DOD226: Is Self-Improvement Isolating You?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:02 Clip: I'm the cool dad, that's my thing I know now what I can offer you that no one else can Complete and under-dependent I'm a man, I'm sensitive I need to feel loved, I need part of being a father that I enjoy

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast in the ice bath. I'm Tom Curry. I am joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:36 Eli: Hello!

0:00:33 Thomas: There's a really nice flow to it. I like that turn of phrase. Can we use that somehow?

0:00:40 Tom: You like that? You like it? I think you know why it sounds so good? It's recording from the ice bath. The acoustics are better. Yeah, they don't tell you that. It's the Wim Hof thing.

0:00:47 Thomas: Well, would you believe the weather's - I MEAN NEVERMIND! IT'S TOTALLY FUCKING NORMAL HERE! EVERYTHING GOOD!

0:00:52 Tom: Have you guys ever tried an ice bath?

0:00:56 Thomas: We've talked about this.

0:00:57 Tom: Did we? Okay.

0:00:58 Thomas: Yeah, but it's okay. We can - yeah, yeah. So in high school track, I remember I used to get it successfully occasionally, and when you can get it successful, as in it shuts down all the fucking nerves, then it actually feels great. Right? Talk about pain tolerance differences people have. I think the ice stuff is actually a test they do for that to see like people's pain tolerance.

0:00:58 Eli: Have we talked about this?

0:01:17 Tom: Yeah. Yeah? You put your hand in, like, ice water or whatever and see how long you can hold it in there? Yeah.

0:01:21 Thomas: It makes my nerves go fucking insane. It's hard. I haven't done it since then because the last time I tried, it was like so unbelievably painful. I couldn't do it.

0:01:30 Tom: Do you know anybody in your lives that does ice

0:01:33 Eli: I did. Yeah. That's how I ended up doing one is I had a friend who was like full on Meat Cult and Ice Baths was one of the things that he was doing and he was - we were over at his place.

0:01:38 Tom: Baths

0:01:39 Thomas: Meat cold. Is this suck to dick corner or no? No, I'm just kidding. Meat cult.

0:01:45 Eli: God, I went - it would have been so much better than Meat Cult. I take Suck the Dick Corner over Meat Cult, and eat twice on Sundays, Jesus. But we were at his and he's like, I'm telling you, it feels amazing. Like once you get past the first couple of minutes and we were like sure why not so we like went down to our skit not even swimsuits we were just like down in our skivvies and all took a turn because he had like an official cold plunge bath that didn't require ice it had like a rotating whatever yes

0:01:47 Tom: I love the word skivvies yeah yeah it's basically like a reverse sous vide yeah right

0:02:13 Eli: Exactly it was a reverse sous vide and we got in it and we Were all like well that was torture I was in a I was In a little torture chamber for a second and he was like but it feels good now right and I was like I mean you step on my nuts and then stop it feels good now

0:02:27 Tom: Yeah I feel yeah

0:02:27 Thomas: Probably felt good when they freed those people from the Syrian prison. I bet it felt great. Yeah, probably felt really good.

0:02:34 Tom: I was trying like a few years back before the pandemic I was trying to cultivate a friendship I was try to cultivate a friendship with this guy because his wife was a friend of haley and he was a weird dude and I I didn't really like him but I was trying to like make friends I was like yeah you know like he's connected like it might be nice to be buddies with this guy I don't really have like a lot of like local friends so I was you know let's work out like I'm trying to share some interest with this guy and he was one of those guys that's into all of the things like whatever the things are like whatever the rogans or the hubermans or the whoever is like he just he believes all of it immediately and like he got into the ice bath thing so fucking hard like he was ice bathing everything every morning wake up at you know dawn and go stare at the sun for 10 minutes or whatever and then hop in his ice bath and he did all that stuff turns out he's still batshit fucking crazy like

0:03:04 Eli: Die

0:03:28 Tom: None of that stuff did anything to improve his mental or physical health it does nothing it just froze his balls like that's all it

0:03:27 Eli: Yeah

0:03:32 Thomas: Weird.

