"When do we call it quits?" featuring Seth Schroeder

This episode features Seth Schroeder, one of Campfire’s Fellows. Seth Schroeder provides his answer to the Season 29 question, "When do we call it quits?". A Fellow’s Campfire can best be described as TED without the data, The Moth but interactive, and a sermon but without the religion. You can learn more about Seth Schroeder on the Campfire website, https://cmpfr.com/events/seth-schroeder/.

The Campfire Fellows go through rigorous training and coaching provided by Campfire Faculty so they can share their wisdom through story for you. Our Fellows are the people next to you at stoplights or walking by on the street. These Fellows apply or are nominated by people like you, who know interesting and introspective people with some wisdom to share. The Fellows go through a unique process with our team to discover a wealth of wisdom inside themselves and then are trained on how to share the origin stories of their wisdom. 

This episode was originally performed in November 2019, produced by Jeff Allen, and recorded live at The Stage at KDHX.

Please be advised, some adult language and homophobic language is used during the telling of a specific story. 

Transcript

Steven Harowitz:   0:12
Hello, Internet. I'm Steven Harowitz, and I will be your host for this episode of Campfire At Home, recorded here in St. Louis, Missouri. Almost every month we gather at the Campfire to hear stories about life and how we live. Campfire At Home is how we bring that live storytelling experience to you, wherever you are. Before we get too deep into Campfire At Home. I do want to share a few opportunities for you to get involved beyond listening to this podcast. We obviously have our live show, but we also offer classes and workshops on public speaking and story construction. If you or an organization you're part of are interested, you can visit cmpfr.com, that's c m p f r dot com. Each Campfire Season poses a life question that is explored by our students and Campfire Fellows together with our audience. Let's go to the Gaslight Warehouse to listen to Seth's answer to the Season 10 question, "When do we call it quits?".

Seth Schroeder:   1:18
Hey, everybody. It is really great to see so many beautiful faces out there tonight. Um,  as Steven said we'll be focusing in on the question of "When do we call it quits?", and when Dan and I were developing the questions that we might wanna explore for this Season, I think this question stood out to me because I could sense that there was a lot of power in it. I do not like telling people my quitting stories. There is a lot of stigma attached to it. We tend to see quitting is like failure, like giving up on something. And as I was thinking through some of my own experiences with quitting, I started to see this thread between quitting and between gaming, which, for those of you who know me, probably doesn't surprise you at all. Um, I love games, in particular tabletop role-playing games. Yeah. Wow, I was not expecting cheers for that. And I've been playing them and writing them and running them and designing them for over 10 years now. And in that time, gaming has given me so many opportunities to both escape parts of life that might be difficult as well as gain more experience at a distance. The failures or achievements that I experienced through gaming, while not, you know, in the real world, um would give me, you know, experience dealing with failure and finding ways to gain achievement in my life. And so to try and share this love of gaming with all of you, I decided to make a game that will be playing tonight. In addition to the rest of your Campfire packet, you should each have a copy of this wonderful zine called "It's Quitting Time: A Game About Character Creation." Go ahead and take it out because we will be referencing this throughout the talk. So I'll give everybody a second to pull that out. So throughout  some of my storytelling process, I'll be taking a break through part of it to walk you through how to play this game. And just, you know, playing this game mostly involves doing a lot of listening, thinking, and, if you're comfortable, writing things down. And you know, some of you are probably wondering, what does quitting have to do with gaming? And for me, I see them as similar things, mostly because they both have a lot to do with making decisions or a decision-making process. Despite the stigma of failure associated with quitting, it's, to me, really just a type of decision-making, deciding not to give your time and energy to something anymore. And gaming, you know, through the course of playing it, you'll have to make lots of decisions. And in the case of role-playing games, you have to make a lot of decisions before you even really get to play. You typically have to go through a process called character creation, where you make the character that you want to use to experience the world or the narrative of the game. And in both cases, you're making decisions about the type of person you want to be in that given moment. And I think that's, you know, that's what I want to focus in on as I tell some of these quitting stories, this idea that quitting is not inherently a failure. It's just a different type of choice. I think I had some kind of intense experiences with quitting from a pretty early age. I think back to being about three or so, and when I was that age, I spent a lot of time in imaginary worlds. Again, for those of you who know me, probably not a big surprise. Um, but I can remember running between all of the different yards in my neighborhood with the other neighborhood kids and just playing a lot of make-believe. And one of the worlds that we found the most inspiring was the world of the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. Yeah, just quick show of hands. Who here is familiar with these legendary icons of popular entertainment? Wow, so many people. Awesome. For those of you who are not familiar, Power Rangers was a action adventure show in the nineties primarily aimed at children. It was a weird Frankenstein show where they took footage of Japanese shows and then cut it up with new footage of American teenagers, which you wouldn't think would work. But for me, it was like the greatest television experience of all time. This show had everything I could want. It had these really cool, colorful costumes, fun action sequences, this dedicated team of friends that wanted to do everything to work together and save the day. And, you know, play for me as a child was like a way to orient myself to the world and a way to, you know, learn how I might want to interact with the world as I got older for myself. And you know, the reality for a lot of kids is that we don't tend to have much control over our lives, and play, an imagination can be a way to feel like you have that sense of control or to even go about developing a way to control your environment. And Power Rangers was the biggest inspiration for me. Um, but I would be interested in what some of your inspirations might be. So I'd like to go ahead and ask you all to take some time and just think back to some parts of your childhood, those moments of, like, play or imagination and think about you know, some of the stories that might have inspired you. Could be like a TV show, like Power Rangers. Or it might have been a book that your parents read to you or a game that you and your friends made up. Uh, just take a little bit of time, and I'll check back in with you guys. And just reminisce.

