Episode 29: Brandon

Brandon, at 49, would like to skip to 50 and is ready to tinker more, try new things, and seek the meaning that comes from simply going for it. Whatever that "it" may become. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

In my career, I've been always kind of looking for the next step and trying to kind of build up and up, I guess. And that's good and that's healthy, but I think there's also a way in which you can get in a little bit of a treadmill mindset. And and I would like to take the opportunity to think about what impact I want to have and what work I want to be doing with a little more of a sense of intention and a little less of a sense of urgency, maybe. Or like, oh, I'm supposed to be at a done this, now I'm supposed to do that other supposedly higher thing. Like I'm gonna I want to start letting myself think thoughts like, what if I go sideways? What if I try this? What if I experiment over there? I've not been letting myself do those kind of things, partly because of mortgages and kids and divorces and expectations and Ks and all that stuff. And that's fine. I think I've responded to all those challenges, and I think I want to like create a little space to be like, well, what if?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Good morning, good afternoon, good whatever time it is that you're listening or viewing. I'm Tim Cunningham, host of the podcast The Niners, where we're learning from folks who are living on the edge, on the edge of a decade, moving forward, learning about hopes and dreams, looking back, and ultimately uh taking advice on how we can continue to live and grow together and enjoy the lives that we're in. I am honored today to be uh interviewing Brandon, who came to me through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend. Brandon, how are you today? Doing great. Good to be so it's great to see you as well. To begin, can you tell us how old you are today?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Today I am 48. I'm coming up on my 49th birthday this summer.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

All right. Soon to be a niner. You're like a pre-niner. Yeah. I love it. Hoping to talk my way in. Great, great. This is, you know, maybe this is like therapy then. It's like preparation to become a niner. And if you like it, tell all your other friends who have eights in their in their ages, and I charge a really reasonable rate, I promise. I don't like it. Can I skip to some other number? That's a really good question. I'll have to talk to my lawyers. I'll go straight to 50. 50? Why 50? I mean, I know you're practically there, but why rush? I mean, there's something a little majestic about 50. I mean, it's a big round number. Big number. Was that was it Molly Shannon in the old SNL days? It sure was. And she was 50.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

And she can lunge.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yeah. I've been waiting to make those jokes with my sister. We've been since since that Saturday Night Live era.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

And you you have a whole year of them when you turn 50. And maybe longer if you're still feeling young. Brandon, can you tell us a little more about yourself? Where where are you from and and where do you live now?

SPEAKER_01 2:34

I mostly grew up in Utah in Salt Lake City. Um, not Mormon, but um was around a lot of a whole lot of that in Salt Lake City. But I've also lived in other places, lived in New York, Chicago, and now I'm I've been in LA for about 15 years. And what keeps you busy? I have uh I have a couple of boys, uh sons who are here in the house with me at this moment. And um I work in technology. I work in new technology, PR, reality kinds of um kind of novel or innovative uh technology is where I tend to tend to work for most of my career. Um right now I'm between things, so I'm having a little bit of a summer sabbatical and uh thinking about what I want to uh what I want to do next.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Um, Brandon, you talked about sort of moving forward and as you're you're taking your sabbatical this summer. I'm curious, as you think about being 48, almost 49, just in a couple of months, by the time this podcast comes out, you will be 49. What excites you the most about moving into the next decade when you hit 50?

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah, I think I mean there's a few cute corners that I'm rounding at this moment in my life where I have a kid in college for the first time. And so we are turning some, turning some corners there as a family. Uh, another son on his heels in high school right now. So in my 50s, I'm going to be a dad to two adults, two college educating or college-educated kids. And the kind of things we will do together is just new and different. And so not quite sure how that's going to look. And also the older and bigger those kids get, the more say they have in how it all looks as they come online as full full people. So that's that's a big one that I think about a lot at this moment.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

And another thing I'm thinking about is is work. Like I said, I think in my career, I've been always kind of looking for the next step and trying to kind of build up and up, I guess. And that's good and that's healthy, but I think there's also a way in which you can get in a little bit of a treadmill mindset. And and I would like to take the opportunity to think about what impact I want to have and what work I want to be doing with a little more of a sense of intention and a little less of a sense of urgency, maybe, or like, oh, I'm supposed to be at a, I've done this, now I'm supposed to do that other supposedly higher thing. Like, I'm gonna, I want to start letting myself think thoughts like, what if I go sideways? What if I try this? What if I experiment over there? I have not been letting myself do those kind of things, partly because of mortgages and kids and divorces and expectations and all that stuff. And that's fine. I think I responded to all those challenges, and I think I want to like create a little space to be like, well, what if?

