And what we have in tonight is a to-do list from 2017 that weirdly just popped up on my notes app. I accidentally typed in KR and you know the notes app is getting so good at finding things. So KR brought up Krav Maga and it was a to-do list from 2017. And one of the many items on the to-do list was begin Krav Maga K-R-A-V space M-A-G-A.

Speaker 1:

Krav Maga is an Israeli self-defense style. I would say that I've studied a little bit of Kung Fu and the biggest difference between sort of the Asian martial arts and Krav Maga is that the Kung Fu, qigong, tai Chi they all involve like deep, philosophical, energetic practices that get you doing like magical, weird powers with your punches and stuff. Krav maga is basically like, how do I fuck you up so hard and so fast that you're that I can run away? So if you get like attack, krav Maga is like you're going to find a way to press your thumb into that man's eye socket or any soft spot on his body. You're going to take his nuts. You're going to just you could, if you can, chew on them, like bite them and rip them off with your mouth. It's basically, there are no rules. This is not something you don't do like Krav Maga competitions that I know of, by the way, I know nothing, but I'm pretty sure Krav Maga is just strictly self-defense and that's why I loved it, because, as you'll see in 2017, I had one thing on my mind and that was protecting my children, which obviously has slipped a whole lot. Anyway, please enjoy. We're going to review a 2017.

Speaker 1:

Eight years ago, my to-do list that I just discovered that kind of blew my mind because I did so little of it. Okay, please enjoy. Oh man, that's rubbish. That's rubbish. Okay, let's begin the first item on my to-do list from May 4th 2017. So this is spring. I was living in Los Angeles. I had a six-year-old and a four-year-old and I was 38.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so the first item, which is checked off, buy into and manifest the inevitability of my astonishing success. Astonishing success. So if you've ever studied like, uh, ester hicks and manifestation, there is a sort of will it. I'm not gonna even get into. I honestly we've got too little time. I just think it's hilarious that I checked, checked off, buy into and manifest the inevitability of my astonishing success. And eight years later, I want you all to know that my astonishing success is yet to come. So it is inevitable, but we're still waiting.

Speaker 1:

Okay, real edits. Clearly, this is something to do with instagram. Unchecked, I will say that I have probably thought about doing a real uh, a million times and never done them. I have a profound resistance to social media that I'm not even. It bores me to death to even get into. Okay, so unchecked. Do real edits. Not even sure what this is for? Okay, this is where it gets interesting. I have little subjects, so the to-do list was separated into acting, and that was the buy-in to and manifest the inevitability of my astonishing success. Do real edits was something to do with acting. Didn't do it. Next section of the to-do list was body, mind, health, and the first one was tennis with Actor, which sounds absurdly vague, but I know exactly what this was.

Speaker 1:

I was on a show called Masters of Sex, season four really fun, probably in six episodes. It was the final season of Masters of Sex and it was on Showtime final season of masters of sex. Um, and it was on showtime and I got the. The quick storyline was I was this lawyer and the main guy's wife, uh, played by caitlin fitzgerald. She was divorced, she was recovering from realizing that her son was a creep, that her husband was a creep and she was starting to get that summer of love hippie energy going. And we go to a nudist colony in this episode, which was really probably the funniest situation I'd ever been in, where you show up for work and I'm not kidding open field, 130 yards, actors buck naked. Now I'm in a suit, I'm a lawyer, so we're the only two people dressed and I think it was trying to mimic the Esalen spa in Northern California.

Speaker 1:

But long story short uh, the guy who's the voice of the NFL on Fox. Who's like the NFL on Fox. He had an incredible voice Coming up, deion Sanders. Fuck, I am so bad at that shit. Anyway, this fellow nicest guy in the world and I are chatting about. Somehow it comes up that we love tennis. Now I just want you to know that as we're chatting about all this, he is, his cock is swinging in the breeze. I mean just, and look, you know it's a special, you know, in between takes like, you're just like hey, you know, it's just.