Seth Schroeder:   8:16
All right? We'll have to give you all some more time to sit in what are hopefully happy childhood memories. But I, at the risk of some people dozing off, I'll keep things moving. Um, I would be interested, though, to hear about some stories that might have inspired you. Are is there maybe like one or two people that might be willing to share with us what some of your friends aren't? Yeah. [Inaudible.] Oh, that's awesome. Wow. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. I love The Hobbit. I love that book. Anybody else? Yeah. [Audience member: Animorphs.] Yes. I also also loved animals. Yeah, those covers where, like, people are morphing into animals. So good. Thank you for sharing. That's awesome. Yeah. So, Power Rangers, big thing for me. Obviously. I had other things I love too, but I don't know if at least at that time, anything else really hit this obsessive level that I had for this show. Um, it was it was so intense that I did what seemed very logical to my three-year-old self. But probably which is that I assigned Ranger identities to all of my family members. Um, this made a lot of sense to me. There were six Rangers on the show at the time. I had six family members, you know, totally lined up. Um, and I didn't call people by their first name. I called them by their Ranger names, including myself. I remember introducing myself to my pastor at our church as Jason, the Red Power Ranger, much to my mom's embarrassment, cause she does not let me forget that. And I think, you know, as a kid, I was doing this because I wanted to try and wrap myself in something that I saw in the show. And that was the fact that the Power Rangers were, you know, this is dedicated team of people, and that's, you know, how I wanted to see my family, that we were all this, this dedicated team and, you know, in it together, which in many ways we were, um but I think, you know, it wasn't just wanting to be part of this team, but it was wanting to have sort of a known like defined role within my family. You know, each Ranger, they're all color coded. They all get signature weapons, signature abilities, signature giant robot dinosaurs that pilot into battle. Every member of the team knows how they fit in with every other member, and I think I wanted some sense of that. So I, I want to ask you all to think back again to some of those you know, childhood inspirations. And this time, go ahead and open up that character creation game up to the section that says, ah, "Foundation." It's blue. And if you could take some time and ah, in the section that says "Part one," maybe write down some of the things you learned from that thing that inspired you as a kid, you know? What was your takeaway? How did it help you orient yourself to the world? Take some time. If you feel comfortable, write something down, and I'll check back in with you guys.