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Giving yourself permission to ask those questions sounds to me like certainly a first step. Can you concurrently give yourself permission to actually act on the answers you find with those questions? Is that sort of part of the plan?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Well, that's what I'm experimenting experimenting with right this minute because you've got a moment where I unexpectedly lost my job. I was part of a company that got acquired and was hoping that that would I was part of a product that I was very proud of. And I was hoping that that would turn into a bigger, better, grander version of that product would affect more people. It was a health and fitness product. There was a workout and fitness app in virtual reality. And what happened is kind of benign neglect on the part of the acquiring company, which turned and when then which then became active neglect, which then became cutting 60% of the little company that they had had bought and just kind of gutting it after a couple years. So that just happened a couple months ago. Um yeah, it was a little bit, a little bit surprising, a little bit of a uh a little bit of a moment. Um like I said, bunch of other things are going on at once. You know, my college boy's coming home, my parents are coming for a visit, I had some camping plans, and I was like, well, looks like summer vacation has begun.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

There you go. Slightly extended.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah. So you can see why that kind of prompted me to uh take a moment to reassess what's work net look like next.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Brandon, so so this this idea of moving forward and what that what that growth may look like and and what I hear giving yourself permission, maybe asking permissions in in this, what you termed as a sabbatical. I love that framing for where you are right now. And part of the reflections, how my if you look over the last decade, how would you say you've changed?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

It's been it's been interesting because the way that my life has just kind of played out, the decades have had these these bookends for me.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Oh yeah? Like 10, 10 by 10 bookends? Like almost. All right.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

So I was 30 when I had my first child, and that began my 30s, and that's that's a kind of a transformation. Uh my 30s did not look like my 20s. And then um when I was 40, my marriage fell apart and very gradually and then suddenly. Okay. Um, so it was 40, and you know, I thought on my at my 40th birthday party that that I was my life was headed in one direction, and then I was with somebody that I would be, you know, holding hands with at a hundred years of age, regardless of what what else happened in the world. You know, that was like the one thing that I knew. And so I got the news that I was mistaken about that. And so I have spent my forties single for the most part. Um, I mean, not purely, not monastically, but you know, it just there hasn't been uh a partnership. What there's been is a process of me kind of recalibrating my my adult life. And so I'm different in a lot of ways. The unexpected free time that comes with divorce, it's like you know, you got kids, kids, kids, kids in your face when you're a parent, but when you're divorced and you suddenly have 50% of your kids um that kind of blows a hole in your life in one way, but in another way, it really opens up you up to focus and when you're parenting and then be yourself when you're not parenting. And in our world, I see it around me, a lot of people who are doing like the nuclear family thing where maybe friends and relatives who might support them live in some other state. So it's just kind of the two of you in a house with kids, that can be a little bit of a pressure cooker. So as a divorced person, I did my first extended retreats at Zen monasteries, uh I had never done like a seven-day you know retreat, the kind of thing you don't necessarily um think to do when you're a parent of two kids, maybe and uh like is that like a silent retreat?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

So you go from talking with kids in action and all this stuff to just I've done other retreats that are not purely silent.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Uh I've been actually been growing in my kind of Zen practice in the last 10 years. Um I did some wilderness things that I had never kind of gotten around to. Like um, I've been backpacking. I was an Eagle Scout growing up in Utah, but never backpacked alone. You know, just walk into the wilderness, into the backwoods where there's no one around and there's no resources available except what you remembered to bring. And did a little bit of that. Did some bushwhanging in like Gold Butte National Monument. Went to see a piece of land art called Double Negative that's out in a remote part of Nevada. So I did some exploration wilderness-wise. There's other things that I've gotten myself into. My what I was started to feel during that period of of kind of growth and reflection was the distance between the kind of thing that I'm the kind of person who would do and the kind I actually did got smaller. It was like, I intend to do that, I guess I will go do that. And I think that that was that was the there was a lot of grief in the earlier parts of this, but actually the the kind of gift of it all was being like, well, what I want to do, oh, if there's nothing stopping me from doing it, I will commence doing it. So that's been I'm much more the person who is that way now as to the version of adulthood where you were you kind of doing things out of obligation or out of routine or out of the question.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

