👑 When It Doesn't Go To Plan

Not everything goes to plan.

A failed recording. A canceled flight. A week full of delays, changes, and moments where nothing lined up the way it was supposed to.

This week in The King’s Court, King Roberto talks about what it feels like when the direction isn’t clear, when you’re still responsible, still leading, but don’t have control over everything in front of you.

Because that’s where frustration creeps in.
 That’s where you start asking why.
 That’s where most people stall out.

But that’s also where the work actually is.

For me, the perspective didn’t come from fixing the problem.
 It came from stepping away, loading up the Lair and heading to the redwoods with my granddaughter.

And remembering what actually matters.

⚔️ Royal Decree – Episode 9

When the direction isn’t clear, you don’t stop showing up.

🎙 About The King’s Court

The King’s Court is a podcast about leadership, legacy, family, brotherhood, faith, and life lived in real time. Each episode is part of an ongoing archive — preserving stories, perspective, and the voice behind the crown.

If something in this episode resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

👑 New episodes weekly.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome to the King's Court Podcast. I'm your host, King Roberto. Last week I sat down to edit the podcast after it was done recording, or so I thought. Popped in the SD card with the audio, and to my surprise, there was no audio. Well, that's alright, because I'm a prepared podcaster and I always have a backup. So popped in the backup SD card that was on the video. Also records audio, and lo and behold, no video. So it was a complete technical malfunction last week. And I have to tell you, that is just about how the week was going. You see, just a few days before that, we were in the air over, oh, one of those flyover states, maybe Nebraska or so. And a text popped up on the phone because, you know, we fly with Delta and had the Wi-Fi, the free Wi-Fi, and Text said your flight has been canceled from Salt Lake City to Sacramento. Now that was at the end of a whirlwind of a trip. We were in Oklahoma City for a family wedding. Of course, that was after a delay from Minneapolis to Oklahoma City, which we went that way because we were going to the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding. We were coming from out of town and were invited to be there by 6 o'clock. So the only flight from Sacramento to Oklahoma City that landed before 6 o'clock was one that went through Minneapolis and landed at 4:30. We proceeded to get up at 2 o'clock in the morning to get to the airport because of the ridiculously long lines for TSA that were happening at the airport. And it was ridiculously long. And we got there and found out that we were going to be good getting to Minneapolis, but the flight from Minneapolis to Oklahoma City had been delayed by an hour and a half, which put us getting into Oklahoma City at 6 o'clock, which is after the rehearsal dinner starts. And once we get to Oklahoma City, we have a 90-minute drive to Tulsa to get to the rehearsal dinner. Because even though the family back there is from Oklahoma City, they wanted to have the wedding in Tulsa. So that was the start of the trip. Now the wedding was beautiful. I mean, there's nothing better than that wedding. It was a gorgeous place and we had a good time, but that led to a trip down south to Chattanooga, Oklahoma. Chattanooga, Oklahoma, is apparently a place that not many Oklahomans know exist. The winds down there for that trip were 60 miles an hour. And if you've ever been driving on a road in a vehicle with 60 mile an hour winds, your car is moving all over the place. But we made it. Of course, what sort of adventure would it be without a little bit of fire? And the fire was sparked from the wind that down the power line. And our friend's husband was called to the volunteer fire station because they take care of people down there, each other, and they work at the volunteer fire station. So he wasn't even there when we got there. And that trip was all about delays because we had flights from Oklahoma City to Florida that our friends' parents were on that got canceled. Multiple trips, multiple flights on the East Coast were being canceled because of the weather. Now we were going west, we're not going east, so we were pretty confident in our flight not getting canceled. But we made it to the airport and found out that our flight out of Oklahoma City had been delayed. Now, why is it delayed? Mechanical malfunction on the plane. But to your great uh relief, it was a minor malfunction on the plane. Now, I will say we were sitting in the um, what is it, the gate. We were sitting at the gate and the and the crew for the airplane happened to sit next to us, and and one of them pulled out a book of how to fly a 737. And I said, uh, is this your first time flying? He said, Well, yeah. I'm and I'm just reading the book. Uh, I'm reading the manual to make sure that we know what we're doing when we get on the plane. So that was comforting. Uh, of course, the that was the first officer, uh, the pilot said, Don't worry, we got this. And and and I said, I'm sure you do after you read the book here in the in the gate uh lounge. You guys should have this thing all figured out by the time you get on the plane. That plane was delayed coming in, and then it took us 45 minutes to get off the ground, pushed back from the gate, and it took us 45 minutes to get from the gate to the airport to the runway because this malfunction that they had was some compressor of some sort that affected the engines starting on the plane, and this is just more on the trip of what we're going through. So we finally get in the air, right? We we're on the plane, we're on the broken plane, in the air, somewhere over Nebraska. Text comes in flight from Salt Lake City to Sacramento has been canceled. Good golly, Miss Molly. What more could go wrong on this trip? Well, you know, the queen uh was not having much to do about