Seth Schroeder:   12:15
Yeah, Um, yeah. I think this perspective that I had this sort of Power Rangers model of the universe or model of how people fit together for a while, I can remember feeling like it worked. Like it gave me this sort of sense of safety and security. That is, until a couple of things changed in my life. One is that I started going to school, Trinity Lutheran School, preschool through eighth grade. I was there for all the grades, and ah, that meant, you know, meeting other kids who all had their own ideas about what Power Ranger they were. So they didn't like my ideas for it. Um, and the other big thing that changed my life around that same time is that my parents decided to get divorced, which, you know, living through as a kid was not easy. I can remember experiencing a lot of fear and confusion when they had told me. I was pretty young at the time. And, you know, I I had spent all this time building up this worldview that my family was, you know, this one solid, cohesive unit, and I had to quit that because it was no longer. It didn't feel like it was reflecting what was changing in my life. Now we were starting to have conversations about you know what houses my parents would live in if they're not living together or, uh, you know, would me and my siblings stay together, or how would we split time between my parents? This is a much different sort of world. And so I'd like to ask you to think back to those childhood memories one more time. If you could open up that game again, back to the Foundation section where it says "Part two." And this time I'd like you to think back again to that that lesson from your childhood inspiration from earlier. And I'd like you to check back in with those lessons. Do they still hold up to you today? Uh, you know, have you had to quit believing in any of them or change your thinking in them? Go ahead, and take a little bit of time again. And if you're comfortable, write something down, I'll check back in a few.

