Blake Kasemeier: Fatherhood in an Age of Everything

In this heartfelt and timely episode of A Lighthouse in the Dark, Michael Fishman sits down with writer, content creator, brand storyteller, father, and deeply thoughtful voice Blake Kasemeier, whose series This Week in Fatherhood has resonated with parents navigating the beauty, pressure, humor, and uncertainty of raising a family in the modern world.

They explore brands, AI, social judgments, the power of a good "em dash" and impact meaningful relationships have on our lives.

Blake opens up about the transitions that have shaped him — becoming a father, his mother's cancer battle, facing her loss, and sudden unemployment — navigating finding his footing in family life, building a creative career, and learning how to stay grounded while living in a world shaped by technology, public visibility, social media, and constant change.

Together, Michael and Blake explore the real work of fatherhood: showing up when you are still healing, leading with love while learning as you go, protecting your family without losing yourself, and trying to build something meaningful in business and life while remaining present at home.

Their conversation also dives into the discipline and humility of Jiu Jitsu, the emotional weight men often carry quietly, and the importance of creating honest spaces where dads can talk about grief, growth, identity, responsibility, and love.

Funny, wise, vulnerable, and deeply relatable, this episode invites fathers — and everyone who loves them — into a conversation about what it means to keep becoming while building a family, a future, and a life of purpose.

Because fatherhood is not about having all the answers. It is about showing up with heart, humility, and the courage to keep learning.

Full episodes can be watched as well on YouTube @alighthouseinthedark channel.

For more connection and exclusive content please subscribe to the official @alighgthouseinthedark Substack.

Additional content is available across social media @alighthouseinthedark

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

So, the essence of why I started Lighthouse in the Dark is to have deep conversations with people who illuminate the world through compassion and kindness and consideration. So I thought one of the best ways to do that was to bring my guest. Um, it's two truth tellers, two storytellers who I really feel like speak freely. So I have no idea 100% where we're gonna go and what ground we're gonna cover. But I would like to welcome Blake Case-Meyer to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Dude, happy to be here. Yeah, dude. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your platform.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

I I appreciate you so much. And I've been following you online. What is it, Blake, that lights you up?

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Oh, um, like just candidly, yeah, we're gonna die. Like, and it's so, it's so bleak, it's so dark. But like, I so look, I've wanted to connect with people for a long time. I've been making stuff on the internet since the internet has existed. Uh, some of it good, a lot of it bad, the vast majority of which thankfully has gone unnoticed until relatively recently, um, which is how we know each other now. Well, how you know me. Um, and so I I did that in a sense because I I've always just wanted to create. There's always been a fire, right? In 2018, um, I lost my mom to a brief but brutal fight with lung cancer. And um, you know, I had I had dealt with grief before in some context, but in that context, grew up mostly single mom. Um I have a dad, he's awesome. Um, but my mom and I were, you know, in our own little world. My mom never uh remarried when I was growing up. She, like two years after I moved out, she found the love of her life, the second love of her life, the love of her life, and they went on together. Um, but I after my mom passed away, I very quickly realized that there's this thing that happens between people. Like right now, there's a Michael and Blake world that exists, and you and I are the keepers of that world, right? And so we have memories of we only know each other for a little bit, but there's a world that exists between us. Right. There were 36 years of a world that existed between me and my mom, right? And uh when she left, I realized I was the keep, I was the sole keeper of that world. Right. And that sort of uh that was like a a really big responsibility, I think. Um, and I realized that like in that moment or in that time, um that we like, and I mean like the keepers, like your brother's keeper. Like we are the we are the ones who are responsible for for owning, for communicating, for prolonging that world, for making sure that world exists. And like the feeling stoked in me this really intense fire to tell as many people about these worlds as I could, because at that point it sort of absolves me to some degree of the responsibility. Then it becomes all of our world, right? Right as soon as it leaves this thing, as soon as it leaves the the sole proprietorship of me owning the world. So, anyways, it's a little a bit a bit heady, a bit philosophical, but I think that's kind of that's a lot of where this derives from. Um, and like I'm very, very aware of my impermanence. Um, and so I think that has a lot to do with my desire to leave a mark.

SPEAKER_03 3:27

Yeah, I I I think grief is a gift. It's it's my personal philosophy. I raised my kids, and you have kids, so you'll understand this, because I think you talk about being the historian.

SPEAKER_04 3:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

I raise my kids that we're dying every day because I have no idea when that time comes.

SPEAKER_05 3:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

But it means that's why we should live. And people think that sounds morbid, but it actually is really freeing for me, and it's kind of one of the ways that we really embraced adventure. And I've been to a person who's been to hundreds of funerals. I've given at least, I don't know, 37 or 40 eulogies I can't even count.

SPEAKER_05 4:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:01

And I think what you said hit me really hard. It was one of the things that I was looking forward to talking to you about is grief is this thing that people run from. And the reality is I see it as a continuation of love, and it is my job to keep those memories alive and kind of share.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

The analogy that I always make is that, like, you know, initially your grief is this uh giant ball in a tiny room, and it's um it's like impossible to see anything else in the room or imagine a time when you could not see that ball. Right. And we have this idea that with time the ball shrinks, the ball stays the same size. We just find ways to go to other rooms of the house.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

And or make the house bigger or make the room bigger, you know. And I think that uh and that's it. It's always gonna be there. And it's how we it's how we visit that room.

SPEAKER_03 4:49

Yeah, and I I think it's very interesting for me. Uh I had Dr. Todd on who's like a facial analysis person, and it was very fascinating because he and I have talked about grief and all the things that people say that they should never say. And I people say stuff with the best of intentions, but it's so cruel, right? Like this is all part of a greater plan. It's like, okay, I don't want to hear about the plan right now.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

Right? Or, you know, it'll all be for the a greater good. It's like, no, I'm gonna have this pain all the time.

SPEAKER_05 5:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Like this is not going away. I'm never gonna stop missing my son. I'm never gonna stop missing my grandmother. I'm never gonna stop missing those people.

SPEAKER_05 5:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:27

And I don't want to. Yeah. It's a continuation of love for me. It's like you have to own that part of it. And we ask people sometimes to let go. And like, there's a big part of me, like, there are certain days in the year, those days mean something different for me. And and I know that's kind of true for you too.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, I I mean, uh, I think it also meeting people where they are. Right. So, like, uh, and I think seeing the good intention. Like, I've never been, I don't think I've ever been really upset with anybody for saying the wrong thing um or not saying anything. Right. Uh like I'm like, I know how awkward and weird it is to be a human. Yeah. Like we're just like just trying to figure it out in these weird things. And like one of the interesting properties of being a person is that like, I'm sorry, this is gonna get a little bit philosophical and weird, but like uh I talk about this a lot. So like I can only see out of my windshield, and you can only see out of your means. Me too, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:29

I feel this way, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Right. And so like I have no, there's just you perceived things about me already that I will never perceive about myself, right? Which is crazy. We've just met, right? Right. Um, and like with that, like I just have an immense amount of compassion for people when they are trying to to close the gap between your windshield and my windshield, and like especially like with best intentions and stuff when people are just trying. And so, like, I've never been particularly like soured by it. Um, because like at my heart, like the other thing too is like I think most people most of the time have really good intentions.

SPEAKER_03 7:04

I think most people come from a loving place. I think they usually intend to be good when I know somebody's intentionally, it's one of my favorite things is I'll ask them to repeat it. Because I'm like, are you gonna double down on going out of your way? Because it is my core belief that most people are generally good.

SPEAKER_05 7:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:20

And I also am like, most people are so busy worrying about their own stuff, yeah, that they're really not thinking about me, right? Like it feels personal in the moment to a lot of people, and I'm always like, look, that person wasn't thinking about you. They they didn't set out to like pick on the feature on your face that really bothers you. It's like, that's not about them. That's the thing you're carrying. And I'm like, no, this is just who I am, and like, okay, cool. If you don't like it, that's also fine.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Uh, was there a point at which you noticed you realize that? Because like that's like super liberating. And I think for a lot of people, it doesn't happen until you get like maybe out of your 20s, like until you get out into a to a certain point in the into the the ocean of adulthood where you're like, oh wait, nobody's really noticing. Like, I I think the uh the there's a David Foster Wallace quote that's um you'll worry less what people think about you when you realize how infrequently they do. Right. Um like when when did you realize people weren't always looking at you? It's a weird thing for me because I grew up in television, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:25

Because people were looking at you for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yeah. I was looking at you for a long time.

SPEAKER_03 8:29

Well, so I have this it's like dual parallel paths in life.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

Because there's a part of that where people are always looking, or again, they were projecting their vision of what the Roseanne show was or what DJ was, right? And then there's Michael. There's almost three, because there's like there's like DJ, then there's Michael, and then the people who are close to me usually call me fish.

SPEAKER_05 8:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:52

And that's a totally different kind of dynamic, and so much of it was based in other people's projection.