So if you know hindsight's always 2020, or maybe frequently 2020, as they say. If you could talk to yourself a decade ago, or maybe you had some advice to give to someone who else was 38, 39, moving into their next decade, what what would you share either with yourself or someone else?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I think it would be maybe you don't need to have a grief process that looked like mine or a kind of rupture to get some of the things that I got, which is you can think about, you have the opportunity, you have the freedom to think about things you want to do, like things you think of yourself as having done when your body is healthy, when you are strong, when you are flexible. And are those things going to happen the way you're living right now? If not, why not? You know, are there things that you think are immovable objects in your life? There's like, well, I can't, you know, sail around the world, or I can't, you know, go spend six months playing backgammon with my dad on a boat in Florida or something, you know, like what whatever is the the thing where you have an image of a way your life could be, like if you're not making choices that make your life go that way, those things will not happen. You could just start tinkering. So I have an experimental mindset, honestly, is I was pushed into it, but there are do you have the opportunity to to not get pushed. You could choose it.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Tinker by choice.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Brandon, as you think about, and it sounds like tinkering as you move forward, continuing to tinker as you move forward, are some are there some things that concern you about the next decade?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Well, I think there's macro level stuff that's that everybody's worried about. It's not distinctive to me. I do think I'm raising kids and I'm trying to survive myself in a world that feels quite unstable and different than the one that that I grew up in. Uh but we all experience that. I I think I'm one thing that does worry me a little bit is is that aging process within the body. I had the I had a back injury this year. I ended up in the hospital overnight for the first time in my life. I rode in an ambulance for the first time in my life. And so worried might not be quite the word, but I'm definitely a little more wary of the fact that how the vessel of the body breaks down. And and just like, can I will I be able to do all the things I want to do? Am I taking care of it the way it needs to be taken care of so that I can do the things I want to do?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

And I'm learning that care is different. I I just got over a back injury two weeks ago where I woke up, I was doing a dumb yoga class. It's silly downward dog, and my back went, thought I was okay, went to sleep that night, and I woke up in the middle of the night howling in pain, had to roll out of bed, couldn't walk, and thankfully it's better. But something that I'm curious to learn from you is you think specifically about your physical body aging, what are some things that you can do or are doing to help alleviate some of those concerns about the physical body future?

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah. I mean, what one thing I started doing during my 40s, partly because of the pandemic, was where you kind of stuck in place in lockdown, but then kind of work from home situations as well, kind of as a version of lockdown, where it's like, okay, what are the habits that you make? How do you relate to your habits, your daily habits? What are the things that you intend to do and then don't follow through on versus what are the things that actually stick?

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

And just becoming your own personal trainer, life coach, whatever, such that you can like design a day, design a morning that includes the things that nourish you, you know. So, and what are the things where you're just like not there yet? So, like for me, the morning yoga stretching routine that I have been putting off my entire life.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

No, 49.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Yeah. Um, like I got my wake-up call now, so I gotta add that one to the to the to the day. You know, I gotta build that in somehow. Um, and so I'm like, ooh, the path gets narrower and narrower. In some ways, life gets easier and happier, I think, as you're coming through life. Like how?

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Like what's it what's an example?

SPEAKER_01 14:22

I think it's easier to recognize the people you like and enjoy their company and just focus on them. And it's easier to just kind of let go of people who are like, well, I have no problem with that person, but that's just not the vibe I like to have around me. And just like kind of making those choices quicker and easier, be like, Well, I'm not gonna put my energy over there. I'm gonna put it over here. That's fun.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Fun. I've not heard it described that way before. I dig that.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Yeah. Um, no, it's just it's just simpler, you know? Um, it's like when you're at a party and you don't feel comfortable there, it's not your fault, it's just like not your vibe. Okay, like I can also go home. Uh so like that those parts of midlife are just kind of like knowing like, well, this is what I'm like. This is the kind of thing, these are the kind of people I like or the kind of situations I like, and I'm not beating myself because I'm supposed to also go like the ballet or something, like ballet.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Um yeah, I've never enjoyed ballet either, but I still will go because I I just like saying, well, I'm going to the ballet. So lesson learned, I don't have to go to the ball. You do not have to go to the ballet.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

That's um so yeah, that that aspect is is fun. Life gets a little simpler, but on the other hand, you know, the the path gets a little narrower. Like yes, you have to floss. Yes, you have to stretch.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yes, you have to get that colonoscopy.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yeah. Like don't eat the onion rings.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Just yeah, not you will regret every time it doesn't get better. Brandon, um, as you think about your moving forward and looking back, sometimes maybe even at the same time, and it sounds like your sons may be near a cusp of a decade themselves, either stepping into or wrapping one up. Would you would you have any advice to give to them or someone in their late teens, early twenties based on your own lived experience?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah, I I definitely think the advice we give kids, it depends on on the kid. I have a mindset. Some people have a mindset of I need to start my adult life, I need to become a productive member of society. Like they have that inborn in them. And there's also that message from the organizations and institutions around us, and maybe the family systems around us, like you need to get going, you need to, you need to make that money and get that mortgage and do those things. If you're the kind of person who already had that in you anyway, and you're getting all those messages from outside, if you're one of those, you should probably lighten up. Um, take a job that's dumb, take a job that's just gonna expose you to interesting situations and characters or teach you about a subject, even though it doesn't look like anything on your resume. You know, maybe stop building your resume and start like living your life. Now, I know there's a lot of people who actually need this structure, who like need to do something besides smoke weed and play video games, and they need to get up off the couch and like maybe go get a job. But I'm not wired like that. I don't I come from kind of go-getter people. My advice, and I think my kids are a bit like that too. So that's that's about as far as my advice goes, is that you do have to live life for yourself. Like no one's gonna give you an A anymore. It's like people are gonna give you resources and money in proportion to the value that you created for them in helping them solve a problem in their life. To get any resources and any money, you will have to help other people solve their problems, not your problems. Like they don't care about your problems. You help them solve their problem and they give you money. At some point, you will have to do that. Um figure your own stuff out. Yeah. On the other hand, at 23, 24 years of old, years of age, there's not that much value you can create. So maybe lighten up a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