0:03:35 Eli: Turns out that's all that does yeah

0:03:35 Tom: Does it freezes your balls it's so

0:03:38 Eli: But gentlemen do you want to know the only thing worse than jumping into an ice bath why it's the auto ads the cold plunge of your podcasting experience there you are living breathing enjoying thomas's tremendous 45 minutes of weather material at the beginning of your broadcast and then bam at a totally different volume uh

0:03:55 Thomas: Well, to be fair, like most of that was your gaslighting. We got to include your gas lighting in the fucking calculation. Well fuck

0:04:02 Eli: No lydia cut all that out and it's just you talking about how weird rain is for 20 minutes and then you're weirdly defensive about it because she cut out all the part where I said yeah no it's weird it's weird that she did that but I did write her right afterwards and say I want you to make thomas look really fucking great we're sort of doing a gaslight thomas project together she noticed how much I love it and she was like can I get in on this and it was like absolutely Absolutely.

0:04:20 Thomas: Me okay oh nice nice to bring people together yeah okay

0:04:27 Eli: Fun fact, Remy, not real, not a real kid. She just goes, there goes Remy again. It's a, it's a, we'll reveal it at the anniversary special, but gentlemen, you can get away from the auto ads over at patreon.com forward slash dear old dads. That's patreon.com forward slash dear old dads, not patreon, which is what I just said.

0:04:36 Thomas: What

0:04:48 Eli: patreon.com forward slash dear old dads get a commercial free little bonus episode. Get to hear about Donovan's first first concert with his dad with tom not his dad but tom uh this on last week's show yeah his dad yeah I think the first concert he went to with his dad was like limp biscuit they were mostly selling drugs to minors out in the front we really didn't get to get inside but you can check all that out over at patreon .com forward slash dear old dads grip into it

0:04:47 Thomas: Yeah

0:04:58 Tom: Bad his dad. Let's be real.

0:05:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:25 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:05:26 Tom: All right. So there was an episode of Modern Love that came out a few weeks ago. And I don't think we want to go through and dissect that whole thing, but there was a take on it that I had that I wanted to share with you guys, because it was really talking about what is driving adult men to be isolated, to be lonely. We talk about the loneliness epidemic, But this was more like middle -aged adult men, men with kids, men who are not the sort of typical 20 -somethings that they usually sort of center the conversation around. And one of the things that really struck me, because I think in many ways it resonated with me, is that for a lot of the messaging that's out there, the idea being floated out to men is that the path to happiness is found through self -improvement.

0:06:11 Tom: And then they focus almost all of the self -improvement concepts specifically on ways to improve your body, ways to improve your finances, ways to improve that isolate and remove you from community. None of the ways that they center the idea of improvement, I don't think, really improve you in the ways that are most valuable and most important. And I think that that idea that like we're centering self -improvement as a sort of like male virtue, but all of the improvement is like this really narrow band of what it means to grow and improve is doing us some real harm. And I see this in a lot of stuff. So I was curious what your take on that or if you see the same thing or if that resonated with you at all.

0:06:10 Thomas: Meat

0:07:00 Eli: Yeah I mean not to be be a grumpy socialist but I am which is like I think the reason for that is that you can't sell the scientifically proven ways to improve your life which are community and moving your body when they have done study after study test after test about what actually makes people happy with a capital h it's going to the same place every week with people you have common values with and moving your body for any reason whatsoever with purpose. Playing basketball, going for a swim, taking a walk, somersaulting, jumping off buildings, doesn't matter. What they all have in common is you move your body with purpose and you do a community activity. And it's really, really hard to sell those things because the social safety net has created free or cheap versions of all of those things and so what we have to sell people are isolation activities like ice baths and meat salt and neuro pills and shit like that meat salt

0:07:10 Thomas: Salt.