Speaker 1:

Stuff comes up and it turns out this guy ah, fuck, I mean the idea that he would somehow find this podcast and be listening. I don't even remember his name. I remember we got along great and it wasn't just and he loved tennis as much as I did. He had his own court and this is what you realize. He was playing a minor role in this show. He has a voiceover studio in his palatial estate in the hills of hollywood, because his voice is so fucking good that his job is to basically wake up, have a cup of coffee, stay in his pajamas and go into a small little cubicle for 45 minutes and bust out the daily promo for the nfl on Fox and just print seven figures every fucking year for like a decade. So he had his own tennis court, he, and he was just like hey, I have tennis games all the time. I bring up D one, people I bring up like celebrities that come play tennis.

Speaker 1:

So I, on this thing, I was like tennis with actor. I should have said tennis with actor with a good size cock, uh, voiceover Fox, because maybe it was too vague. But anyway, unchecked, I never called this guy, I don't know why. I would love to have played tennis with him. I wish he could go back and speak some sense to myself.

Speaker 1:

Okay, number two on mind-body health. And, if you're listening, actor with a good cock who is great at tennis and does the voiceovers on Fox. Uh, my number. Uh, no, I'm not going to do that, but please just hit me up. Um, all right, yeah, so number two, krav Maga.

Speaker 1:

I've mentioned Krav Maga. Now the story with this is, uh, I was on this show, new girl and Jake Johnson and I Jake played Nick on New Girl. Great, I really love Jake, really interesting guy, love his brain and, you know, an open kind of guy. I think I got him into meditation and at one point we bonded over our need to defend our children and you'll see how this is a theme today. But uh, we were like the. I don't want to like spend 10 years learning how to like develop my chi. Let's do krav maga together. And so I looked up a krav maga instructor and we texted back and forth and somehow it just didn't work out.

Speaker 1:

All to say that eventually we just went to my kung fu teacher, who was so out there, uh, that he was like do you know how much, do you know how much stored energy and power you have in your, in your gank plate? Uh, also known as your perineum, your grundle, so basically between the balls and the anus, is this very, very fascinating area called the perineum is the scientific but slang grundle, or gank plate is not used a lot, but I always like gank plate. Anyway, in martial arts and in meditation and spiritual practice, this is extremely powerful energy, a lot of shit's going on down there. And so this Kung Fu teacher had us lying on our backs and at one point he like put his finger like in jake's perineum not in it, but like on it and I think jake I needless to say, jake never took another lesson with my, my teacher for me. I was at that point used to him molesting me, so I was fine with it. No, I, this guy is amazing and he's not a creep and but just Jake, it was a little too out there. So I think I think it's still on the to-do list.

Speaker 1:

Krav Maga and uh, look, I'm not not saying we may need to check this off at some point, clearly, uh, another actor my next to at some point. Clearly another actor. My next to-do list was Jonathan Tucker. Another actor, very talented actor, good friend, muay Thai. He was on a show called Kingdom and he was saying that, basically, if you want to start, if you're going to learn one martial art, learn Muay Thai, because you're just going to be able to kick people to fucking smithereens. And so that was on my mind. I wanted to be able to defend my children, my young, innocent children. So Krav Maga and Muay Thai were on my mind once again. Neither of them done.

Speaker 1:

And then the fourth one was organized notes, which is unchecked, so I never organized the notes, obviously. Now, family was the next subject and that has no to-dos. Nothing was ever written, so not sure what that's about. Finance is the next one. So not sure what that's about. Finance is the next one. Take off, lever your business charge. Okay, that was just like removing a charge. It was checked. Tesla rebate Yep, well, we used to have one of those, so, okay, that's not interesting. Now it gets good Friends Just one friends. And there's just one to-do list and it says dan paduano, mescalum. And this just makes me so happy because, uh, dan paduano and I went to college, I went to brown, to Brown together. Dan is a farmer near Santa Cruz and on this beautiful property he has he grows all sorts of fruits and avocados and has all this land. He gives it to the CSA. He's a proper farmer, no days off kind of guy, but he has these giant San Pedro cactuses.