Seth Schroeder:   15:03
All right. See some folks finishing up here, and if you're not quite done, that's fine. Um, I won't ask you guys to share this particular one, if only because I know sometimes having to quit a belief from childhood could be a more difficult memory or a difficult thing to engage with. But I hope for those of you who did have to quit beliefs from childhood that, you know, it created space for something new to grow because, you know, that's kind of how it was for me. I had to quit this worldview again of seeing my family a certain way, seeing them in roles that I had assigned them, and I had to quit it. But that was OK because this a view I had formed in childhood. And it was something that I had kind of forced my family into. My thinking had to grow and evolve in the same way that my family was beginning to grow and evolve. What made this experience a bit more surreal, though, was the faith community I was starting to spend most of my time in around the same time. Trinity Lutheran School was not just my school, but it was my church. So I was spending a lot of time there. And you know, the people there taught me a lot, including a lot of lessons that I would say are pretty traditionally like Christian values. And one of those values is that marriage is sacred and divorce is not just, you know, seen as quitting, like people quitting on their commitment to each other or their family, but also quitting on this promise they had made to God. So you know, it's a sin. It's against the natural order of things. And I was hearing this lesson a lot in church. I heard it a lot as I grew up in this community, and it was so strange because I didn't feel like what they were telling me, this sort of black and white view, something is purely right or purely wrong, it didn't match up with my lived experience. My parents, though they were recognizing they couldn't be in a romantic relationship anymore, they were still making decisions and sacrifices to keep all of us in each other's lives. I watched them make choices about where they lived or where they worked specifically to keep all of us in the same areas so we could all spent time with each other and be together, and that didn't feel like quitting to me. If anything, that felt like the opposite, like they were doubling down on making sure that we were still a family. And I think growing up with constantly hearing this message from the church and living with the dissonance between that and my own real experience of my family started to teach me I feel like a healthy sense of questioning authority, and that became pretty important throughout a lot of my life. But in one summer in particular, it became very important, crucially important to me, This was the summer of 2014. I had just graduated from Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois, and my sense of questioning authority had manifested itself into a journalism degree, which, which I was planning on using to continue to try and question powerful people. And I had really thrown myself into the the work of a journalist while I was still in college. A lot of my time that wasn't spent in classes or homework was spent working at the newspaper there as a reporter. As a photographer, editor, designer, cartoonist, basically any job I could get my hands on because, I don't know if you guys know this, but it's really hard to get a job as a journalist. So I was trying to beef up my resume as much as I could, and I started to feel like that my work was paying off. I was developing this new confidence in my abilities, and by the time I graduated, I had lined up a reporting internship with the Daily Eastern News, or with the Effingham  Daily News. Excuse me, a different newspaper, which is in Effingham, Illinois. Um, and just a real quick show of hands. Who here is familiar with Effingham, Illinois? Wow. All right, most people here. Um, for those of you who are not familiar, if you're ever driving through Central Illinois, Effingham's real hard to miss because it's got a 198 foot tall cross that you can't help but see from the highway. Yeah, yeah. And it was while I was living in this town that I was starting to come to a really important realization, and that was the realization that I needed to come out. So, full disclosure. I am a queer person. Um, I've since coming out have used a couple of different labels between gay or bi or pan, and I haven't necessarily quit those identities. But at this point in my life, queer feels like the most accurate or the most flexible. And I say realization because that's what it was for me. I really had spent most of my life genuinely thinking I was straight until I was about in my early twenties, and it was news to me. Let me tell you, it really caught me off guard, so much so that you know, it's kind of strange to think about. Like, how could I go through most of my life and not really know this about me? And looking back, I think there's actually a pretty simple answer to that, which is homophobia. I had grown up in a faith community, much like the community I was now seeing myself in Effingham. And, you know, for most of my life, the cross had been a symbol of protection and salvation, much in the way that Christianity teaches you to think about it. But growing up in that community, I encountered homophobia constantly. One of my earliest memories is playing on the playground at that school and having another child rip a toy out of my hands because he didn't want me to get gay germs on it. And that, you know, saying that out loud sounds like this sort of small instance of childhood bullying, but it's actually what's really hard about it. The feelings I have behind some of those stories are so much bigger than what it feels like the words could possibly express, because this wasn't just, you know, one instance. It was constant. Homophobia was like background radiation where I lived. Both me and, you know, my family members and my closest friends, we used homophobic insults constantly. Gay was just a synonym for bad. And we were all caught up in this. We would bully people if we thought they were gay, and I hate that I was a part of that. And I know so many of my friends and family hate that they were a part of it, too. But it was systemic. It wasn't necessarily any one person's fault. It was just the world that we were in. And so when I found myself in Effingham, a town that I knew pretty much nobody in, but now all of a sudden had what felt like this burning secret to tell people, I didn't know what to do. I tried to find people that I felt like I could connect with, but it's really difficult. It was really difficult to find someone I felt like I could trust. Okay, because, you know, I had spent so much time growing up with