0:07:59 Tom: Meat salt I would like some meat salt but actually I do want some meat salts

0:08:01 Thomas: That's a new one. I meat salted myself the other day. Yeah, it was delicious. So I listened to this. I thought it was interesting because it's this guy talking through, it's very long, but it's interesting. He's talking through how he went through this progression where he used to have really close male friends, closer than I've ever had male friends for sure. And then lost them over the stuff. And the reason I'm going back through it is for one, it is this advice that I think maybe even we have given and a lot of people give that I Think in general, in a way is good advice, which is, hey, if you're going through a hard time, if You're feeling like you need, for whatever reason, if you're, by the way, going to enter the dating world, focus on yourself, improve yourself, you know, it's like focus on that self improvement message, don't focus on desperately trying to like, get a date focus on like, I feel like that's pretty reasonable advice. And one of those things is, you you know, going to the gym. So in fairness, Eli, like movement was part of that, you know? Like they're saying, get in shape. And that was one of this guy's things is that he, he started running like crazy. And so he was moving his body, but what he was saying was that all of those activities that you mentioned, like, you Know, focusing on finances and going to the gym, working out, doing this self -improvement stuff. His point was that that's all for whatever reason, I think there'll be interesting to talk about. It's all very solo.

0:09:20 Thomas: Like it's all very internal kind of solo stuff now first off Tom do you think that premise is right or do you think that's just how this guy did it because and it was like kind of during COVID so that could have been part of it but because I feel like you talk about when you did like CrossFit and that sounded like it was very social to me hmm

0:09:36 Tom: Yeah so I I was really interested in this topic and this article because so much of it resonated with me personally and like I'll be honest like when I listened to this and I started thinking about this topic one of the things that immediately occurred to me is that I am somebody who has spent a lot of time personally and with my kids really extolling the virtues of self -improvement as part of your life's project. And I look at like the blog and I look like other things that I've done in my life and I'm obsessed isn't the right word, but I am deeply interested in the project of improving the self, right? I really believe in that project. And so when I got to thinking about this, I was like, holy shit. And then I thought it was funny that he named CrossFit. I found CrossFit to be the exact opposite of isolating. I found Crossfit to be liberatingly social. Like as a secular person, this is going to sound like weird. It is close to church. It's real close to church. It's an hour spent with the same community of people engaged in the same activity with a common interest within your sort of neighborhood. I made a ton ton of friends. I would actually recommend to people that are feeling lonely or isolated, join a CrossFit gym. They are really great centers of community if you're not a church person. I really believe in them as a social activity. So I thought it was kind of interesting that he found them to be so isolating. What I did think of after that, though, is that they didn't connect him to his existing group of friends who

0:11:10 Thomas: Well also he wasn't doing CrossFit right so I think it could also be the kind of activity he chose I think he was running okay

0:11:14 Tom: No, he did do CrossFit for a while. No, he did CrossFit and then he moved into running when the pandemic hit. Yeah. So, you know, one thing that is a struggle for me, and I don't know how to bridge this gap, is I have a big community of people that I know and love and good friends of mine, and I don't see most of them. I don't see most of them every year.

0:11:18 Thomas: I just remember the running part okay gotcha yeah yeah

0:11:35 Tom: Like, I am really disconnected from a lot of my sort of, like, community, like a lot of my, like guys, like my people, I don'T see them very often. And it does create like a real distance there. And there is also a sense that like, when you have all these people that you've not made time for that, like I donT really want to make time for new people. I already don'T have time for the people that I already love.

0:11:58 Tom: So, like, if I were to join a CrossFit gym tomorrow, I would feel weirdly guilty about, like hanging out with my new CrossFit buddy because I haven't seen my other buddy who I've known for 20 years and who I deeply love in months and months and months. And I might be reluctant, I think, to make that new connection because of that. And I do think that as we have secularized and moved away from church, I think we've moved away from those easy ways to have weekly, regular, neighborhood -focused community. And I think those things are real important. I think they are.

0:11:56 Thomas: Interesting yeah I

0:12:36 Tom: But I think that the shit that's being sold to men is intentionally sold to them to be isolating. I do Think that. I Think that there is an agenda agenda to what is being sold to men. And I think that that selling of shit to men right now is made to isolate. I really, truly believe that.