You got you got time. Brandon, your work as a parent, your living as a parent. Do you find yourself trying to support your kids in ways like opposite of the way you were supported? You said you were a big go-getter, and it sounds like you're not really driving that. I think I'm similar in some ways with the way my parents raised me. I don't have kids of my own, but I think if I were, I would almost find myself doing more opposite than what they did. How does that work with you? Do you find a similar thing?

SPEAKER_01 18:22

I have two different kids in that respect. One was just um just a self-driven straight A student who one day, late in the pandemic, decided he would start getting straight A's all the time. And then at some point in his junior year in high school, he decided that he wanted to be valedictorian, and he did that.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Wow, starting junior year. That's impressive.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Yeah. Um he had a plan for how he wanted to take all these AP classes in his senior year, and that was gonna push him to the top of everything, and he did that. All right. And we just kind of sat back and watched. I didn't even really look at his report cards. Other kid, you know, is not wired quite that way. He's happy being a B student and he needs different stuff, both highly intelligent people, but as a parent, uh you kind of gotta play it as it lays, you know? Yeah, and I think that one of the things that I brought, you know, in this generation that wasn't available to my parents or their parents or their parents is uh, you know, I have enough I have the philosophy, I have the sense, like I have the the um the perspective, I guess, that they can make their way and that there's more than one way and that there's support available for them, regardless of how they go. Given that they understand that, like I said earlier, you gotta solve somebody's problem in order for for anybody to give your ever give you money.

unknown 19:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

So and I won't I won't always be there for them and they need to figure that out for themselves. But I think that I bring the gift I can give them is release from judgment. The world will judge you enough. Like I think from your parents, you need like information and guidance and support, but I'm not sure that judgment and blame and criticism are useful. So my kids have been able to grow up with much less of that than I did or my parents did.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

What a gift for them.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

That's I hope so. We'll see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

I I I I I firmly believe that like 500 generations from now, if humans are still around on this planet, we will have gotten it right. Humans that have children or help raise children or support children, nephews and nieces, in 500 generations, we will nail it. And because of the work that you are doing right now in this lifetime. Thank you. So thank you. Um, I'm curious, is there anything else you want to share with any other niners listening in? Folks on the cusp of something.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

There's one other thing I think about sometimes, which is, you know, the labels that we put on ourselves. And that's another fun thing about getting older. And that for for my next eight decade, I didn't say this, but I think that, you know, I think when you're younger, you are in a mindset that like artists make art and painters make paintings and musicians make music, and that there are kinds of people. And we call it we kind of fall for that. And um so another thing it took me half my life to kind of figure out, you know, is that um like I went from a Burning Man person. I've been going to Burning Man since 1997. It took me more than 20 years to do a big old art project uh out in the desert. Like a big, you know, I got a grant and I um I took $4,000 worth of helium to the desert, and uh I did a bunch of stuff with illuminated balloons and weather balloons and um did a big silly art project uh that no one's ever seen before, no one will ever seen again. It was only done once, and people are like, Who's the artist on this project? I've got the clipboard and I'm looking up. I was like, Are you the artist? I was like, I guess I can be the artist for you. I'm the artist right now. Does that meet make me an artist? Maybe. So, you know, I appreciate you and this project and like the podcast, the book, whatever this project turns into, you know, the uh I hope that for you, this is just an entry into some new identities, some new ways of being yourself. So I think that that freedom to put those labels on and off is something that everybody can can Yeah, thank you, Brandon.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

That really resonates. Uh like you, um, I am between roles. I've been out of work of my job job. And and even as I say that, I'm like, but I don't define myself as a job, but I have not had that regular income for quite some time. And and this project, A, continues to be enlightening with what I learned from folks like you. So thank you for all that you shared. And B, to your point, thanks for the the reminder and encouragement that it might go somewhere where it might not. And that's thrilling wherever direction it goes. So thank you so much for being a part of it. I'm I'm honored to meet you. Thank you for having me here.