this reinforcement, this idea being hammered into my head that being gay was the worst thing you could be. And so looking back, I think I had created this wall in my mind making it impossible for me to see myself as that, that's why it took so long for me to recognize that was the case. So living there made me miserable. But finally the day came to leave, and I had made the decision to move to St. Louis. Um, I was, I felt like I was quitting my journalism career before it even began because I didn't feel like I could handle the stress of being closeted and the work that comes with being a journalist. And on the day that I finally left this town, at that point, I had maybe come out to a couple of people, a few of my closest friends, some family members, my mom. And for the most part, I had been met with so much love and support. I remember my mom telling me that you know this this didn't change anything between us, but it was like she was seeing me sort of like as a kaleidoscope, like just a small rotation to get this new picture, this new perspective, and I wasn't really surprised that any of those individual people were going to show me love and support. But it was just so different than what I had been expecting based on the community I grew up in. Despite all of that, I was still really scared of coming out to the rest of the world. And I think that was partly because I felt like I still had my most challenging person to come out to. And that was my dad, who on the day of me moving out of Effingham showed up with an empty moving van, prepared to take all of my possessions in this basement apartment back home and then eventually to St. Louis. And he had done this maybe, like four or five times, but probably even more, like always being prepared to be there whenever my life needed to change a new direction. And before I talk about him a little bit more, I'd like to make it clear that I love my dad. I think he is a kind and caring person, and, you know, I feel like I get my sense of right and wrong, my sense of empathy partly from him. And even though growing up, I didn't really hear him use a lot of homophobic language that I can remember, I knew how important the church was to him. And I knew the church did not like gay people, so I didn't think he would either. So on this day, moving day again, finally, I felt this strong desire to tell my dad, to be honest with him. Here he was helping me carry these boxes up flights of steps, and I felt like I had this secret from him. And as we're moving, one of my neighbors stops by. He was a police officer in town, and I had spent some time when I first moved there trying to get to know him, trying to befriend him and his friends, again being really desperate for a sense of community. But I had stopped spending time with them. I had quit hanging out with them after realizing how sexist, racist and homophobic he and his friends were. I didn't want to spend time with him, but for whatever reason, he saw me moving these boxes and was like, "Seth, you're leaving. We gotta hang out again soon," and I will honestly say I took some satisfaction in telling him, "No, I am moving. I'm not planning on coming back to this town, and we will never hang out again." Yeah, I felt good. Yeah. So I finished loading up the boxes into this van, and my dad and I drive over to a gas station. We gotta get gas before we can hit the highway. And while he's standing there pumping gas, my dad looks over to me and says, "Did you hear what your neighbor said right before we left?" "No. I must have been grabbing more boxes." "Oh, well, you know, he just got really close to me and said, 'Your son's a faggot.' Can you believe that?" And I felt my blood freeze. You know, I, I know my dad was quoting somebody, that those weren't his words, but it just took me back to all those times as a kid hearing homophobic bullying on the playground. And, you know, in both cases, like those kids or even myself if I was bullying people, we weren't born knowing those words. We weren't born thinking gay people were worse than other people. We were quoting adults. We learned those things from them in the same way that my dad heard this awful person use a slur and was repeating it to me, and I hate that I'm repeating it to all of you. But I think it's important to use the word and talk about it because that's what happens with homophobia and ideas like it. It passes through people like a wave. So I did not come out to my dad that day. For the next few months whenever I was around him, I still felt this urge to be honest with him. But I would quit before I could even get started. I wouldn't let myself tell him until finally that next year I did. At that point, I had moved here to St. Louis. I had established a life here. I had a job. I had a room I was renting. I had actually started dating my first boyfriend at the time, and so I invited my dad over and sat him down in my dining room. And I told him exactly that, that I was dating a guy, and, you know, this time I saw him go quiet, and I could see these difficult emotions within his mind. But he didn't really say anything. He got up and excused himself, I assume, to try and express his upset feelings without me seeing it. And that was hard. It was so much different than the love and support that I guess I had kind of grown accustomed to and, in fact, all queer people deserve. But, you know, if there's a piece of advice that I could give anyone who might have to do their own coming out experience, it's to try as best as you can not to put so much stock in people's initial reactions. This is not fair to you, but in the long run, people can change. People can be shocked the first time they hear something, but that's not necessarily their permanent reaction. Because that's, you know, the great part about having told my dad is that it created room for something new, a world where we could be more honest with each other. That sometimes was more difficult, but it was on a foundation of respect, of of again, being honest and transparent together. And so I'd like to ask all of you to open up your character sheets again and flip over to the section that says "Armor." And this time I'm gonna ask you to reminisce about something. It might be a bit more difficult, because if you are not a queer person, I imagine that coming out could be sort of difficult to relate to. I don't know if there's an exact equivalent. So instead, I'd like you to think about a time that you felt like you had an identity or a part of an identity forced on you, something like, you know, a label or maybe a stereotype or expectation. Go ahead and take some time. And if you feel comfortable in Part One of the Armor section, write something down about it. I'll check back in.

