A look back as we look forward

In this episode, we take a look back at some of my favorite episodes that I have recorded so far. We also talk about what I have learned, how I have grown and what to look forward to as we continue this amazing podcast journey!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Episode 20. A lot of learning, a lot of growing, a lot of life. Let's talk about that. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Mostly Me Occasionally Wise. I am your host, Brian, and this is episode 20. And I thought I'd have a little fun today. I thought we'd just take a look back at some of my favorite episodes that I have done in the past and also talk about how I've grown, what I've learned, you know, and how much life has just evolved since the first episode. And then, of course, we will also talk about the future of the podcast, what I plan on doing and things like that. But first, before we get into this episode, let's get into Dad Life Debrief. So if you're new to the podcast, Dad Life Debrief is an opportunity for you as the listener to join me outside of recording this podcast and experience life as a husband, father, family man, chaos coordinator, everything in between. And this week was all about the 4th of July. Now we did get a little wet. We had some rain come in, uh, not just a little, we had a lot come in there for a while. It was raining pretty hard, and we were right in the middle of it because we were having to drive to my mom and stepdad's place for their annual barbecue. And there were a couple of times I thought I was gonna have to pull over because the rain was just really, really heavy. But of course, before we left, we went on the firework hunting adventure, and there was a place here close to the house, so we went there and we we set a budget, obviously, because fireworks are super expensive. And it's funny how you noticed the taste and fireworks between the two kids, my 13-year-old and my four-year-old. My four-year-old is in is all about popular characters and cartoons and video games and things like that, and of course, anything that pees and poops. And so the first thing he gravitated towards was a dog firework that poops, and he thought it was the greatest thing in the world. He had a good laugh about it. Of course, we got two or three of those, and of course, there was chickens that lay eggs and things like that. He got a couple of nightworks, he got this firework that was based around Mario from the Super Mario games, which ended up being a really pretty firework. And then, of course, when you get to the 13-year-old, you know, he's all about the Roman candles and the firecrackers and the bottle rockets and things that just make loud noises. Because I guess at 13 years old, that's just what you're into. We did a lot of, you know, when I was younger, we did a lot of bottle rocket wars, a lot of unsafe stuff with bottle rockets. So I noticed that that hasn't changed over the years, and he wanted to do the same thing. So we did that. Of course, we got some nightworks, some were really pretty, and we ended up spending almost like 140 bucks. And I was like, geez. And of course, you know, they give you these baskets, the little hand baskets, to put all these fireworks in. So you're thinking you've bought a whole lot of fireworks, you're like, okay, you know, I've gotten a bang for a lot of bang for my buck, but there's no pun intended. And then you load it up in a sack and you take it home. And of course, I put it, I get a big old cardboard box and put everything in there, and I'm like, man, there's not a whole lot here. Did we get everything? And of course, I had Becca come in on the cover, everything, and she's like, Yeah, we got everything. It's just dang. So, yeah, it was that's where they get you. You know, you buy all these cool things and they condense it into this pile while you're you're shopping, and then put it in a paper sack to make it look like you know, you you've bought so much, and then when you finally get it out on display, you're like, geez, this isn't as much as I thought it was going to be. And you know, it was a I was a little frustrated, I'm not gonna lie, but at the same time, these were fireworks that my boys picked out, and I was looking forward to watching them shoot them off because I mentioned, I believe, in the last episode, I'm kind of at this age where I don't have to buy fireworks to enjoy the 4th of July. I get more enjoyment watching everyone else shoot off theirs, especially the little kids. And of course, me being a dad, I got to experience all of that. And like I said, we were worried that the rain there for a few hours was gonna rain everything out, but it didn't. And watching the boys getting to shoot their fireworks was just was awesome. We got some really good pictures. I will say there were a couple of fun moments. My four-year-old was finally old enough to where we could light this punk, and he could go and light his own fireworks, you know, with his big brother around or with me or or Becca around. And the funny thing is, is he would light it, but he would take off running all the way back to Becca and I, and by the time he turned around to look up, the