SPEAKER_05 8:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:58

So I think I got a glimpse of it early, and then I think I've been fine-tuning it over the course of my life of like, this is not nearly as personal as most people want to make it.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:08

And I think you made a great point, which is like, for me, I had kids early. So somewhere around 18, 19, I was really like, most of these people are judging me, pardon me, for shit that they don't even know anything about.

SPEAKER_05 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Right? Like, this is what I love, and that's all there is. And if people don't like that, I'm not for everybody. And there's there's a huge liberation when you stop trying to be for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. I similarly, like just the humble, the humbling nature of children. Like we're like, we have my kid in in um my first son March 2020. So pretty recent comparatively. And then also just like the the beginning of the world shutting down, right? Right. Um, and so uh just a lot going on there. Uh, but like I remember getting dressed to go out with my kid and being like putting together an outfit and like because we'd be seeing friends that we hadn't seen in a really long time, and you want to like, you know, you want to you want to impress to some degree. You want everybody to be put together, right?

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Which is normal, it's natural.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Yeah, and and my wife just being like, Oh babe, nobody is looking at you. Right. Like they're looking at this little thing that we made. Like you don't have to worry about this ever again. Right. I was like, oh yeah, that's kind of true. You know, in some ways it's like it, it uh it's super humbling, in some ways it's super liberating, where you're like, dude, nobody cares what shoes you're wearing. Like they're just looking at your cute little kid. Right. Like, and it was it was kind of an awesome moment of uh uh for of being liberated from your own perception of yourself.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

I worked on a talk show when my son was first born. So the first few months I took him to work with me, which was like the greatest thing. Super cool. But it also many spit up all over me because I was feeding him, doing all this stuff, and I it was so funny because I I'd bring extra shirts and all of the technical people were really like, you can't wear that on camera. And I'm like, I have a newborn. I'm like, I this is part of my life. And so I think early on I got that. I went to an event one time, I went to a red carpet and I put on my tux. I needed to pick up my kid. All of a sudden I'm burping him. Next thing I know, he just yaks all over the front of this tux, and they're like, What are you gonna do? And I'm like, I'm just gonna wear it. I can't go get another tux, right? Like, I'm like, it's a black tie event, so I don't have a choice of dressing down. And I remember somebody on the red carpet, like most people didn't notice. Yeah, there was one person out of all those people who was like, Oh, I think there's something, and they went and they're like, Oh, your jacket's a little wet. I'm like, Yeah, my baby spit up on it. It turned out to be the greatest part of the conversation because we talked about life as opposed to like all of the peripheral, like professional stuff.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah. And it's getting, I mean, like, yeah, again, not to divert too much, but like that that human nature, like that, the the fingerprints and the brush strokes, like that stuff is becoming so much more important these days. Um, we've perfected the art of making people look perfect. Um, and so the imperfect stuff is like what's super interesting. Like um, I think that's a lot of, you know, not to not to talk about myself too much, but that's a lot of what people connect with with what I do, is like there's no takes. Like there's no like, oh hold on, let me change what I'm wearing so that it's looks cool on camera. Like what you see is what you get. And a lot of that's just due to the nature of like life. Like I'm uh I'm full-time dad, and like as I'm making the stuff that I put up on the internet, it's not like I have it's it's not like I have time to put up a set, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 12:38

So it's not super polished, right? Like everything, I don't have time to polish everything, yeah. Like the way people would.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah, and like because of that, it's been like this really cool, and because there are people that do uh God bless them, and they put so much work into like these perfect like lies. But I think probably to some degree, the analogy that I always make is that like with content creators, which is different, very different from the world you come from, but maybe this is a similar analogy. You're like a spaghetti in a Tupperware container. And most people really, really try not to let their sauce seep into the Tupperware container, right? They're like super nervous about oh, what's gonna happen when I stain the container and everybody's gonna see how it really is. And like you can't control that. Like who you are is going to seep out into the plastic or whatever, and like that's just gonna be that's it's you have to be comfortable with that eventually because you can only hold it at bay so long.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

It's gonna happen either way. Yeah, and there also is the part for me of like nobody's grading the Tupperware, they're grading if it tastes good, yeah. Right? Like, if you make a great sauce and you make great pasta, no one is critiquing the fact that it came in Tupperware that might have been used a few times and has some stains on it. Exactly. I I think that's our preconceived notion again of perception of other people.

SPEAKER_05 13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

And it it's born out of insecurity. And I'm always that's the biggest part of this is I don't have a public persona. And I think it's part of the reason why I feel pretty healthy about my career and like this business as a whole.

SPEAKER_05 14:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

Is because where everybody else crafted a persona, I never really set out to be somebody else. And I'm so thankful because it means I don't have to carry that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Yeah. Do you think that was intentional?

SPEAKER_03 14:17

Yeah, it was well, it started with my parents because my parents never wanted me to be famous or really work in front of the world.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Well, okay.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

So they both had regular jobs. And my mom was a nurse and a teacher, and like so very, very simple, very humble, right? My dad's an immigrant, so very humble background. And when it started, my parents didn't want me to audition for anything long term. And so the universe laughed and said, Well, let's put him on a nine-year thing that changes everybody's lives. But they made me go to public school. So I never left my public school. I did that on the days and weeks I didn't work, and I took the schoolwork with me. So it forced me to always have my foot in real life. And then I actually was super lucky from the standpoint of, you know, it sounds funny, but I didn't get rich working. I got paid very minimally. It was the first thing I'd ever done. We didn't even know what we were supposed to be negotiating or arguing for. Uh-huh. So the beauty of that is when I came out of everything, and then they made the best investments they could, but they made some bad investments. Right. But the beauty of that is I came out and I still had to work. So I've worked a bunch of regular jobs and I was around real people and did real things and didn't have this persona that I had to carry through the world. This like polished, perfect thing that I was always trying to maintain or that I didn't anybody want anybody to see behind. And I was kind of like, screw it, I just am who I am. I'm weird. And the and the longer it's gone is I've kind of just leaned into that more and more. And I think it's what people relate to very much like with you, is authenticity is so valuable because I think so many people are desperately wishing they could do that.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Wow, that's that's crazy because I think so many people, it's so weird. I I so I've been in LA for most of my life. Like I grew up, uh I was born at Cedars, um, and then I my mom lived in Ohio, my dad lived in the valley, and I kind of bounced back and forth, lived in Santa Cruz for a little bit. Um, and but then I moved out when I was 18, started waiting tables. I was trying to be uh in a trying to play music.

SPEAKER_05 16:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

And and it was at that point where I had I saw this kind of phenomenon of like you're working in restaurants, you meet people who are moving to LA, it's the biggest thing they've done from wherever they are. They're trying to make it as a actor, writer, uh model, dancer, um, multi-hyphenate, whatever. And uh they've only seen the sort of uh media projection of what like people from LA are like, and so they come here and they do that version on steroids. Yeah. And uh and then they're here for six months, and then a new person comes to the restaurant, right, and they meet that person, and that person like reflects that back on this person, and that person thinks that's how it's supposed to be, and it's this wild cycle. Yes, it happens.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Watch people do this very weird transformation kind of chameleon behavior.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

And I like I grew up in this business. I was really lucky because I was close to our crew. Yeah, and our crew were just good regular people, and they were like, be you.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah. That's wild. So that's wild. That's one thing that like I like I don't know a ton about the business, but my dad um is he works in the business, but he's a sign painter.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:32

He's uh he's a union sign painter and scenic painter, right?

SPEAKER_03 17:35

Okay, which great job, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

It's a cool job.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

It's a it's a great job, and the thing is you don't get celebrated for what you do.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

As a matter of fact, I I should pick on you about that later, but um, yeah, so like there's there's that, and then you know, my my kids, friends, dads are um like second camera assistants or gaffers, or they're it's it's they're blue-collar workers, and so much of the industry is just normal folks who have jobs that happen to be making movies, making shows in entertainment. And like the majority of the industry are like normal blue collar collar, like hardworking folks. Right. And it's this weird perception of like, and that's so cool that you like, you know, you bonded with people on the uh the crew. My neighbor is uh a camera assistant, and he was talking about how he worked with Anthony Bourdain, who's one of my heroes, and he said, uh Anthony Bourdain never talked to, he was never engaging with like the talent. Like he was always with the crew, with the crew doing stuff like that. And like, you know, obviously, like I'm gonna I'm going to take, I'm gonna believe that fantasy because it totally uh validates all these ideas I have about him. Right. But like I I love that idea. Um, just normal people.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