0:12:55 Eli: And I'll add I think everything being sold to us is meant to be isolating I don't think but I think that the entire system collapses under community. The current late stage, and I hate to use the term late stage capitalism because I know that's really overused and often used by people who just mean like money does things I don't like right now.

0:13:17 Eli: But the current late -stage capitalist system, which is about individual ownership and an entitlement to a way of living and a thought process about living that has never been true throughout history industry and fails us in every conceivable level. I think it's only possible through isolation. When you feel like I have to live in my own house without anyone in it, it's just me and my wife and the one kid and my, and I have all these acres. I have this giant big house for this giant big TV. My family lives in their own house with their own stuff. And we all have giant big TVs and we, you know, we don't do this. We don't doing that right. Like all of those things, That system fails under community instantly, right? You don't need a big TV and a way to constantly entertain yourself and your children if you share households with family or if family comes over to watch your kids all the time or your kids go over there to watch all the times. The stuffification of our lives is a replacement for community, but it also has to, by its very nature, replace community. Otherwise, we'll just find a better reason for it, right? When you go online and you search for how to get in shape, they send you to solo exercises. Now, part of that is because those exercises are good for you, and some might argue they are the easiest or most efficient way to get into shape, right? Things like starting strength and lifting weights are really, really good ways to train your body. But it's also because a game of pickup basketball, which statistically you are significantly more likely to stick with, right, you are significantly more unlikely to do regularly, they can't sell you that.

0:13:17 Thomas: Mean

0:15:03 Tom: Yeah, I think there's also this idea that is coming out. And then I do. I strongly believe that like all of these things are working intentionally against us. I believe that there's intent behind it. Like I'm seeing so much when I when I look in these in these sort of like online spaces I'm seeing a like preponderance of terms that never they were always in this sort of zeitgeist before but which were never as like repetitive and constant and built in and that is the binary that's being sold between introverted and extroverted people and people who understand these terms understand that generally these are not like labels that you apply to yourself as I am introvert I am extrovert that's much more nuanced than that and that like most people fall on a continuum and it may change day to day etc etc but I I do truly believe that like this stuff gets amplified in order to convince more and more people that they are of a type and that the type that they Are of is the introverted type and that means that you should watch more netflix and you should stay home and you Should buy more shit for your solo hobby and you should buy more shit to stay at home and to disconnect from the people around you it's polarizing it's isolating and it otherizes everybody because everybody is absent a community now like we're all absent community and it's not surprising to me that in this void void of connection, we have issues around loneliness. Like, of course we do. Literally, what else would we expect to

0:16:44 Tom: Have but issues around loneliness? And then what do we do? We try to salve that wound or patch that gap with a fucking faster cell phone or a connection to a new social media space when we know, because the research is clear on this too, like for most people that doesn't do it. It doesn't connect us in the ways that we need to connect. There is a truth to the physicality of being with people. It bonds us more. It just does.

0:17:10 Eli: Well, I'll also say that there are also stratifications of society and activities that have become private that didn't used to be private, right? So like Tom, if I can use you as an example, because we've talked about this and you've talked About this on air, one of the reasons why you have been socially isolated the last few years is because there's been health problems in your family. It is a wildly new concept with there are health problems In your family, for that to be something that just your family deals with, right, that's an idea that is not 40 years old. And yet, we all feel it. When I I was having health problems last year. It was something that me and Anna dealt with. And like, maybe I talked to my mom about it, or maybe I talk to a close personal friend about it. The idea that your community comes together around you in those moments is non -existent outside of those pre -established spaces, right? Because what are the spaces that come around you when you're sick, when you'RE unwell? It's your church, it's your community center, it's your friend group, et cetera. And if you're not already part of one of those, And there are a lot of reasons why people aren't a part of those. They're naturally shy. They never quite fit into one. They lost their religious beliefs, right? Whatever the case might be, society is constantly offering you paid solutions to those problems in isolation rather than community.

0:18:30 Tom: And, you know, I think one thing that feels very true capitalistically is that toxic masculinity centers independence. So it centers that idea of like, what is a sort of like virtuous, toxically masculine guy. Well, it's an independent guy, right? And an independent guy is a fucking loner. That's what it is. And so there's this narrative around like, well, a man shouldn't need anybody or like at the very most, a man should need his wife. And if a man needs his buddies, if aman needs a community, that is a weaker version of that man.