firework had already done its thing. And you can kind of sense there was some frustration there. And I get I appreciated him, you know, I appreciated him being safe, but at the same time, I wanted him to enjoy, you know, the firework he just lit. So we walked back down there and we put all our fire our fireworks on a piece of plywood because the ground was wet for one. And that way it's easy to clean up and it's all in one little pile. And so we walked down there and I kind of, hey, you don't have to run all the way back. I understand why you're running back because you don't want to get burned or there'd be an accident or something happened. But I said, here, you know, and I dug a little line in the ground. I said, run to this line, turn around and look up. I said, You're you're safe. Now, if there's something safe potentially going to happen, or someone shooting off a firework that's really big, then you know, mommy and daddy will come and get you and you can come hang out with us. So once he established that he could run to that line, he enjoyed the rest of his night. My 13-year-old, like I mentioned, he was really into fireworks, you know, the firecrackers, the bottle rockets, the Roman candles, the things that just went boom, just made loud noises. They were being unsafe with bottle rockets at times. He and his cousin, and we had to kind of like, hey, this isn't safe. You're, you know, it's potential for you to lose fingers, things like that. And so once we've corrected that issue, you know, they went on and having fun. I did, I did have to talk to him about the artillery shells because I noticed when he was shooting them, they were kind of like getting hung in a tube, but still going up and doing their thing in the sky, but it wasn't as high up, you know, high up as I thought it should be. And so after the first couple of times I went and talked to him, I was like, hey, what's going on? I noticed your your artillery shells are getting hung. I don't want one to accidentally tip over and shoot at us, and then we have people getting hurt, or you know, we all get scared. And he informed me he had just lost sight of the tube that he was using and can't remember what it looks like. So he was using the biggest tube and the longest tube. So it was having to work extra hard when the artillery shell was lit up and it just wasn't launching itself up high enough. So I said, hey, you gotta get a smaller tube, but at the same time, find something that fits the shell. And, you know, he went up there and looked at all the the other tubes that were up there from other family members' fireworks that had been set off. And and he figured it out, of course. I had no doubt in him. He's a super smart kid. So 4th of July went off without a hitch. We had a lot of fun. We were all tired by the time fireworks were done and we got home. It was a little after midnight, and we wanted to go to church the next day, but we were just, you know, when 7 a.m. rolled around, we were just like, nah, we're good. You know, we we we go just we go almost every Sunday, and I I looked at my wife, I was like, I honestly can't remember the last time we didn't go because even when we're on vacation, we try to make a point to make Sundays, especially Sunday mornings, you know, we try to make those all about God and appreciating what He's done for us. But we we needed a day off and it was nice. Let the wife sleep in. I hung out with you know the four-year-old, and we went to the store and got some things, and of course he bought a couple of monster trucks because I spoil him. Uh spoil all the kids, but it was really it was a lot of fun. Fourth of July was really, really great. So I have to tell you something that happened last night with the four-year-old. So the four-year-old is is fully potty trained for the most part, but when he poops, we kind of have to make sure he wipes appropriately because he doesn't always get it all. And he had flushed, and he was in our room putting his shorts on because sometimes he'll run into our bathroom next to our bedroom for some reason. I don't know why that is. Then I don't question it as long as he makes it to a toilet. And I asked him, I was like, hey, I need to check you just to make sure you wiped appropriately. Of course, you know, we walked back into the bathroom, he pulled his pants down and just bent over. It was like, hey, you know. And I noticed he hadn't, you know, cleaned up. And I went to get some toilet paper and I noticed toilet paper was gone. And he had an empty toilet paper roll in his hand. I'm like, wait a second, that wasn't empty when I was in the restroom the last time. And I looked at him and said, TJ, you know, son, did you use all this toilet paper? And he just looked at me with the boom with the toilet paper roll in his hand. He just stared at me. Because you could tell he was trying to conjure up an excuse, but he knew he had gotten caught. And I look at the toilet and I noticed the toilet clogged up. And I'm like, TJ, we don't need to use all the toilet paper. That that's wasteful for one. Toilet paper is not necessarily expensive, but it's not cheap either. Especially if you want the good ones, the good toilet paper, which