that. You you see, she was pretty hangry. And when you get hangry, you find out your flight's been canceled, and you get to the airport, you want to rip somebody's head off. I mean, by the time we landed, I had the hotel room already booked. I knew what I was gonna do. I knew the game plan, I knew the play. We were gonna go find the the customer service counter, and we were gonna say, why are we delayed? Because if you fly, you can be delayed for a myriad of reasons. But if it's weather related, you do not get any compensation from the airline. If it is related to something that the airline did, like maintenance on the aircraft, then the airline will pick up your room, they will give you food and they will feed you, and they will put you on the next flight the next morning. Now, now that happened to be what was going on with our flight. They called that plane in for maintenance. And after flying from Oklahoma to City to Salt Lake City on a plane that clearly needed maintenance and had a compressor failing, I was all about Delta taking your plane to the hangar, do some maintenance on it, and we'll catch the next flight in the morning. Now, that's fine. I knew my wife needed something to eat, and when when the queen needs something to eat, the go-to is pizza. Yep, that's right. It's pizza. So next time you're out, your girl's hangry, get her some pizza, she'll be fine, trust me. And that's just one microcosm of the last month or so. You know, when life gets unclear, you know, there's no clean answer. What's gonna happen? And and you realize that you're responsible for things that you don't fully control. You know, there's changes going on in my world with work. There's uh structure shifting there. Uh there's there's changes with the 4-H program that's going on. Now, admittedly, those are not the worst uh changes to have, but sometimes change for the sake of change is not necessarily a reason to change, and sometimes it feels like that, but it's that clarity that I really, really appreciate. And so, how's that hit hit you, you know? For me, in most things that I do, I'm the anchor, I am the rock, I am steady, um, and I know that people are depending on me, which I'm good with all that. To be honest with you, it it's I wouldn't have it necessarily any other way. And now, being the Gemini in me, you know, sometimes you get two sides of that coin, and it just depends on what side you're in. You know, you might get the playful King Roberto, or you might get the uh not so playful King Roberto. Um, it just depends on the the phase of the moon. We'll say it's the phase of the moon. There you go. Uh and what you get, but you know, when when you're the anchor and you're the guy who uh you're moving, you know, fairly rapidly through these things, and when I move, I expect people to move. There's a lot uh to be said about when an unexpected roadblock is thrown up in front of you. You know, what are you gonna do? I mean that for me that's frustrating. I had I had the plan, right? I had the um I had this all figured out. What do you mean we can't do this now? And then for some of this, it goes back to, I mean, the we're not talking about the delayed flights or anything, but there's a part of you with some of these changes and and why they're changing, and you kind of take it start taking it personally, and you're like, why am I doing this? You know, but at the same time, why am I doing this? Can be a whole bunch of different reasons, you know, for me, for my family, for my my future, for my grandkids, and it usually goes something about like that for me, uh, for my family, my wife, uh, my my children, my brothers, my dad, my grandkids. I mean, it all kind of focuses around that why I do what I do. Uh, but there is that selfish element of it that starts with, I'm doing this for me. Uh, number one. You know, and the order, my my life order is pretty simple. You know, you got God, you got my wife, got my kids and family. That's it. That's the top three. Um, and I'm in there, usually right around the wife level, depending on the day, and like I said, depending on the mood, might be above the wife, might be below the wife. Um, but that's pretty much the order of things in my life, and so to keep that going, you have to still show up every day, every day. And on, you know, things don't get done, and I'm working on this at work in particular. There's a very much a realization that if I'm not there leading, would this really continue? Is the system strong enough to endure if I am removed from it? Because it needs to be. I need to build that strong enough to be removed from it. Um and that can be daunting when you think about it. And it can cause you to want to, you know, sometimes these things come up and you just want to check out. You're like, no, I'm done. Um I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm not gonna be unappreciated, I'm not gonna be uh the I'm done having the burden of leadership. You know, I don't want to make every decision to find the path, and a lot of people go that way. You know, I just want to take a vacation. How many times have we heard that? I'm just gonna go on vacation for the next 10 years, and then they wait for that clarity, or they wait for people to catch up to them, or they wait for something else to happen, they wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and nothing happens. That's not my style, you know. That clarity that that you reach after you process things through, that clarity that you're searching for doesn't always show up at first, right? Sometimes that clarity shows up when you just keep moving forward. You have to keep moving forward. You can't get stuck in the woe is me, can't get stuck in the why'd this happen? That's the that is the trap. That's the trap, and that's you know, part of the trials and tribulations we face. We're gonna get these moments to come to us, and it's like, oh man, why did that happen? Why'd that happen to me? Why'd that happen to my family? I mean, I could go on and on about how many times it's happened to me and my