So I do another podcast that is only designed to celebrate those people. Oh, cool. Because they don't get enough credit. It's called Fish's Call Sheet. Okay, and not like I'm not too much of a plug, but it it's particular to this is I found that those people don't get celebrated. And I hate the term actors get called talent. And I hate that term. It like literally makes my skin crawl. And because everybody I know at work has talent. And I've watched people work and I've worked in almost every department, but I did that later. And one of the things is sometimes people were like, I can't believe you're working in this department. Like, it's good, solid work. Like, there's all kinds of honor in this, and the people I know who work in this are amazing. I've never understood the people who kind of look down on it or make assumptions about it. Yeah, and so what I've really tried to do is celebrate those people, and it to me, they're some of the best people I've ever met in my whole life, and they shaped me and changed me in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Yeah, that's that's beautiful. Yeah, you know, I remember like sitting the the the day my dad got in the credits or something, and I remember sitting into the end of the movie and waiting for his name to come up on the screen. It's like, oh, that's crazy, and it's like, you know, like sign painter, whatever, like some small credit, but it was like, oh, that was it was such a big deal. Um, and then but it's what's interesting is that you tell people about like they're like, Oh yeah, my dad, uh like you know the sign at the coffee shop in Gilmore Girls, or like, oh yeah, like, yeah, my dad painted that. Yeah. And it's like, it's so and it's like his hand, his fingerprints are all over the place, you know. Um, but nobody would know his name, you know.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

But that's the thing for me is their fingerprints are everywhere and their artistry is everywhere, and you've seen it a million times, you just didn't know because you didn't have a face or a story to put with that act or that name, right? Yeah, and so for me, I'm trying to I'm trying to solve some of that in in whatever little way I can. That's great work. Because I I love those people. Those are the people who shaped me and and kept me motivated when my life fell apart, right? Like those are the people that I was thinking, those are the people I want to make proud. Like, I don't think being motivated by other people is always the best, but I do think the people you love, it's natural and healthy to want to make those people proud.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm a so I'm a firm believer that um uh everything works once and not everything works every time. Right. Sorry, everything works once and nothing works every time. Right. So uh I think we have an idea, especially how we receive media these days, is uh we people are sort of like these flat notes, like like single dimension people, where it's like you have like the inspiration guy, and then you have like the empathy guy, and then you have the and uh and so you're like, oh, I gotta be an inspiration guy. And then as soon as you f like falter or this you you wake up tired one day and you don't feel like just human? Yeah, you don't feel like getting up at 4 30 and and you know going on a run and going in a cold plunge, you're like, Oh, I'm no longer this guy. And it's like that isn't a Appropriate note for us within a melody. Right. And it's important that you have that note sometimes. But if you just listen to that note, that's not a song. And so like I think people need to, they need structure. They need to understand that, like, that there are all these varying things. So sometimes, man, it's like sometimes I'm like, if I don't lift this weight, my kids are gonna die. Totally unhealthy thing to think of. Totally weird thought to have, but I lifted the weight. You know what I mean? And it's like, okay, got through that workout. But then the next day it's like, hey, you know what? This weight's too heavy, and I don't need to lift this weight today. And that's totally fine too. It's just, it's, I think it's there are different times for different, you know, motivations. And uh we are a sum of all of those things.

SPEAKER_03 22:46

And we're all supposed to be all those things. I think this is one of the things that kind of drives me crazy is people are like, Well, you are a positive guy. And I'm like, yeah, my nature is positive and optimistic. That is natural for me, right? But that doesn't mean I've never been depressed or that I don't ever have anxiety. It doesn't mean that I don't have considerable grief. As a matter of fact, a lot of my positive stuff comes from my experiences with grief and loss. That's what gives me the perspective on life to choose happy or choose kind. I tell people all the time, I'm kind because I know what cruel looks like. And that's part of this is like you have to understand you're not supposed to be a perfect human, and there is no such thing as perfect. It's perspective-based. Because what's perfect for me wouldn't be perfect for you. If it said, what's the perfect day for you? Your plan and my plan would be different, right? The one thing I think that we would have in common for sure is like there would be some kind of interaction with other people. There definitely would be lots of family, and then there would be something that sparks our interest or our like our fascination of the world, right? Those I those I know already from the limited time we've spent together. But to say I know what yours looks like or that mine is perfect and yours is not, is such a flawed view. I think the reality is perfection is perspective based. And like what's perfect for me is different for somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Yeah, totally. There's uh there's an Emerson quote that these roses bear no resemblance to uh roses uh in the past, that these roses are beautiful on their own, in their own thing, and they don't need to be compared to other roses, right? And like I like if the roses, if if not the roses, what else, right? Like if if if if it's not the rose, it's the person. And the person is beautiful and perfect in them in themselves and not necessarily in comparison to any other people, right? And I think that that's like such a a such a rich way and freeing way to like see the world for sure.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Talk to me about this week in fatherhood.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Because I love that. Okay, yeah, like it's like magic for me. And if and for people who don't know from your social media, like this week in fatherhood, like I literally crave those. My kids are grown.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

So there's a part of it for me, I'm looking back because your kids are young or younger, they're growing fast. Yeah. But like I have all adult kids. So I'm looking at this and it's almost a second look at childhood because I love the conversations. Talk about this week in fatherhood.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Oh, I'm so glad it resonates with you. Uh, and thank you for asking me about it. I was making videos on TikTok. Um, like I was putting out content every day for like a year. I was slowly growing this following over there. And one day I had nothing to write about. And I had actively avoided talking about fatherhood. Right. I had actively avoided becoming because I was like, I'm growing a thing here. I there's a lot of stuff in the like content creator space around parenting that I don't want to be. Right. Um and so I was like, okay, what if we just talk about your experience? Like your experience as a dad. Got nothing else to do. Video doesn't do well, it doesn't do well. It's just how it goes. And if it does do well, then uh okay, then it then it does well. And like it's there's nothing to lose. Right. And um, I posted a video that started with a series of prompts like This Week in Fatherhood. Um, and I think the kind of the first one to blow up the line was um it was something to the effect of like I had to stop my or uh I tried to stop my son from um licking a nine-volt battery. Um, but like uh he ended up doing it on the wrong end. So I'm 100% sure he's gonna do that shit again. And uh and that line itself like just brought so many people in. And then the next line was, you know, something very personal and and real about the life. And I thought this, like, anyways, that video got like millions of views overnight, and it was just like, oh, wow, okay, this is a perspective that people are interested in. Give me a week, I'll do another one. And it's uh it's been that way for every week for actually next weekend it'll be three years. That's amazing, yeah, yeah. And so like I'm a firm believer that like I tell people this a lot, is that I'm I'm not an expert in anything other than my own experience. And uh therefore I can give you I can give you what my experience is, and I can be an expert in that. And so that's kind of what I try to provide people with. And I think that there is um there's sort of this, it's like liberating thing about um that this is so, this is so whatever. I have a quadrant in my head, like a matrix. Great. And it goes from um incredibly relatable to totally unrelatable, uh, and then um totally broad to totally specific. And in the uh relatable and broad, you have like political propaganda. In the like um uh unrelatable and broad, you have like corporate jargon. In the very specific and unrelatable, you have absurdism, and then in the upper right, very, very relatable and very specific, you have art. Yes, you have really, really good art, which requires you to be incredibly personal and vulnerable and tell people the little intricacies that only you think you know. And it is through those that people see themselves. And it's through those that people feel comfort and they they feel seen. And so this week in Fatherhood is specifically built around those intricate details of my personal experience, which seems to be this incredibly liberating thing for people to be like, that guy is just talking about dino nuggets. Um and I screen time, dino nuggets. Exactly, like all of that stuff. And it's been this like really wild trip because I never I never intended it to, I never intended it to be a series, I never intended it to be a big thing. Um, I just took my lens the way I see the world, and I'm like, what if we just point it at this thing, which happens to be like I'm kind of pointing it at myself, right? And uh it's been it's super, super cool.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

I want to live in that quadrant. Yeah. In that upper right quadrant. I want to live in the art quadrant.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:18

It was such a struggle for me growing up with very like super logical parents, because it was like, well, you're supposed to do these things. So it took me forever to like accept, okay, I'm gonna be an artist, I'm gonna lead with my heart, I'm gonna walk like this whole concept of like, I'm gonna talk to really fascinating people and just open myself wide open. My family's like, what's wrong with you and why would you do that? Right. But I love that section because I think art is where people connect. And I'm gonna I'm gonna pick on you for one that's very specific to me, which is your son is the photographer. Because my daughter was my photographer, and now 20 years later, she's working partially as a photographer.