we do. We go to Sam's and we buy the economy size and they last a while. But when I told him, you know, hey, we don't need to use all that toilet paper, he kind of looked at me again and his face went from thinking to like just just serious tone. And he looked at me and said, I'm sorry, Daddy. But the toilet but the toilet was hungry. And I just kind of, you know, pro trying to process what he just told me. And of course, after he delivered this famous line, he put the toilet paper tube up to his mouth and started making noise with his little toilet paper trumpet and walked on out of the room. And of course, at that moment I kind of smiled and I was like, yeah. And then I unclogged the toilet. And of course, I told Becca about the toilet paper needing to be fed, apparently, on a consistent basis that we were gonna have to look at getting more toilet paper so we can, you know, make Mr. Toilet happy. And so it's always something with, especially the four-year-old. He's so animated, he's so creative, and he's always thinking. If you ever, if you have younger kids, pay attention to them every now and especially when they're playing by themselves, and you can see the wheels turning. And a lot of times they're coming up with just this insanely creative stuff. You know, with my four-year-old, it's talking monster trucks and and and things like that, and toilet paper trumpets and making, you know, music and putting on concerts and twerking and things like that. It's it's amazing, you know, how creative your kids can truly be. So now that we've done dad life debrief, let's get in to episode 20. So before we start looking back, I want to say this. I'm not going over every episode. We'd be here all day if that were the case. I really just want to pull out some episodes that were really crucial for me, you know, as far as learning, growing, and just kind of developing my own style when it comes to this podcast. And you have to start with episode number one, which was the 80s did it better, my top 10 movies and hot takes. And it was all about 80s movies. I love 80s movies, and it was crazy because that one dropped on February 25th. I didn't realize that until just now, honestly. I've been redoing this for a while. Man, time does really fly. But back to the episode. With this episode, this was this was a learning and a growing experience. It was also my most cringiest episode because there were a lot of things I could have done better. Looking back now, I don't regret doing the episode because in order to learn and grow, you have to start somewhere. And yes, it was a lot of fun to do. It really was. I love talking about movies, especially you know, when it comes to 80s and 90s, just all the movies I grew up with, and it's always fun to talk how you know how much of an impact they have on me and had a hand in creating who I am now. I still think E.T. is a highly overrated movie, and I'm not real high on the Goonies. I don't know if it's just because, again, something that was just consistently on the TV all the time, I just kind of got burnt out on it. I don't know. I did introduce it to my daughter, I introduced it to my 13-year-old son. They enjoyed it. We haven't done it with my four-year-old yet, because there are some pretty scary scenes, and I don't know if he's just quite ready for that. But definitely as far as the episode where I learned a whole lot, and I grew, you know, grew a lot, was from that first episode. Obviously, through all the episodes, there's there's a little bit of learning and growing, but man, that first episode, while it was fun to do, and it was my starting point, oh, I still cringe just thinking about it because I was uh there was just oh man, yeah. If you go back and listen to it, you can clearly see uh it had been a while since I had done anything in the podcast world, and it was oh, it was rough, but enjoyable, but but definitely rough. The next episode I really want to focus on, and it's actually one of the most downloaded episodes, was the episode about my kids and how they're all three different now, have they all have different journeys. I have talked about in the past and in in this episode as well, the three kids, three journey episodes, and how my two boys are adopted. And I kind of touched based on the adoption process, but I also talked about the the joys and struggles that come with adoption. And this was a very sincere episode, it was also a very hard episode because it pointed out a lot of things that I really needed to work on, especially when it came to my 13-year-old. My 13-year-old and I have had our struggles in the past. Yes, things are a lot better now, but you know, in March when I recorded this episode, we were kind of in our rocky position. Our relationship was was was, you know, needless to say, rocky. It was it was it was rough. And I was at a point to where I was reaching for anything that would make our relationship better. And it didn't occur to me until after I recorded this episode that I was part of the problem. It wasn't, I mean, don't get me wrong, a lot of it is his past before he moved in with us, but I wasn't being the best person I could be to him. A lot of it has to do with his ADHD. I