Seth Schroeder:   33:37
Okay. See some people finishing up there. Again if you're not finished, it's okay. Um and I won't, I won't ask you to share anything about this particular section because again, I think some of these stories are a bit harder to deal with or to reminisce about. Um but I would like to ask you guys to go ahead and fill out Part Two of this section. In this case, I'd like you to think about steps you could take to try and quit this identity that might have been forced on you. Um, depending on your situation, this might be something you've already done. Something you're currently doing or have yet to do. Ah, and don't feel like you need to have, you know, an answer that solves everything. I know. In my case, issues of identity involved bumping into systemic problems that I don't have a lot of control over as an individual. So just try and focus on what you can do right now, and I'll check back in.

Seth Schroeder:   34:59
Again I won't ask you to share anything on this section. Um and I know some of these memories are difficult, but I'm hoping that by going through that exercise you might see some tools you have at your disposal to quit what doesn't work for you. Because for me, coming out was quitting. It was quitting keeping up a facade that I felt like I was only really managing because of other people's expectations or some expectation I had for myself. So it was liberating to reject that. And in the same way that quitting you know, my Power Ranger view of the universe, coming out created room for a new life to grow, a life where I could be genuine with the other people around me. And for me, creating these types of reminders is really important because I get anxious and I need reminders that I have the tools and capabilities to try and shape the future that I want to live in. I've been thinking a lot about the future lately. Um, again, as an anxious person questions of what might tomorrow bring are really never far from my mind. But this isn't what I'm talking about this time. No, I'm thinking a lot about what I can do proactively to try and build the future that I want to live in. And I can trace some of these feelings back to one particular day this summer. Um, and that was the day that my nephew Zander Schroeder, or Z for short, was born. I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep that night. The night before, around midnight, when I was just about to fall asleep, I got the call from my brother that his wife's water had broken and they were off to the hospital for an adventure that I could only imagine, that was seeing the birth of their first child. And while they were doing that, they asked me to go to their apartment and babysit their very anxious golden retriever Gambit, who just did not understand why his two humans have gotten up and left in the middle of the night. He's a cutie. He's so cute. And I had, I end up spending a lot of time that night laying on their couch with this human-sized dog practically on top of me. And he was licking my hands constantly to try and ease his own anxiety. Yeah, um, but I was also managing a lot of my own nervous energy. I, you know, I was just a little bit worried, like hoping everything medically speaking would go okay. I was also mixed in with that, dealing with a lot of feelings of excitement, you know, seeing this this brand new member of my family. And so that day, even though I felt really sleep deprived, I also felt like I just kind of glided through work. I was so elated to meet this new person, and I had gotten the call that Zander had been born safely and healthy, and his mom was healthy, too. And everything was okay. And finally, when I got some time to myself, I can remember standing in the shower and just thinking about how excited I was to meet this this new person, this brand new being that had their whole life ahead of them and I was gonna get to be a part of that. And while I was thinking about this, I could feel this sort of energy build up in my heart, the best word I could think of it. And it, it felt very concentrated, but also like it was spiraling or radiating through me. And I recognized that it was this intense feeling of love I had never really felt before for somebody who I hadn't actually met yet. And I have read before about when people become parents for the first time sometimes their brain will flood them with, like endorphins and Oxytocin, and they develop this new capacity for love that they didn't know they had before. And I kind of felt like I was going through an uncle version of that, and I had felt similarly a few years back when my niece was born, but this time felt different, more intense. And I don't know if it was, maybe just because I'm a few years older or maybe because I was starting to see more and more of my friends and family making new families of their own. But it left me with this question: do I want to be a dad? And the short answer to that is yes. But I'd like to make it clear that this is in no way meant to be a baby announcement. Because even though I can identify this feeling within myself, it really leaves me more with with more questions than answers. Because you know, I love my life the way it is now. But I also feel like I have a full plate. I've got, you know, a full time job. I'm a comedian. I'm a writer. I run two tabletop role-playing games. If I wanted to make room for something new or somebody new, I'd probably have to quit some of those things, and I don't really want to quit any of them. In addition to that, I've also been making my own version of family. I have two wonderful boyfriends, one of which designed this amazing game that you guys are all playing. And ah, you know, for those of you who don't know us, I know that that might surprise some of you. I mostly say that because it seems to be most people's reactions when I tell them for the first time that I have two boyfriends, that I am in a gay triad, as we like to call it. This is also usually followed up with the question of, "Well, how does that work?" And the answer to that is just like a couple, they are just three of us for all of it. So yeah, and you know this, this question led to discussions amongst the three of us. Like did we wants to maybe raise a child together? I'm not sure. It's a complicated question, right? And we are an unconventional family, so any version of that for us would probably look unconventional. But it's also been really exciting because, you know, because we have this sort of opportunity to live outside of the normal bounds of expectation, it also means that building a family you know can look how ever we want it so look. It might mean raising a child together. But, you know, for me, I might channel some of this energy to build something new and, you know, maybe start a business, like a bar or a magazine. Or maybe I'll just put all this energy into volunteering and help my community that way. Or maybe I'll just put all this energy into being like the best uncle ever for all the kids who are already in my life. I don't know exactly, and that's great. That's really exciting, because I have all of these new lessons to help guide me through figuring it out, including this sense of love and creation that I now can feel in my heart still. And I'd like to ask each of you to go ahead and take a look at those character sheets one more time. Maybe one more time. We'll see. Go ahead and flip over to the back part that says "Heart." And if you could take some time and think about what might be in your heart or in your center of being. It could be somebody that you love or maybe it's a dream you're holding onto or maybe it's the future you'd give anything to see. Go ahead and think about that some. If you feel comfortable, write something down. I'll check back in with all of you.