SPEAKER_05 30:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:00

But also, some of the best memories we have are because she took pictures that I never would have, and they're from a little perspective.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's uh it's funny, yeah. I mean, just the the things that the kids are gonna do with the camera are uh are unique and novel and not particularly like concerned with. I mean, they're just at some degree they're kind of like copying us, and then at other degree they're just seeing things for the first, literally seeing things for the first time. So yeah, when I hand my kids a camera or my phone or whatever, uh it's it's remarkable. And then like there is that like um that from like a more philosophical standpoint where you're like, oh yeah, like you are my documentarian. Right. And so like I do want to empower you with the the notion that your point of view and your observations matter in this context because like uh because they do. I mean, like, because like you're gonna be the person to those little worlds that we talked about at the top of this conversation, like you're gonna own this little world someday. Yeah, and I want you to feel that pressure right now, but I want to I wanna like you know give you the skills and the confidence to know that you that's what you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

Yeah. Yeah, you've been writing. I think you said you've been writing for decades, right? Yeah. And I loved the thing you said about AI. Does this resonate with you? Yeah. Okay, talk about what you've created and how AI is essentially listening.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Oh, yeah. So I'm 42, born in 1983. Right. Um, you're a few years older, but we both live kind of in the same generation where we uh lived before the internet, and then through our formative, like really the years as we're spiraling into adulthood, the internet is coming into being. And so not only did we learn how to learn the internet, but uh not only did we learn the internet, but we learned how to learn the internet, which means that you and I and people in our generation have a unique skill that we know how to we know how to roll with the punches a little bit more. Like Gen Gen Z, like digital natives, but they didn't have that moment where they had to change everything. Right. And right now we're at one of these weird moments where um AI is is coming into to be a big player, and I I don't think that there is a healthy amount of skepticism around it. And yeah, so like so I I have been, yeah, my I was a professional copywriter and content writer and creative director for 15 years. Um, before that, I mean I've been blogging on the internet since the internet existed, and so I literally wrote the models that the AI is using to create copy. Like the M-dash is like the telltale sign, right? People are like, oh, there's an M-dash in this chunk of copy that's like the telltale sign of ChatGPT. And I'm like, I can show you um like style guides that I made for brands with M-dashes from like 2011. Right, right? Well, the computer didn't do that on its own, right? And so like it becomes this weird thing where you're like, no, like I'm not using AI. AI is using me. 100%. And like it's also, but here's the other end is that people are not wrong to have that distrust. Because there's when you have the tool, um it alienates you from the process of making the thing, which is hard and it has its own joy, the joy of making something, right? And bringing it into the world. And when all your when art is reduced to just the product and it's removed from all of the process that makes it, then um one can just assume that everything is fake. Yes. Because why would you do the hard work if you've never experienced the joy of doing the hard work? And so like that's a lot of like while I I so this is this rooted in, I wrote this essay and made some videos around this, around somebody accusing me of using AI for a script. Right. And like the script, like the video is it's it's wild because it is a deeply personal story about my dad's journey to sobriety. Yes, yes, about like uh all of these kind of like about my experience as a father, like really intricate, intimate details. And so on that end, I'm like, I'm I'm sad.

SPEAKER_03 34:38

It makes me sad to think that one would assume that that that's just AI created and that you're gonna pass it that way. Yeah. Like those aren't your real experiences.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Yes, and it's sad to me to think that a person who would believe that that's the way you make art. Right. And it's like, ah, like, I don't know. It's it's just it's it's a devastating.

SPEAKER_03 35:03

It's a struggle for me because I think that's part of the part of like you're never gonna make amazing, like there will be good, but it can't be the same level of I think amazing art from AI. It's one of the things that I think gives artists some hope. Is the reality that you have to feel it. And I think one thing that's unique in our generation is we played video games where you had to go back to the beginning. Yeah. You didn't there was no map that told you where to go. They didn't give you a line that you could follow. And everything was a bit of a freeform problem solve. So we're kind of geared towards that. Yeah. And I think it's a really fascinating thing, too, is like, you know, we didn't have an answer for all of these things when we first started the internet. When you would first do dial-up and all these things, and you had to wait for it to get it, it didn't even always go through, right? It wasn't like you could just turn it on and access stuff. Yeah. And that's a different perspective, I think, than for young people who've grown up and it's just a universal. It's on your phone, you take it with you.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

That's really interesting that I think I hadn't thought about before is we knew it when it didn't work.

SPEAKER_03 36:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

And so, like, they've never known it when it didn't work.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

Right. It's just normal to them. And I'm like, no, no, for us, it was experimental and like there were times it failed, and you you I don't know, map something or whatever, and you're like, that's wrong, or every once in a while you'd turn it, it would be a dead end, and you couldn't look at the map to reroute you.

SPEAKER_05 36:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:28

You printed it out on a piece of paper and you're like, okay, what do I know about these to be true?

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah right?

SPEAKER_03 36:34

Like I'm an old school, I I miss the Thomas Guides, right? Where you would like flip through because the best part of a Thomas Guide was I started to realize what was around the thing I wanted to do. It wasn't just point A to point B. And I worry that this generation, everything is point A to point B. So it's get from here to the finish line. Yeah. And like life is the adventure in between.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Well, that's what's crazy. Like, my my wife will be like, uh, she's like, I'll have an appointment in Santa Monica. And she's like, Oh, she's from uh Phoenix. And she's like, Okay, cool. Like, how long is it gonna take you to get there? I'm like, that'll take me an hour to an hour and a half, yeah. She's like, You haven't m mapped it out yet? I'm like, no, no, no, I'm just gonna take 101. If there's traffic on the 101, then I get off and I get off Sepulveda, and then you know, if it's not 10, take the Venice, and then and like I have like this whole route of getting around LA in my head, and she's like, That's uh that's incredible. And I'm like, that's because I never had a phone.

SPEAKER_03 37:29

And that was normal.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:31

People were always like, how do I get to this place? And I'm like, You want to take the freeway? You don't want to take the freeway? Like, I there are options here, yeah, and that's a totally different experience. You know, it was one of the things when my daughter started driving, I took the phone away. And there were a bunch of times where I'm like, I'm gonna drive, and then you're gonna look, and then I'm gonna sit in the passenger seat. You can have the map when I'm not around, right? Yeah, but I want you to start looking because also you get this thing where you drive a really long way, and I don't know if you've experienced this where you like drive a long way and you get there and you're like, I don't remember anything about this drive, which is like I was deep in thought and but slightly terrified because like I was really efficient as a driver, but my brain was clearly somewhere else because I was only looking for the one exit. I missed a whole world in between, yeah. And I'm and and somewhere I'm like, I'm I don't know what I went in a time warp and may have lost some time. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

I mean, that's yeah, like I I'm that guy, like I'm always like my wife's like, oh, he's in the zone, yeah, he's gone. And like I'm like, I'm having a conversation, I'm doing all these things, and there's all kinds of times where I'm like, I get up from my desk and I find myself at my son's school to pick him up, and I'm like, I have no recollection of the journey here. Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Right.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

And I'm like, I know I was safe, and I like nobody honked at me, so I clearly was not creating drama in the in the process, but there is a part of like, I think that's the thinker, that's the artist mind.

SPEAKER_05 38:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:57

And I love it, but there's also times where I'm like, whoa, I probably need to be very specific on the way home. Right?

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:04

Okay, I'm gonna ask you about something personal. Sure. Can I ask you about Ellen Day?

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Oh, yeah, yeah. March 13th is a very special day for my family. Um, years before my mom passed away, um, she was having a rough patch. My mom was uh involved in the photo industry a lot. So she was did a lot of things. She was a producer, she repped artists, um, she did a lot of stuff in that space, but she like her last full-time gig was probably in like 2012, and she was a freelancer from then on out. And so, you know, freelance is feast or famine.

SPEAKER_03 39:38

Feast or famine and always surging.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

Yes. And so, you know, when you get dry months and you've got a mortgage and things are pretty rough, and uh my stepdad, uh my mom was running through one of these phases, and my stepdad hit me up and he's like, Hey, you know, your mom's having a hard time. I think we should do something to cheer her up. And so we came up with the idea of having a made-up holiday. Yeah, and like my mom loved stuff like that. Like she just uh loved, I mean, this is a great example of like why this is so much better than AI. Uh, is like she loved knowing that people were like doing something, like tinkering and working and then surprising her. So uh on the morning of March 13th, the first one, um, we presented her a plaque that we made uh that like commemorated the first happy, we called it the happy Ellen Day of the holiday. And then um surprised her with that, and then it had a whole agenda of things that she could do that day. And it was like nothing crazy, it was like things that we could do on a budget, um, but mostly things that like are the kind of special moments that you have with people that you love that you don't take time to do all the time when you're like busy and worrying and stuff like that. And especially when you're looking for work, because when you're looking for work, you're like, I need to be looking for work from like the time my head lifts off the pillow to the falls back on the pillow because you're so stressed out. It's like, hey, let's just have a day. And um, and she it worked, it was a total hit. Um, and then uh it was maybe too much of a hit because at midnight uh or whatever, at the end of the day, um, she tells my stepdad and I like cannot wait to celebrate again next year, which is when my stepdad and I realized, like, we're gonna be doing this shit every day for the rest of the day. Right, right. Right. Yeah. Uh and then uh my mom passed away uh in January of 2018, um, about I think 58 days before the first Happy Ellen Day after she would have passed away. And so um my stepdad and I had this um this sort of reckoning with like, well, what do we do with this? Um, because it's a special day for us. And there I if you've ever mourned somebody, there are these days on the calendar where you're like, you just dread those days. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_03 41:45

I I schedule them out, I tell people ahead of time. Yeah, like I just won't be around. There's like June 6th is one of those days for me, right? Yeah, November 7th is one of those days. Like I have and I tell people. And sometimes I'll apologize to people in advance because I'm like, I'm not gonna be around tomorrow, or if I'm short with you tomorrow, just understand I'm I'm just working through it.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Yeah, yeah. And so my stepdad and I sort of decided that there were plenty of sad days and that uh happy Ellen Day, we we needed a good day. We deserved a good day, it became our holiday. And so uh from there we just opened it up to anybody else who wanted to celebrate. And so it kind of became just among her friends in our family, like this thing. And like I get friends who text me in the morning, happy Ellen Day, pictures of them having a glass of wine, whatever it is. And so I I when I started building a platform, I was like, I think I'm gonna give this day to other people as well.