was very ignorant, I was very uneducated with it. I was very old school when I, you know, with the approach to ADHD. Of course, since then, I have educated myself, I have a better understanding of it, and it has improved our relationship tremendously. But yes, definitely, and it honestly, the three kids, three journeys episodes, probably one of my favorites because I love talking about my kids. I mean, I talk about I love talking about my family in general, but man, that one uh that one really was, like I said, a lot of fun to record, but at the same time, it was really an eye-opening experience because you don't realize a lot of things until you either talk about them or you hear it from someone else. And in this case, you know, after recording, I sat down. I always, you know, listen to my episodes before I, or I try to listen to my episodes before I put them out there. There is one episode where editing wasn't the greatest, but with this episode, I really listened to it and it just really, man, it it it really spoke to me and realized, made me realize how much I needed to change. And now, you know, since then, you know, in the dad life debriefs, I have talked about how my 13-year-old and I, our relationship has just, man, it has grown so much since I have made a lot of changes. And man, it's just yeah, this episode really, man, it hit it, it hit hard. And at the same time, it's very educational for me, and I could I hope it was very educational for those who listened. The next episode, oh man, there's so many to choose from. I really enjoyed the things I swore I'd never say as a dad. Because with that one, you guys got to introduce, you know, you guys got introduced to, you know, having to get on to my four-year-old for twerking in church. Uh, he was twerking for Jesus, and he still twerks randomly. That hasn't changed. He still twerks in church, and it's just kind of become it's kind of just become a part of everyday life with my four-year-old. Of course, with my 13-year-old, he still says some things that I'm just like, bro, like, did you did you think before you spoke? That was a lot of fun. And of course, that one hit as well because you don't realize you're using a lot of the phrases that your parents used with you until you start saying them. And it's just, if you haven't listened to that one, that one really, you know, that one kind of one of those just like, man, I'm I'm I'm becoming more of my parents than I realized, kind of episode. And then, of course, you know, we've done the unwritten rules of marriage, which was really fun. We we talked about the greatest parenting movies of all time. We talked about the dad's guide to surviving summer. Those were all great episodes, but I really want to touch base on the interview episode where I had Danielle Frank in. That was a lot of fun because I had all I had have been toying with the idea of bringing guests on, but I didn't know how necessarily how to go about it or who to ask. Because when it comes to bringing guests onto this podcast, I really want to bring in people that can, you know, that can relate to what this podcast is about. We talk about parenting, we talk about movies, we talk about all these other things. But of course, let's be honest, the focal point is parenting and all the joys and and all the things that go with that. But when I brought Danielle Frank in, actually she reached out to me, which was which was awesome because you know, I was I had another episode lined up and I got the email. And at first I was like, okay, it's just some sort of you know, scam or spam or anything like that. And it was a legit email, you know, and I did my research on her and I talked to my wife about it, and I was like, you know, this is this is awesome. This person's reached out to me. I mean, I'd be silly, you know, to pass it up. So I reached out to her and she was really cool, you know, back and forth on email, and we had a little bit of a meeting before I brought her onto the podcast just to kind of give her, you know, a spiel on what the podcast was all about and some of the questions I may ask. And it was really cool. She was really comfortable to talk to. I was a little nervous there because you don't know really who you're gonna be talking to or how they're gonna, you know, act and things like that. But she was just so cool. And then, of course, we had her, I brought her back in and we did the episode. And if you listen to the episode, you can clearly tell I was nervous because this was my first interview, especially with someone who had written a book, who had worked in Hollywood, who who had accomplished so many things, and I wanted to make sure we covered all of those things because those were important to her. And I want you know, our guests to feel like they're appreciated, you know, on our episode. And of course, talking about her time at Mirimax, you know, talking about her time in the wine industry, and of course, talking about the book. It was a lot of fun. And here recently. Recently, that was probably one of the episodes where I learned more about myself and how I just need to be able to relax because at the end of the day, yeah, these people may have accomplished all