Seth Schroeder:   44:12
You know, like I was saying before, I may not know what it is I want to to create new yet. But looking back at these older lessons in my life have given me new insights into how they're still reflected my life today. You know, I was saying that being in an unconventional relationship comes with unconventional solutions. It also comes with unconventional problems, like whose toothbrush is that? There are three of them, and I don't remember which one is mine. And so we had to come up with a new system to keep track of that. And the easiest thing we found was color coordination. We each picked a color that we resonated with. Mine is red, which is my Power Ranger color as well. And you know, it's, this isn't the same thing as what I developed as a kid. This is something that we all chose to do together. It's not something, it's not roles enforcing on people, and it's not like we need the color coordination to identify everything separately. But it's become an affectation of our relationship. You know those things that couples have two. And so you can see red, green and blue throughout our home if you visit. You could also see it on our wrists. We have beads tied around each of our hands as a reminder. I think these reminders are, you know, one of the reasons why I asked you to fill out this game while we were talking today. Because, you know, quitting, as I said before, it is all about a decision-making process, trying to figure out what you want to keep in your life and what you want to get rid of, and figuring out how to make those choices can be really difficult. But I'm hoping that now you've got some new tools to figure out and remember who you are and what you've done and what you might like to do or be in the future. It's not any one part of this, you know. As much as our past or the things in our hearts can anchor us, it's also the challenges and the problems we face that define us as well. I feel like it's, you know, the intersection of all those things. And if you unfold your game and see all of them intersecting together, and if you ever want to go through this process on your own without me guiding you to it, now you've got instructions on how to do that. I, I don't know what tomorrow is going to bring, and that used to terrify me. It used to make it so that I wouldn't make decisions. I wouldn't quit things in order to create new things. I would just go through life and sort of accepted what it dealt me. But now I do have all these reminders. I have all of these tools to try and take control of things, and I hope now some of you have these tools as well. That's it. Thank you, guys.

Steven Harowitz:   48:23
And that's a wrap. I'd like to thank Seth for answering this Season's question, "When do we call it quits?" If you want to, you can see the answers to this Season's question as written by our audience members from each Campfire if you visit our Facebook page at Facebook.com/campfirestl. You can scroll through all the great insights that our audience shared back with us and our Fellows. A big thank you to the Campfire Team, our photographer Jenn Korman, and our videographer and podcast producer Jeff Allen, as well as the home of all of our classes and trainings TechArtista. If you want to learn more about Campfire and the work we do, you can visit cmpfr.com, that's c m p f r dot com. And if you liked what you heard while you were listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes or wherever you find your podcast. It really helps out. Thank you again for listening. Until next time.