0:19:05 Tom: And that shit is going to kill people, right? Yeah, that shit is no bueno, like no fucking bueno.

0:19:09 Eli: Well, it already is. Yeah. Mm-mm.

0:19:15 Tom: When you look in those self -improvement spaces, and by the way, I'm in a lot of these online self -improvement spaces because I am interested in the project of self - Improvement, especially fitness -related self -Improvement, and they are fucking weird spaces, man. Man, even if the content isn't that weird and that isolationist, so much of the community around it is so much. So much of this sort of like orbit that exists around some of this stuff is fucking weirdly. You shouldn't fucking need help with that.

0:19:47 Tom: Why would you need help at all? Like that's fucking like, I thought you were a dude that you were man. Like it's not manly to need help. It's not manley to want to like, just fucking do it on your own.

0:19:55 Eli: Mm-hum. Yeah.

0:19:55 Tom: Like just fucking to every single thing on your own all the time why do you need anyone it's like well because I'll fucking go crazy that's why if I don't have people to love and to be loved by I will go crazy and it is making people fucking crazy and I think that it's intentional I believe that the algorithms promote this shit because it makes money

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0:20:23 Eli: Isolation is so hard to break through, right, because again, societally, we are taught to reinforce that isolation, to go through that isolation and not to reach out, right? If someone doesn't hang out with you for a little while, everything that men are told is leave that person alone. They don't like you. They do not want to be your friend anymore when actually they probably need you more than ever. And so retraining men when the men in their lives pull back from them to reach forward and say, hey, I have not seen you in a little While, how do I make us us hanging out a thing, that's really hard. And that's been trained out of us. I'll tell you. So I am very lucky. I've talked about this all over the show. So I will, I'll try to keep it relatively brief. Like I am Very lucky that I have this group of parenting friends, but my parent friend group is held together by my buddy Barack. My buddy Barack is a natural community maker. He's worked in nonprofits his whole life. So he has a ton of that skillset. That's what his master's degree that he is getting is in. So like, that

0:21:25 Thomas: People used to say when he ran for president that was all he ever done was be a community builder

0:21:28 Eli: Is what he said. Yeah. No, know he's built community and fired up ready to go right exactly yeah and his wife michelle yeah he is very good at those things but when I look at a tremendous amount of the incredibly lucky community I am benefit to it is because I have one friend who insists on creating community and if he didn't a lot of that stuff wouldn't happen the lesson I take away from that is not just oh my gosh I'm so lucky to have my buddy barack in my life like what an amazing lucky lucky thing it is for me to have this person and that I am welcomed into their circle. But it is also a great lesson that it just takes one person

0:21:31 Thomas: We can't say who this is by the way but yeah yeah

0:22:07 Eli: To create a community. That's what I've been able to do in magic. I try not to toot my own horn about it, but when you Google me, one of the first things that comes up is the magic group that I started in New York. That article was written 10 years ago, eight years ago. Right. That group still exists and it's still the only one like it in new york city you'd think there would be like 10 billion magic clubs in new york this giant city full of people there aren't there's one old man club and you gotta audition to get in and there's a whole bunch of hoops you have to jump through and then there's us and there has just been us for almost 15 years now you know not to get too pollyanna but like one of the really tough things is when you are in the position of privilege to create community it really does just take one insistent person to do it yeah Yeah,

0:22:55 Tom: Fucking good on that guy for being able to do that because like as you were talking I was thinking you know again like when you think of a lot of the sort of of traditional virtues that guys are growing up with and like what sorts of virtues that sort of masculinity decenters, it decenters exactly what you're describing. A lot of what you'RE describing as like the reason that this, that your friend is able to create this community, these are not centered masculine virtues.