Speaker 1:

Now, for those of you who don't know about hallucinogenics, obviously we've all at this point have heard odd nauseam about magic mushrooms. Psilocybin oh yeah. Microd, yeah, microdosing. I do 50mg, 500mg. I'm on the protocol four days on, three days off. Oh my god, it's amazing I'm drinking so much less.

Speaker 1:

I actually did a stand-up bit about how annoyed I am and how mainstream psychedelics I've become. I think, deep down, if I'm being perfectly honest, I'm always going to find a way to look down on people who are doing drugs in a lame way. I find the whole thing so lame. Anyway, dan Padawano has these giant fucking cacti, san Pedro. They, when you chop them, melt them down, boil them, do the whole thing. It's not that hard. You get mescaline. The San Pedro cactus that's the psilocybin is to mushroom magic mushrooms, as mescaline is to the San Pedro cactus Fascinating, fascinating hallucinogenic.

Speaker 1:

Fascinating, fascinating hallucinogenic, wildly interested in it. So I believe this to-do list was Dan, send me a giant San Pedro cactus and let me take mescaline from your garden. And I think what happened was because it's unchecked. Dan continues to this day, eight years later, to send me pictures of his incredible cactuses growing. And I always say when are you going to send it to me? And I think he just doesn't want to get arrested, or maybe I just need to be more persistent, but anyway, okay, so that's a fun one, unchecked.

Speaker 1:

And then Creative Pursuit. This says phone call recording equipment. I'm not sure what that was. If I had to guess, I was having some great phone calls and I just wanted to be able to record them for because I thought they were very entertaining. And I now do that. Actually, the iPhone has made it easy, like, if I'm calling'm calling someone I know we're gonna have a heater of a conversation, I'll be like, hey, man, can we record this, especially if it's advice. If I'm calling like kind of a mentor type person, I'll be like, can I record this? And? And we can, and you can just on your iphone do it and you get the whole thing and then it's immediately transcribed and then you just upload that baby into chat, gpt, and you tell me, organize this into all the points I need to remember, while maintaining the actual transcription, and then you can do all sorts of things with it. So I encourage everyone to do that. Okay, oh yeah, dreams.

Speaker 1:

Next one is dreams, and this was motorcycle trip, unchecked. Now I do have a motorcycle. I did buy one, so I think writing this down did somehow influence me to buy a motorcycle. But uh, it's a. I have a 1984 Honda Nighthawk 450, uh, bought on the side of the road here in Maine, put a couple grand into it and now it's just awesome. Top speed that I'm comfortable with is like 55, 60. You probably go faster than that, but you know it's over 40 years old, so we're just going to relax. But anyway, my dream is to have you know whoever's down, good friends, and go motorcycle trip through Alaska. I don't know if Alaska is the right thing, but I just don't like traffic. But definitely a bucket list, so hit me up if that's something you would love to do. And then this is to finish it off.

Speaker 1:

I lived on this street called Las Palmas, so this was my to-do list for Las Palmas Gun for self-defense, earthquake drill disaster kit and modem. Well, the modem isn't, but what? What ended up happening with me with Krav Maga, with Muay Thai, with gun for self-defense, with earth cake drill disaster kit? There was a moment in my life where and I was talking to a bunch of dads in the neighborhood about this we would go out to dinner and all we all had kids around the same age four, five, six years old and we would kind of distill our life. We'll be like we're useless. You know, I don't think our wives really like us, we don't really love what we're doing. What is our purpose? What as a, as a man, what? What the fuck are we doing on earth? And we would have these existential questions and it would inevitably just come down to look, being a parent in many ways is great, in many ways just suck shit. We feel emasculated. We're having, or no, no one's able to go on motorcycle trips to alaska. You know we're. We're spending more times with our kids than than women did with their kids in the 1970s. It's just. It's just a weird world now where parents are just always with their kids and the kids are useless. They're not.

Speaker 1:

You know, like, like back in the day, six, seven year olds were helping out. I mean, they were functioning to keep shit going, shit. They were feeding the chickens, you know, loading guns, whatever it was like. They were on board with what had to get done to survive. But now we're all such fucking spoiled little just whining pricks that kids. It's just like. What are you? You spend 14 years just having as much fun as possible and learning bullshit in school. Oh, anyway.