SPEAKER_05 42:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

And like it's not a massive thing, but you know, there are there are people who DM me uh the morning of who've done it for like I've you know been a social media presence for like three years now, and so who they've they've gone through three happy Helen days and they'll text me on the morning and be like, it's in my calendar, we're gonna do something special today. And so, yeah, it's it's this it's this really cool day. And I think I think more people need a reason to just have a day, and so we're happy to give them one.

SPEAKER_03 43:12

Yeah, I I wanted to bring this up because I hope people will create their own day, right? Yeah, like you can celebrate Ellen Day, and I think it's beautiful when people send you messages. Yeah, you don't have to take my day, right? Celebrate whoever it is in your life. We talked earlier about being the historian of like pick your pick your person. Maybe it's a grandparent who's been gone for a long time, right? Maybe it's your loved one, maybe it's just you guys as you are, but pick your day and make holidays. I think it's strange that we don't do more of that. And I was like, I'm almost mad at myself as somebody who feels pretty conscientious and like celebrates life. I was like, yeah, we don't have an L and Day. Like, like I I missed that. So it's a gift you gave me.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Ah, that I'm glad. And and yeah, do it, do with it what you will. Okay. Mom would have. Liked it that way. So yeah, I mean, I'm if you can find some joy in it, it's yours. Yeah. And it's anybody, anybody who's listening for sure. Yeah, find your find your day.

SPEAKER_03 44:08

Let me ask you about your mom. Is that okay? Oh, of course. Okay. So I know there's a big day. We'll get to your mom's part, but talk about January 18th, 2018.

unknown 44:19

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 44:20

Because that was like a like a life-changing day for you, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Yeah. So uh January 18th, 2018, um, I I was flying on a plane on the way back home from s seeing my mom pass away. Um, she was at um Aventus Hospital in Pasadena, and I lived in uh the Bay Area, and as I'm as the my plane is descending and lands in Oakland, my phone lights up with a bunch of notifications for my coworkers, and they're I they weren't sending me condolences, they uh were asking me if I had made the cut because while the plane was in the air, a third of the company that I work for um had been laid off. And um my my boss was one of those messages, and I called him immediately, and he had the really, really hard job of telling me that I didn't have a job anymore uh four days after my mom passed away um on a day that was uh January 18th. I always remember it's because it's my wife's birthday. Right. I was supposed to get married in six months, seven months from then. And like I didn't have a job, I didn't have um a mom, I didn't have a plan. Um, it was a really, really hard day for me. Um, and the story goes uh is that I, you know, I did have jiu-jitsu the next morning.

SPEAKER_03 45:44

I this is this I yeah, and I want to hear the quote because I think this is so huge for people.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Um, and so uh I had jujitsu the next morning and I I was unsure how to go because sometimes um when you're grieving and you something really heavy happened to you, you know that your presence means something. Like you walk into a place and you're like, I'm just gonna bum everybody out, like I'm gonna ruin the mood. And um it was it was a pretty slow class, it was a 7 a.m. class um in the financial district in San Francisco. And um I my so as a result, there's not a lot of people there. My professor at the time was like, Hey, do you want to do you want to spar with me? And I was like, Yeah, of course. And so we spar, and it's a pretty lopsided uh game of human chess. He kind of hands me my ass as he that's jujitsu. Yeah um and afterwards he puts his hand on my shoulder and he just says, Blake, this is a good place for your pain.

SPEAKER_03 46:35

Yeah. I I that line it's such a beautiful line, and I think it's the thing that we can give each other in those moments, right? Like, this is a good place for your pain.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Yeah. Yeah. Uh and it and it was. I mean, I uh you know, I'm I'm now a black belt in jujitsu, I now teach uh not far from here, um, and it it has been an incredible place uh for that. Um but also just uh having someone how do I put this like having someone accept you as you are in that moment and just like just be with you and let you know uh yeah, it j that this is a safe space for you, that you know, you don't have to you don't have to be anyway that you're not here uh is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. There's a there's an idea, and like I I'm happy to be this guy in the jujitsu community. There's an idea of what jujitsu is, and there's a lot of very popular people in this community that um present a certain persona. Um I and I say this all the time. I think the the reason why people are like, oh jujitsu saved my life, jujitsu saved my life. I'm like, my my guy, having friends saved your life. We live in a society in which uh we're we're really alienated from people, so so especially like middle-aged men, uh men, you know, north of 30, there's there aren't a lot of opportunities for us to, and especially once we striff families, um, we just get really alienated from social connections. Uh the author Sebastian Younger says uh people don't mind hardship. What they mind is feeling unnecessary, and that modern society has perfected the art of making us feel unnecessary. Um, and what's great about jujitsu is if it doesn't matter if you're good, if you're bad, uh, so long as you're a good person and you relatively smell okay, um that you people care about you. Right. People want to know why you didn't come to class. They ask you about your your newborn, they ask you uh how your wife's health is, they they check in on you. And it's not that it's particularly like I think there's some magic to jujitsu, but I don't think that's it. I think there's some magic to community, and that is a place where community is still alive. And there are other places, but it's rare.

SPEAKER_03 48:52

It is, and I think we need to grow them. I I have this belief that like people heal in community. And I have an online community that is a mental health space, which is just literally it's 100% free, where people just show up and we do lives like once or twice a week, and I just check in with people and they ask about whatever they want to ask about. We talk about topics that are going on in the world because there aren't enough places in the world where we do that, where we open each other up and we share with each other. I think jujitsu has this beautiful there's the overlap of being both physical and mental. And then I also think there is a direct connection because you can feel where someone's going or that someone's gonna do something. You can also feel when people are really like tight-namped versus like the person who's really calm.

SPEAKER_05 49:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:40

And there's nothing more frustrating than like, you know, you're trying to do the human chest thing, and the person is so calm and you're like, they already know where I'm going, right? Like when you when the master is like doing it and you're like, oh, like, okay, I'm gonna you're like, no, he's three moves ahead of me.

SPEAKER_02 49:55

Like, and I'm gonna end up upside down or wrapped up in a and then you're like, yeah, it happened.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, it's like the the physical connection, I think, is really important too. I don't people don't do that enough these days. And certainly, you know, the last, you know, since I think the the pandemic was a really big moment for people just being so physically alienated. It's interesting, actually. My uh my wedding, uh my dad and I were uh sort of estranged for a little bit. Um, and then uh sort of around the time that my mom passed away and getting married and having kids, we you know, we we refound our relationship, but my dad was at my wedding, and uh he's like it's he said, You touch me so much. And I'm like, I I do. He's like, Yeah, I didn't realize that you like you touch people so much. And I was like, Yeah, that's a thing I do. And um, it's I think you know, within with consenting adults. Yes, yes, um, but uh and he's like it's so like disarming. I feel I wish I would have touched you more, which was a beautiful thing for him to say. My dad's a very loving, warm person, but he's just uh he's also very respectful of all of that stuff. And so I it was it was like this thing where it's like I didn't know that I was that kind of person. Like, but yeah, like it's uh it's I think touching is really it can be really important. Um I hope that clip doesn't get taken out of contact.

SPEAKER_03 51:18

No, no, I think I think it's really important. Like touch is such a powerful thing. Yeah, there's a connection that almost words can't speak sometimes, and we don't, especially as men. Like I was raised in a house where like my dad is not affectionate, right? He's an old school, old world, basically never tell you that I love you, never tell you what you did right guy. Like he's one of those really old guys. And the thing about that is, I didn't realize how much I wanted my kids to have a different experience as much as I just knew I wanted them to feel it different. My dad had this philosophy he used to tell everybody when I was a kid, which was kids need three hugs a day. And I was like, yeah, but my siblings get three hugs a day, and my cousins who came to live with us got three hugs a day. I can only remember two hugs in my entire childhood. Yeah. And like, I was like, and I would hear him say this to the world, and be like, What am I doing wrong as a kid? You start to internalize that and go, What am I doing wrong that I'm not getting that, right?

SPEAKER_05 52:23

Ah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:24

But I was raised to be the soldier, like that was his mindset, right? He was trying to train me to be the next person to have to take over things and lead things. So he was trying to make me tough.