family, or me personally, and had that feeling of why me? Why me? You know, this isn't right, this shouldn't be me. But you keep moving forward, and eventually the answer or the reason presents itself, you know, it it's part of that plan, right? It's that part of that big plan that we all have, and so you know, that's all fine and dandy, and that's part of life, right? That's that's just part of what we do as adults, uh, as humans, is we figure out ways to keep moving forward, and that reason why for me to keep moving forward, you know, it was not it's never more clear than when we get a little bit of time with the kids or the grandkids. And for us, we got home from that flight from Oklahoma City the next morning. Um, you know, it was 12, 14 hours after we originally were gonna land, but we got a nice night's sleep. We got back to home to Sacramento, and then four days later we turned around, hitched up the the lair here, uh, and we were off camping down in the Santa Cruz Redwoods with our granddaughter, Miss Sammy. And leading up to that trip, we're both exhausted, right? We're both looking at each other like, what the heck are we doing? We're 50 years old and we think we're gonna hang with a six-year-old for a weekend. We're crazy, we're crazy. But then I get a phone call at work one morning, nine o'clock, and it's Sammy. And she says, Papa Bob, we're going camping this week, and I said, Yes, yes, we are. Papa Bob, where are we going? We're going to the the Redwoods by Santa Cruz, and it's kind of by the ocean. She said, Oh, I'm gonna pack a swimsuit. It's 70 degrees outside, the ocean is much colder than that. We're not going swimming. No, I'm bringing a swimsuit. Okay, that's fine. So she packs a swimsuit. You know, that afternoon, Papa Bob calls me again. Papa Bob, uh, where are we going camping? And we're going to the forest, Sammy. Are there big trees there? Yes, there are. I want to see the biggest tree in the forest. Okay, we can go see the biggest tree in the forest. And and that continued for another day. You know, this is probably Wednesday or so, and then Thursday, you know, same phone call, same conversation. Papa Bob. Are we going camping tomorrow? Yes, we are. All right, are you gonna get me from school? Yes, yes, I am. Your parents are bringing you over Thursday night, and they will pick you up Sunday night. And if you're counting, that's Thursday night to Friday, Friday to Saturday, Saturday to Sunday, three nights, four days with a six-year-old coming off of a trip to Oklahoma City that was a whirlwind of a trip that we didn't know was gonna be a whirlwind of a trip, but it was a whirlwind of the trip. And we're gonna take the six-year-old camping into the redwoods for three nights. And I gotta tell you, the flight, there's no control there. With 4H, there's a little bit of uncertainty. But when we got into the lair and on the road, there was perspective. And you see things differently when you take a minute to slow down. And Sammy, you know, she didn't care about any of it. And for a minute, neither did I. Seeing that kid get so excited about going camping, being out in the redwoods, being out with nature. You know, it's funnier than all get out, but we had to make a pit stop on the way, right? And we're pulling and the and the the lair here is not small. I mean, it's a 35-foot trailer. We're pulling the trailer, we pull into the parking lot, and she decides that she's hungry. So she gets a a bag of chips. And it's not the lunch size bag, it's the it's the bag of chips that you put in your pantry at home. Proceeds to eat the entire bag on the drive to the campsite. After we've asked this child, are you hungry? Would you like something to eat? Nope, I just want my chips. Okay. Well, you know what? Grandma and grandpa taking you camping. You're gonna go home in a couple days and your parents can deal with you. Uh, but yeah. We get into that uh pulled into the campsite and we back in and Sammy's asleep. Thank God, right? Thank God. Yeah, so we were able to get the trailer mostly set up with her being asleep. Gets out and we're on the river. We're on the river, like walk out the trailer down the trail, and you're and you're at the edge of the river down there, and it's dark, but she hears the river and says, Can we go to the river? No, no, Sammy, we cannot go to the river tonight. Uh, we will go tomorrow when you wake up. Okay, what do you want for dinner? Uh a hamburger. Well, the hamburger got about two bites eaten from it. Uh, but she really liked the cookies for dessert, and I gotta tell you, if you haven't had the luxury of camping with a Starlink, uh, and you have little kids who are electronically connected to the world nowadays, that's a game changer. I went camping with my kids for 11 days back when they were six, eight, and ten, or maybe it might have been eleven, nine, and seven or so. One of them thought it was great, one of them didn't, and one of them was kind of in the middle. Uh, the one that didn't probably would have had a lot more fun if we had the Starlink up and running, because she would have been connected to her stuff. Um, but we didn't, and that that's another story for another day, which we still give her. A hard time about. But this is a great illustration of today's um royal decree. And it goes a little bit like this. Actually, it goes exactly like this. When the direction isn't clear, you don't stop showing up. And you can kind of surmise how that fits everything that's been going on. Podcast didn't record. Flight was delayed. Changes happening around, you know, family life, uh, personal life, extended volunteer stuff. But you keep showing up. And when you need that perspective, it's there. It's just waiting for you to see it. Next week, I'm gonna sit down with a little man named Lewis and see if we can expand the circle a little bit more. The pressure's still real out there, but so is this podcast. Hope you enjoyed it. I will make sure that this thing has recorded and probably see you next week or talk to you next week. King Roberto saying goodbye.