Speaker 1:

So I, we, we had this sort of shared frustration and what we ended up doing is just having these dinners and figuring out ways to everything we needed to do to not fail at the ultimate level, which was to have your kids to not be prepared for natural disasters and home invasions. And so it was just like oh, I found this guy who can, like take chlorinated pool water and turn it into potable drinkable water. You just throw this in so when Armageddon happens, like you've got pool water. You know, you can drink that for a few weeks. It's like, yeah, I'm thinking about getting some gold bars, you know, because when the apocalypse happens, you know money's going to. Uh, you know money's gonna be bullshit, but gold's been around for thousands of years and that would inevitably lead to like oh yeah, well, I just got a hundred gallon drum of petroleum like 87 octane because that's gonna be the most valuable shit so you can get the fuck out of town.

Speaker 1:

Um, we're talking about like not necessarily like all of society crumbling because of like a fascist dictator, more just like giant fucking 8.8 earthquake fires and just got to get out. You know, you just got to get the fuck out of los angeles and I was like you do not have time to fill up the tank again, you got to get the fuck out, so it's. And I was like you do not have time to fill up the tank again, you got to get the fuck out. So it's like guys would be like yeah, I just stashed three grand hard cash in, like this weird brick that comes out of my wall. We were just all becoming weird preppers and it didn't make any sense. I mean, these, these guys, none of us were tough, none of us knew how to change a tire, but I think it made us feel better that we were thinking about these sort of things. So, oh, and then I forgot about the final thing. So I actually think I may use this again.

Speaker 1:

But it was all about plans and I had split up my life into all these different plans. Two of them are checked off diet plan, workout plan and I believe in 2017, I was pretty fucking tight. I think I was in into ketogenic diets. You know, I was eating a ton of fat, ton of some good protein, no carbs, and I was just like fasting, like I was doing three-day fasts and I was getting as shredded as I've been and I was doing squats, like big compound lifts, and I was feeling good those. So diet and workout plan were checked. This is what was unchecked Lifestyle plan, spirit plan, acting plan, hobby plan, martial art plan, new skill plan, fun plan All unchecked and in hindsight, I don't think any of that was necessarily unchecked. Obviously, I did things in those areas. I just stopped writing them down.

Speaker 1:

But I would like to pull back and finish this episode by saying that my initial reaction to seeing lists where I have said I'm going to do something and I don't do it. My initial reaction most of my life is to beat myself up. I've been like you don't follow through on your commitments to yourself. You have no. I'll start tearing myself to shreds and I want to just state that I don't do that anymore and I don't think that that is a good. I don't think that's the right strategy. I don't think lashing yourself actually works. I think this is what I'm saying.

Speaker 1:

I used to look at these unchecked to-do lists and almost like go into a depression, like gosh, how pathetic are you that you can't even do X? And I will say that I now look at it with just a humor. There is so much that our minds dream up of doing. I think it's fascinating to look back and say what did I actually do? Of all the things on this list that are unchecked, the ones that I actually feel like are going to happen are well, tennis with Actor, if he calls me, but Dan Padawano, mescaline motorcycle trip. Yeah, tennis, mescaline motorcycle. Those are the only things that still excite me. I mean lifestyle plan, spirit plan, acting plan, hobby plan. Those things are already. I don't need a plan for them, those are just flowing.

Speaker 1:

I think as the older I get, the more it's like why are you, why are you doing things that you don't enjoy? Now, there are certain things like working out, like lifting. You know you gotta hack a way to enjoy it. Maybe it's just like doing one more rep a day gives you that sort of progress that you enjoy. There's places that you know are good for you and you want to delay gratification and get something good. But for all the other stuff, why on earth aren't you following your intuitive sense of enjoyment? What you enjoy is exactly what God for lack of a better word made you to enjoy. Denying your enjoyment is denying God. All right, that's all I'm going to say about that. Please enjoy. Now I will say that this has been a really, really very, very fun episode for me. I wish you a week full of following your true enjoyment, your true bliss. For me, that clearly is tennis, mescaline and motorcycles. God bless you and I'll see you next week.