SPEAKER_05 52:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

And we lose this idea of tough, it turns into like almost toxic masculinity, right? Versus healthy masculinity, where you're like, yeah, I can be a person. It's why I tell people, thank, thank goodness I worked on a set where everybody was in theater and everybody hugged each other a million times a day. Because that's where I got that part of me from. And I think, especially when you're raising young boys, society has started to teach us not to roughhouse, not to do these things. They get in trouble at school if they wrestle a little or whatever. It's like a hands-free zone. But that's not the nature of little boys, and I think you create little isolated soldiers who don't want to touch.

SPEAKER_00 53:15

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's you know, it is a weird, um it is it's a hard thing to navigate for sure. Uh, because you want them to be confident and saying no all the time and like creating these like weird boundaries doesn't create that confidence. Um, and then you also want them to be able to understand the scale. Um, so like like this is soft, this is not soft, and there's a lot of space in between, and you should know the gradients of uh intensity in terms of like if you're gonna be playing with somebody. Um, and then yeah, then it's just like manifests in like weird, probably unhealthy ways, right? If like it's not like given its its own space, like anything, right? Like anything that isn't given its own healthy space to uh do its thing festers into something terrible. So uh yeah, no, I I definitely uh it's a weird thing with kids, especially with our generation, right? Because like we're the first, I think we're some of the first people that have a vocabulary around some of this stuff. Yes. And also like you're we're trying not to raise, we're trying to raise good men, right? Good, especially raising boys. Um and it's our models for bad men are very bad and often rewarded.

SPEAKER_03 54:36

Yeah, like which is part of it for me too, is I'm like, it's really hard for me to teach young men not to behave a certain way when they feel like those people are winning.

SPEAKER_05 54:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:47

Because I'm I'm basically saying, hey, this this person who's doing immoral things is also reaping the benefit of some of those things. Yeah. So I'm asking you to take a much harder path. And not all I mean, I coach kids for 26 years, like and receiving them from somebody else's household, right? I don't get to make all the rules. I don't send you home to the environment where I know where it is, right? So I can only give you there's boundaries, right? How much I can teach you, and then how do you teach someone? Yes, that's working right now, but long term that's not the right way.

SPEAKER_00 55:26

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it goes back to what we're talking about with AI art, right? Where it's like, oh man, like I I want to teach you the the joy of the process, right? Because I think process is where the that's where the love is. Like that's why we make art. Um it's the same thing, yeah, when when it comes to doing anything that's difficult, right? Like uh making the right choice is rewarding in a way that is not always gonna be financially lucrative, you know. Um, yeah, it's hard. It's uh that's a tough one.

SPEAKER_03 55:59

I also think the physical nature of it too, right? Yeah, because I don't think you're really um you're not a good man if you're like completely secondary or if you're easy, right? You have to have a little edge and a little danger to you, because I think every good man will fight for or die for the things he loves. Like you have to have some portion of that. And I think societally we've started to kind of try and strip that out of people because I think the extreme, we saw the damage of the extreme on the other side. But if you're not capable of standing your ground, if you don't have any physical skills, if you've never trained any kind of like I came from a martial arts background, right? If you've never had any of that training, I think it makes you more abusive. Because there's part of being in a dojo or being in a in a space like that is there's an expectation of respect, and there's an expectation, like you talked about before, of limiting force, right? How much do you apply? Yeah, like I'm not going to to destroy someone. We're training. That's a different thing.

SPEAKER_00 57:02

Yeah, it also like, well, I mean, there are a lot of benefits to martial arts, I you know, but to some degree, it really takes away the emotion out of violence. So, like, to be able, or I guess the emotion out of like being physical with somebody. So with jujitsu, you know, my stepdad can't watch me train. He can't because he's never done it. Right. And he it makes him, he gets a visceral feeling and he needs to protect me, right? And um, and I'm like, oh, what's happening here is so far removed from anything like that. And so it allows you to sort of put things in their buckets. Um, and it also shows you how little being capable of physical violence matters.

SPEAKER_05 57:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 57:54

Like in the real scheme of things. Like, of course, it's good to be able to like this saying is like, you know, I'd rather be uh I'd rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener at war. If uh if you're incapable of violence then you're not non-violent, you're just at the mercy of people who are, you know, who are not being violent towards you. Right. Right. And so it's like this whole, there's a whole like line of logic, what I which I I to some degree subscribe to.

SPEAKER_03 58:16

Bits and pieces of, right? Which totally makes sense. But it's not a universal either.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

Yeah. And I but I also think like to be, yes, to uh there is a certain there's a certain confidence that's important to have, that just to know that you have it if you need it, um, that changes the way it makes you, it just makes you more comfortable in situations and it makes you less, less mean, less insecure, more kind to know what that is is like, to know what what sort of real physical violence feels like, to be like, oh wow, I just never want to incorporate this. Like I never I never want to include or uh be pushed up against this in my life. Like this is this is a terrible thing, so I avoid it at all costs, right? Knowing full well what it's actually gonna be like if it ever happens and that I'm capable of dealing with it.

SPEAKER_03 59:08

Yeah, and I think there's a strength that comes from that that you don't feel the need to assert yourself. And I think like most bullies were bullied.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:19

Right? Like, and that's one of the things we don't talk about enough, is it's usually a really hurt and damaged person who's passing it on because it's the only semblance of some kind of control or strength that they feel like they have because it was stolen from them. Oh, yeah. And so I think that's one of the beauties of training, which is it's not that you're gonna be able to solve everything. And I'm like, I'm like, prefer to walk away, right? Most of these we don't need to engage in. And I think that's one of the best parts of training. But there is something beautiful about like people are less aggressive when they train, they're they're less forced, and they are less reactionary too, because there's certain things like, okay, your hand's on me, but your hand's not a threat, right? Because I have a concept of what a threat is.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:03

Yeah, yeah. The river softens the stone. Yeah. For sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:07

Alright, I'm gonna ask you a hard one.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:09

Okay. Talk to me about your mom. Because I know that she's a huge part of your life.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:15

You feature her so well, you do a great job of being a historian.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

But that has to be such a hard process.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:23

Yeah. Um it is, and it can be, you know, the most the most recent way I've been able to like articulate this is like uh um part of like what my job is here now. I I and this is this being said, like I never thought I was gonna have kids. Never thought I was gonna get married, um, until like until it was kind of in in the mix and happening. But once I had kids, I had this really cool realization that like part of what my job is to do is like my mom is not here to extend her hand, so I can be the person to like take her hand and take my kids' hands and put them together, right? And so, like, so much of what I do around that is like allowing them to touch, to have some kind of connection. Uh, my mom was awesome. She was, I mean, uh, I mean, huge Springsteen fan, uh, like I mean, born in 1960. So, like at her, she lived in a rural farm in Arkansas, and she just had like records and Coca-Cola and cigarettes that she stole from her mom. And so she would just um, I always say this, like, pretty much every three years there was a Springsteen record that perfectly like punctuated where she was in her development. So you can go back and be like, you know, greetings from Ashbury Park or, you know, Nebraska, or like, you know, all of them, they all kind of like have this this you could see parallels in my mom's life. No, she was awesome. She moved to LA when she was pretty young and met my dad. Um uh they had me, which was obviously the most important part of her life. Uh no, and she, my mom gave up a lot. Like she was a beautiful young woman who um, you know, could have been, could have been on the other side of the camera um easily that we have all of her old headshots and stuff like that. But when she when she had a kid, she just was like, okay, I'm gonna figure this all out, and didn't have a college degree, um, and uh very much sort of like bootstrapped her way through like motherhood and adulthood and having a career in the photo industry. Um that was tough at that time period too that people don't really fully grasp.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:39

When when you were talking about that, I was like, man, you really had to be strong. Yeah because women did not get as many opportunities and the business was not aligned.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:48

For sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:49

So to to bootstrap through that, like I I see some of that strength in you. It makes perfect sense to Ah yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:57

I mean, and like, you know, candidly, like we were never really we were never really well off. You know, I didn't want to like punish you too much, but like the the show you were on when you were a kid was like really important to me, like massively important to me because I saw a household that looked a lot more like my household than uh the other ones that were on TV. And like, yeah, because I don't want to punish you too much, but like that was like a that's kind of where we were. Um, especially like we had an extended family of characters that were like, you know, this is your your auntie Beth, and like Beth isn't in a blood relation, she's just you know your auntie, and like you like these people in your life that were just kind of these other adults that kind of took care of you as a kid, and it was um, yeah, you know, we we we worked hard, we struggled, um, we didn't have everything that we wanted, but I think we had there was like something beautiful in that, you know, um, and definitely connected us and bonded us a lot more. Um, but my mom was super young. She had me when she was 23. There were times when our, especially like my teenage years, where we were much closer to friends in some degree, probably in, you know, not the most healthy way, um, than we were to like, you know, a parent kid. Um, but she definitely, you know, huge, huge mentor to me. It's like it was it's really hard, especially now having kids, where you're like, I'm sure you don't know if you went through this. I think most parents do, just how humbling it is when you realize that your parents were in the same position you were. Yeah. And like you're like, oh man, like especially my mom, like she was a baby and she had me. Like, and the things that I was dealing with as a 38-year-old, you know, a 37, 36-year-old, like she was dealing with this also with like massive financial insecurity and just coming into her own in the world, and like again, in an industry that was probably working pretty hard against her her gender, and you know, yeah, it's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:02