0:23:22 Tom: These are decentered virtues, right? So like if you want to build community, if you wanna build like real relationships and friendships, the sorts of things that you have to be good at is you have have to be good at having great social skills, following up with people, including people and making them feel included, creating a space for vulnerability. These are not virtues that we have told men to grow up and to value. These Are Things That We've Specifically Told Men Are Women's Emotional Work. We're telling them not to do the things that they literally have to do at a time when all of the social and capitalist forces are pulling us apart from each other and we're losing the sort of institutional forces because less and less people attend things like church or join things like social clubs or local community organizations. So as those things fall away, as these other forces sort of pull us apart, we haven't figured out how to recenter the things we need to recenter to do that work ourselves and so nobody does it and so we're in a bubble we're just an I got it bubble and like I'll raise my hand like my first instinct when anything is happening is to be like yeah I'll do that that's fine like I 'l do but it's built into the dn it's fucking cellular at this point I can't tell you how many times I've like walked into a door or or like walked up to a door, rather. Somebody, like my son even, well, like he's got nothing in his hands. I'm carrying seven things and I don't ask him to get the door for me, right?

0:24:26 Eli: Right.

0:24:57 Tom: Like I'm in front of him, so I'm trying to get the fucking doorknob while I'm bringing, you know, like fucking two boxes and three bags and I got a fucking backpack on my head because it doesn't occur to me that somebody else could help. It's built into the DNA of who we are, I think.

0:25:12 Eli: And that thing with the door, right? Even when you're carrying seven things is such a perfect metaphor for why people do not ask for help. Part of that, well, it only takes one person to do this or part of that. Well, you just have to reach out mentality comes a self blame when you are not in the position to do that, right, the reason I said like, I feel so privileged. I feel so lucky to be in that thing is like, you're not in that. The last couple of years, you haven't been in the position to create community because your family has needed you. You've had to lock in and create healthy and well spaces for your family. You have done an amazing job at it, but you haven t been able to do the community building that you want to do. And because of that independence, because of that mindset that it's yours to create, all you got to do is do it. Instead of saying, hey, I really wish someone would create a community for me. Does anyone out there have a thing for me to join? Can anyone come pick me up? Can anyone comes over to the house? Right? We tell ourselves, well, no, let me get through this tough season and then I will be the one who creates community.

0:26:16 Tom: Yeah, it's funny that you say that because like in my life, in, in many other instances of, or iterations or moments of my life I usually was the guy who would do that work because I, I don't find it terribly difficult to be like, Hey man, I haven't seen you in a long time and I really miss you. Can we hang out?

0:26:33 Tom: Like I will pick up the phone and just say that, but now that I'm not doing it, nobody else does it.

0:26:29 Eli: Yeah, of course. Right?

0:26:39 Tom: Nobody's reaching out. If I don't reach out years can go by for people that I know care about me and that I care about and nobody will reach out and say anything for like a really long time I

0:26:51 Eli: And it's not because they don't love you, even though that's what the self-talk is, right? The self-talk is, oh, okay, I guess this person only hung out when I reached out first. But the truth of the matter is, if you're the glue that binds the group, it just doesn't happen, right? There are different roles in the group. There are different roles within social expressions. That person might be thinking six, seven times a week. They might think to themselves, gosh, I miss Tom. I'd love to hang out with Tom, but they know you're going through something. So they think to ourselves, well, I don't want to bother him. I'm going to wait until things are going better. Yeah. But we tell ourselves that person isn't interested and then that longing turns into resentment, right.

0:26:54 Tom: Know that's exactly it yeah yeah you hit the nail on the head I know because I've talked to people that they're like well I just you know I haven't really wanted to bother you I know you got a lot going on and it's like yeah I might not be able to make plans so I might also reject you that's the reality of it too right yeah that's what makes it almost impossible responsible.

0:27:41 Thomas: And that doesn't feel good for anyone you know to have to yeah I feel like I just I'm almost like conflicted out of this conversation because I can't separate like I I genuinely don't know. It feels like everything about my personality and just my orientation that feels very core to me is also the stuff that leads to this exact thing. So I can't really like separate, like what of it is some societal thing, whatever it is, some changeable thing, what, you know, like it's, it's really interesting because while I grant that most people are on the introvert extrovert spectrum, we all are like, I mainly just feel introversion. I mainly just feel like I'm not, it's not like I have any major problems being social. And when I'm social, I enjoy it. It's just never the thing I think of.