these great things, but they're human beings at the end of the day. You know, I have no problem talking to the piece of the delivery guy, I have no problem talking, you know, to the old lady at the grocery store. But I was really nervous talking with someone that was on the podcast because I wanted her to feel like she could come back if she wanted to, or I wanted that good rapport with her that, you know, if I wanted to reach out to her and bring her back, we could. And the parent, you know, the episode was great. We talked a little bit after, and she had a lot of fun. She'd love to come back, and of course, I plan on bringing her back in future episodes. So let's talk about the future. I started this podcast, you know, as as a way of just getting things out there, passing on wisdom. I have had a life very you could probably make a movie based on my life, and it would probably be more of a lifetime type movie, but I have been through a lot, and I wanted to share everything that I've learned with other people because other people struggle just as much as I did, or they may have it worse than I do, and I really just wanted to make a difference in someone's life. That's why I started this, started this podcast. And what I want to do for the future is I really don't want to change much as far as the content I put out. I enjoy talking about the movies, the music, you know, the marriage, the struggles with kids, the funny stories with kids, the dad life debrief. I still want to do all that, but the one thing I really want to bring in for the future is I want to bring in more guests. I will say this I am going to focus on bringing in guests that are related to the show. So if you're looking for me to bring in big celebrity or something like that, if they don't have any kids or they're not a parent or they don't really have a whole lot to say as far as parenting or just being around kids in general, they may not necessarily make it on the show because we're gonna talk about all those things. We're gonna talk about parenting, you know, kids, yeah, we're gonna talk about their movies and things like that, but I really want to get to know the guest. Because yeah, it we all know them for who they are as far as celebrities or things like that. But you know, for me, I want to get a note, I want to get to know the person behind everything. And that I want to build a relationship, essentially, is what I want to do. So I want to focus on bringing in more guests. It's not gonna be something that happens all the time because I still enjoy being able to get on and just talk, and it's just me and you, the listener, and just talking about whatever. I do have at least 20 more episodes lined up. I'm always constantly creating new episodes. And of course, what goes in the process as far as a podcast episode for me is you know, I I pick like usually pick three episodes, and then I'll talk over my wife about it, and I'll kind of do some research and I narrow it down to one. And so that's how each episode is just created for me. It's not it's not a super difficult process, but as far as the episode as the future goes, I just want to bring on more guests, and I don't really want to change anything else because it's working for me, and it seems to be working for you guys because you know I'm getting a consistent amount of listeners, and that means I'm doing something right. I don't I don't look to gain any popularity from this. Yeah, that would be great, you know. But it at the end of the day, for me, it's just it's about making a difference in someone's life, even if it's just one person. So yeah, with that said, you know, it's been fun to look looking back, talking about a few of the episodes that really taught me a lot that you know challenged to me that pushed me to get where we are today. I'm still learning, I'm still growing, I'm I'm still gonna make some mistakes, even when it comes to editing. I have gotten better about it. But it's been a lot of fun. So, with that said, what's your favorite episode? Is there an episode that you know stands out to you? Is there a favorite moment with one of these episodes? Was it something I said or was it a story I told that you just really resonated with? Whether it was it it challenged you, you know, or you just had a good laugh, or you know, it just made you really put things in perspective, reach out to me at mostlymecontact at gmail.com or come on over to the Facebook page, to Mostly Me Occasionally Last Facebook page. We are constantly talking about things. I'm always posting questions and things like that because I want to get you guys involved because I want to get to know you more. And you know, it's this podcast is a lot of fun, and I really enjoy it, and it's not stressful. I know with a lot of people that do podcasts that complain about how stressful it is, but I've done a really good job about not making it stressful, just making it fun because I feel once you lose sight of the fun and the enjoyment, that's when it becomes stressful and then burnout happens. And I'm I've done really well at managing that. So with that said, I can't wait to talk to you guys next week. And as always, say mostly you, occasionally wise,