Yeah, I I had kids early. I thought I was gonna be like you. Uh, everybody I knew, because I knew George Clooney when he was young, everybody thought I was gonna be like George. Like I'd be 40, 45, and be like, oh, I probably should have had kids at some point here, and then meet the right person. And then I started raising my little brother, and then I met my ex-wife and I had kids. So I had kids at 18.

unknown 1:05:24

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:25

And so what's crazy is then the world's just gonna trip out when I say this because I'm gonna make everybody feel old. But I just became a grandpa, and I'm in my early 40s, right? So, like, it's a very weird thing. But I'm watching my son with his son, and he's 26, and I'm having this realization like I had an eight year old, I was raising at 26, I was raising a 15 year old, an eight year old. Uh, one of my brother's friends lived with us, and then I had a five year old. And we people have this assumption about what life is like. I was so Lucky growing up on the show because what was happening in front of the camera in many ways was how a lot of the people around me were living. You know, I came to that show with patches on my knees and like pants that you know my mom would figure out a way to make them last. Every bike I ever had before I worked was a hand-me-down. So they were all pink or purple. Every every birthday we'd be like, please let them pick purple, right? Like, because my older sister and my older cousin, we knew that bike was coming to us because there was no chance of getting a new one. And then I go and work in Hollywood, which gave me this vision of all this other stuff and the potential. And I watched people who really had a lot of wealth and a lot of resources. And then I went back to being a very basic, you know, the only way I survived as a parent was kind of cutting everything out. So all of that is so relatable to me. And, you know, some of those lessons from that show I stole along the way and they became even more powerful for me as an adult.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:00

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:01

And being a young adult and having kids, like when you were talking about your mom, my whole thing has always been, I'll know if I did a good job as a parent if my kids come back and spend time with me when they get the choice. And that's kind of how I've evaluated it. So to see my kids in their 20s as adults, like I have three weeks off. Is it okay if I come home? I'm like, you don't ever have to ask if it's okay to come home, right? Like, I want you home. Yeah. But that's such a unique thing. And there's a beauty in being friendly with your parents and being able to do stuff, fun stuff. Because I didn't really have that. My parents were older, right? So, like, my dad was very serious. So I tried really hard to be the playful. I think you get kids when you're supposed to.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

Yeah. I think that's true too. And what I've noticed is that like my kids so much more fill the like I people are like, oh yeah, like what are you doing for, or like, how are you making sure that your kid does this, this, this, and this. And I'm like, yeah, look, he's kind of a person. Like, he's kind of a I there are things that I do, and I can maybe shift him five degrees to the right, five degrees to the left. We can course correct the real big stuff, but like he's his he's doing his thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:12

And they are who they are. Yeah, yeah. And like it was funny because like my my second was like, you know, when we had our first, it was during like said the pandemic, and we just uh and work was really slow for me. I was running it in my own um marketing agency at the time, and like all my clients kind of dried up during the pandemic, and I was like, it was really scary, but I had infinite time to be like dad, right? And my wife was the same thing, she was on maternity leave, and so uh, and then she ended up extending her leave, and um, and so we were like, we lived and died by like the baby schedule, and it ends up kind of biting us in the ass because like now my kid really is like he has to have his schedule, he has to have things a certain way, and because of that, he filled so much of our time that when I had a second, I was like, I don't know how we're gonna have time to manage another kid. And like he has completely just filled whatever space was available to him, right? And and asked for no more. And I was like, that is amazing how they do that. Like they it's it's like some kind of alchemy where like the kids just know this is how much space I have to fill, this is how much space I'm gonna take up. I'm gonna take up all of it, but just the space. So yeah, it's been it's been pretty wild.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:26

Yeah, it's it's and they're all different, yeah. Right, which is like such a lesson because you're like, I'm trying to kind of be the same parent in certain aspects, but the reality is I'm not the same parent to each kid because they're not the same people. That's true. And so I'm like, okay, and like I I just need to make sure I'm consistent enough that I'm not totally gonna be yelled at too much in therapy because I know I'm I'm gonna get judged on this later anyway, which is always like okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:53

If you could do it differently, would you do it differently? Would you have waited to have them? Would you is there any way you would have changed the the schedule?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:01

No. Okay. Um and because I I really do believe we get kids when we're supposed to. We get the kids we're supposed to when we're supposed to. And and I, to me, kids are sacred. Um, I have my two biological kids that I had so early in life, and then I adopted adult kids later. Every, you know, of the five kids that have come into my life full time, and even all the ones that came through the house, they all were with us when they were supposed to. And what I've tried to do is be the best version of me and be really honest when I screw it up. Because the truth is we all screw it up, and you have the day where you're like, oh, like I didn't need to be that hard on that.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:38

Or man, I didn't totally understand. Or I corrected them and then I realized, no, actually, the kid had a really good point, and I might have had it wrong, right? They might have had a better perspective on this. And and the one thing I think I've done a great job is going back and saying, hey, like my policy with kids is if we disagree, I pray you prove me wrong every time. And I'm on your team either way. So my kids know that's gonna show up no matter what. And so I think there's a bit of a superpower in that from the standpoint of they're free to go and do whatever they want. So my kids left at 18 and like, which was really hard, but it was also like mission accomplished.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:23

Then I would tell you, are there things I do different? Probably there's little things I do, but overall I feel like the lessons I learned were the lessons I was supposed to. So, like, I I kind of just go, I have two beautiful, healthy kids, right? Now I have four kids, right? This is a beautiful gift. I I don't think I would do it any other way. I think um if I started over now, yeah, the advantage would be I'm way calmer and like way more disciplined. I have so much more knowledge to give.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:52

But maybe not quite as much energy.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:54

Yeah. That's an interesting way to look at it. Yeah. You get them when you get them when you're supposed to.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:59

Yeah, and and I think they match who you are. Like my son came out, my son's not a talker, and my dad's not a talker. And obviously, I'm a bit of a talker, right? So that was a lesson for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:12

And I spent the first half, we used a joke, I spent the first half of my life trying to talk to my dad, and then I spent the next half of my life trying to talk to my son. But the beauty of the communication now is like, okay, I changed that generational line, right? We were at dinner, um, he brought the baby down because he lives up north. And it's the first time I meet my grandson, and my my dad's there, and my dad has this moment where he's like, There's four generations of us at the table. And I'm like, I'm crazy young to have that kind of an experience. And my dad said something that kind of blew me away. Because my dad turned to him and he's like, You're the first one, you're the first male fisherman to live at home all the way to 18. Which was true, because I was out of the house by 15, 16. My dad was an emancipated minor, right? Like every his dad didn't have a dad after about five, right? So you changed the parts that you can change, you change those generational things, and like there was a part of that was that was my dad's kind of backhanded way of giving me a compliment was like, like, good job. You you kept yours home and got along well enough that you guys made it all the way to 18. Which is like and it was pretty crazy because it's kind of the first time he's ever admitted. Like, yeah, I pushed you out, right? Yeah. But part of that was that's all he knew. Yeah, and I think that's part of the understanding part.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:39

Yeah, yeah, it comes back down to like uh intentionality, right? Like he did the best he could with the tools that he had, um, just maybe not the best tools um at the time.

unknown 1:13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:51

Yeah. I tell people all the time a lot of my best traits come from my dad. And I learned to apply some of them slightly different than he did. And that's part of the lesson, right? And so I love him so much, and I hope that he understands that because there were times that we were grinded on each other, right? Yeah, but some of that is also necessary. That's the other thing I'll tell you, having adult kids, there comes a point in time where they have to push away, and sometimes they do it in a messy way because it's the only way they know how.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:24

And so learning not to take all those things super personal, yeah, which is super hard because they are. I think you said in one of your videos, and I've heard this said in other places, which is it's like your heart is outside your body running around. So when your heart kind of rejects you, but they have to do that to take that step.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:43

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's that's the that's the struggle, right? Like that was one thing that my mom always was like super uh pretty persistent about is that like technically my job is to make you autonomous, right? My job is to make you not need me. And like it's really hard transitioning from because it does feel really good to be needed. Yeah, they and and the truth is we do always need our parents, we just need them in different ways.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:08

I I tell people all the time. They're gonna like it's okay for them to leave. They will need you, they just need you in a different way. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:15

And it might not just it might not be, you know, pouring the Cheerios. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:19

I want some quick feedback on a couple of my favorite quotes from you. Oh, yeah, okay. Is that cool? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so one of them is I was simply no longer willing to not give myself a chance.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:30

Yeah. One of the most somebody asked me the other day, what's the most painful thing someone said has ever said to you? And I said, you have potential. And like it didn't hurt at first. At first felt really, really good. Right. And then, you know, uh, and then you're like a few years into your career, and you're like, I fucking hate this. Like, I'm not supposed to be this guy, like what am I doing? And there's just like burning inside of you that, like, oh man, I do have that potential. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:57

And I have to do something with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:59

And you then you're 10 years into the career, and it's like it's starting to fester and get worse and worse, and you're like, I know, somebody saw the thing, somebody saw the thing in me that I also see in me, and I know it's real, and just starts to really, really hurt. And eventually, um you just get to the point where uh you either say that I'm going to ignore it, and I'm just gonna live with the fact that I'm gonna die with that, or you have to give yourself a chance. Right. And I have been really, really lucky to have this things aligned for me to be able to give myself that chance more recently.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:38

I think you built it. I think you built it, yeah. Okay. Maybe we do not crave easy things.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:44

Oh, yeah, easy, easy, easy. So people people's perception of what they want versus what they actually want are very different. And I think that the satisfaction of of doing hard things, and more more importantly, doing hard things with other people is just it's magic. We're so alienated from it, right? We live in a society that has made things, and I don't want to get too into this, but like we've lived in a society that has made things, made a business of making things convenient. Right. They've made convenience everything. You don't have to go to the grocery store anymore. You just open up an app, order what you want, another person goes, brings that to your home, you pay a little bit more, and that's okay because it's convenient, you know, like you self-checkout. You don't have to wait in line anymore, so you don't talk to somebody. So you sit there and you scan all of your things. It's convenient. One click pay, it's convenient. But um, with that lack of friction comes a lack of a appreciation for the effort, which is the fabric that our society lives off of, right? Is is simply me saying to you, wow, that was hard what you did. And I respect that. And you saying to me, that was hard what you did, and us bonding over that that difficulty, like being seen in that is is is really important. And then I like without friction, there's no growth.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:05

And so, like, I I think people want growth. I think people want to feel good, um, but they're just told that removing friction will give them that. And it's just not how it works.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:16

I've never seen it work that way. I mean, working in entertainment, it's a it's a miracle any project ever gets done because there's just so many steps and so many people involved. And I tell people all the time we have to will them into existence. It's one of the places, but I watch people flame out because it doesn't happen easily.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:34

And I think that's one of the things is this is there's a beauty in the struggle, right? Because it forces you to grow. And sometimes the project or the thing or the thing you wanted to build turns out to be something slightly different because you learned something or you grew along the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:50

Yeah, I tell people this all the time that kids was the most powerful force function for decision making I ever had in my life because they're hard. Yeah. They take up a lot of time. And if you want to get something done, you have to overcome a lot of fucking friction to get it done. And it's good. Yeah. And it and it makes you, it, it, it, it's it's a hard thing. It's a hard thing to do things on top of just doing kids.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:16

Listen, being a dad is like the toughest job in the world. Being a parent is is brutally hard at times. And even when you think you get it right, sometimes it doesn't work out the way you think. But it's also the most rewarding thing. Of course. And it and it changes you. It changes you dramatically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:30

And and again, I don't think everybody has to have kids, and that's totally fine. But for me, it has been quite profound. And it's not profound because it's easy.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:39

No, it's profound. Actually, there's also the element for me of watching in my kids of like, oh yeah, that's me. Like, yeah, that like that is a gift and a curse, or like, oh, you sound like me. And I'm like, okay, maybe this time you should refrain from that part of like my assertiveness, or right? Like, or like maybe there is a better way.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:02

And and so sometimes I watch my kids do things, I'm like, oh man, yeah, that's that's my gift. You're welcome, right? Like, and then there's the flip side of like, oh wow, watch you go on your own and do the I would do it this way. My son used to do this thing in soccer. He'd get down the field, he'd dribble through all these people, and I'd be going, shoot, shoot, shoot, and then he'd make an the most amazing pass. And I'd be like, Oh, what a great pass. And then the other kid would miss it and not score. And there was no payoff, right? And I had to make sure that I went back at the end of the day and reminded them that even though there wasn't a payoff for doing the right thing, it still was the right thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:42

And years later, it started to pay off when you got the right teammates.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:45

And that's part of it too, is like not abandoning something because you didn't immediately get the feedback.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:51

Yeah. And also you did your part right. You know what I mean? You did your part really well, and that person, they wanted to make it. They just didn't make it.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:58

And they just weren't there yet.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:59

And that's fine. Yeah, yeah. No, totally.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:02

Okay, how about this one? The opposite of addiction isn't sobriety, it's connection.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:10

Sobriety is so it addiction is often not. I mean, it is the disease, but the disease didn't start with addiction. You didn't get up and say, I want to become addicted to XYZ. Right? Right. You there was something that you were needing. Right. And that unfortunately became filled with whatever the thing was that you were addicted to, and then you you formed an addiction to that thing. And just stopping doing the thing entirely will not solve or heal that wound.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:44

Um, and people will. More often than not, people will. People will help you solve that wound. And feeling feeling important to someone and feeling accountable to someone, and feeling and and having someone see something in you that is valuable. I actually tell people this. I said I had I had a really bad eating disorder for um in a couple years, and then I had a really brutal low-grade eating disorder for a long time. Right. And that was because I I solved the eating problem where I was like, nope, if I just have to eat this much, then I don't have an eating disorder, right? Because look, I'm not showing the symptoms, but I didn't cure, I didn't deal with the thing that was the actual problem. And so I lived with that, still playing, still like running up to the edge, much in the way that someone deals with addiction. Um, and it wasn't until like I really dealt with that thing and connected with people. So it wasn't just like in this case, it wasn't just eating, it's not just sobriety. Um, it is connection, it is connecting to someone.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:55

I I on a recent video, you said the thing about seeing a little weight on you with your kid, yeah, and thinking to yourself how proud you were of yourself.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:05

And I think that's a really interesting thing that most people never admit, and you freed a lot of people in that. It's because to be able to look at one's body and realize, hey, I it's not perfect, quote unquote, right? But it's perfect for me. Like I'm happy where I am, and like I love this body. This is my vessel.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:24

Yeah. I I stole it from Piers Brosen.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:27

Yeah, I'll tell you how he stole it. He uh he he was on, he somebody asked him about his wife who uh isn't has a larger body.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:32

Yes. Who's a beautiful and their their marriage seems to be beautiful, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:38

And uh somebody asked, and he said, That's the body that gave me my kids. Yeah. Like that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:47

And I was like, wow. Like that is like that should, that's what, you know, you could put that in a museum.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:56

It's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:57

And so I I that was part of I borrowed that, I think that's been sitting with me for a while, but in that context, it really, you know, this is this is what a a tater tot taste tester looks like, you know? Yeah. Like that's just this is part of the price.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:12

Yeah. And you and you test everything. So I'm like, yeah, give it like it comes with the territory as a parent, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was it's worth it. I do it again.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:21

Okay, but like, what are the three words that describe you?

unknown 1:24:25

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:26

Ideally. Yeah. Accurately. Yeah. So I was asked this the other day what I like about myself, and I said, and I don't know if I can this is not a word. This is three words you're making me do it hard. I said, I have good intentions.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:40

Great. But that's not we can make that intentional.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:46

If I if I were to say, I mean, that's three words. I have good intention.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:49

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:51

But it's not this. I hope I hope that's it. We'll go there. I have good intentions. Okay. But that's that is sort of one-dimensional. So, you know, uh, I would hope that I'm kind. I am persistent, if not stubborn. And God, I hope I'm funny. So I think I'll go with those.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:13

Yeah, mission accomplished. Yeah. Um, so let me ask you this question. What is the legacy you want the people in your life to take from you?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:21

Oh, I want them to know that their lives are valuable. I want so when when somebody sees what I do, hands down, uh, people have this thing about, oh, this guy's got main character syndrome. I fucking hope you do. I hope you're the main character in your life. I hope you wake up every day and think that your life is like a movie, because it is, because you deserve to feel that way. You shouldn't be ashamed. That's not a thing to be ashamed of, people telling you of main character syndrome. God, I hope you do. So I hope that people, my kids, they see their lives as this beautiful miracle that is that is worth documenting and it is worth uh like it is worth the same kind of uh attention and love that you would give some great piece of art that was made by someone else.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:09

If you're writing the story, why would you choose to be anything but the hero? Like, like why would you not want to be the main character in your own story?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:16

There's nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:17

There's nothing wrong with that. And I think, you know, be kind in it. Yeah. Be giving, share with other people, help other people improve their journey and their story.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:27

But be the main character in your story. Yeah. So it's the perfect way. I I'm so thankful to have you here. We'll have to come back and talk about more stuff, but Blake, it was an absolute pleasure having you on a lighthouse in the dark. You are a shining light. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:41

Thank you for your platform. Thank you for your time. Yeah. If you made it this far, thank you for listening. Yeah.