0:28:28 Thomas: That's the thing that I feel like it's hard to communicate sometimes to people who think, they always think like, oh, you have social anxiety. It's like, no, no social anxiety, really. I mean, I don't get anxious around people at all. When I think of what I want to do, that isn't in my mind. It just isn't. But I also think that like every every human, I am better and I feel better when I've done certain social things. And so it's really interesting, but I also think I need a lot less of that, or I would want a lot less of maybe than, than your average person. So it's like this, I don't know how to, I don' know what to do.

0:29:00 Eli: Also wasn't modeled for you, right?

0:29:02 Thomas: Oh, of course. True. Yeah.

0:29:02 Eli: I mean, the thing you talk about is that your dad, I mean you both have talked about having relatively isolated dads and I have talked how my dad was a resolute collector of people. The reason why collecting people and creating community and being part of communities is imbued in me is because it was all I saw my dad do. It was his form of socialization all the time. My dad didn't work out alone. My Dad would adopt little workout buddies, bullies right which was just like a part of my childhood is there would be some like young guy who wanted to start lifting who knew dad from who knows whatever the fuck and dad had this but it was in our little like like back house cottage thing and they'd be like yeah get back there and just for you know six months a year year and a half that guy would be my dad's workout buddy he always found a way to take everything he did and turn it into community his job always being game community, right? His employees at the bookstore that he ran became my babysitters and our family friends. There was no separation between the social and the professional for my dad. He modeled that and that's why it occurs to me. And I think if it wasn't modeled for you and reinforced for you over and over again, it's very, very hard to see that.

0:29:31 Thomas: Sorry.

0:29:33 Tom: What

0:29:50 Thomas: What?

0:30:26 Tom: I think too, I don't know, the fetishization of the rise and grind mindset grinds that away because it tells you that there's a more productive way you're supposed to use this time.

0:30:30 Eli: What happened?

0:30:37 Tom: You always should use all of your time productively. Use all your time productively, you should never be doing that thing that's just social, that's just there to connect with and to like be in community with somebody, right?

0:30:48 Thomas: Okay, this is a perfect example. Sorry to interrupt, but there's a perfect example where I hear you saying that I'm like man yeah that is a society message also I don't feel like I'm as susceptible to societal messages as most people like I've never been afraid to be my own person and then I think but also my life is such that I have to make the most of every second and I feel like i'M NOT BEING PRODUCTIVE like I it's funny because I think I don'T KNOW WHAT ABOUT IT IS JUST ME IS JUST BY THE WAY THE SITUATION I'M IN AFTER THE FUCKING MESS THAT happened to me and the financial situation I'm in.

0:31:18 Thomas: Like all of that, all of that, like I, I, it's so funny because it seems to all align with what you're saying is like, yeah, this is what society has done. And I'm like, yes, I agree. But also did society do that to me? Or am I just in this weird fucking position I'm In for very hyper specific reasons. And so maybe that's just unique to me, but that's why I feel like I'm not sure how to think about all this, you know?

0:31:18 Eli: Something happened?

0:31:39 Tom: Here's what I would suggest. You're not sure what to think about it in part because you don't have the luxury of time to think About it. And I'll tell you a quick, like when I worked for the company before the one I'm at now, that was two ago, thank God.

0:31:51 Eli: Where I fired my boss. I fired that other boss too.

0:31:54 Tom: But like I was in a place like in 2012 no from

0:31:57 Thomas: Swear he fired the orphans and the other. Yeah.

0:32:00 Tom: 2009 until 2013 2012 2013 thereabouts

0:32:01 Eli: Good time to be in the housing

0:32:06 Tom: Super cash money so like I was working routinely 80 to 100 hours a week and in the office away from home so you know commuting I was working yeah

0:32:07 Eli: Market in case everyone's wondering yeah thomas that's a lot to most people sorry I should have

0:32:19 Thomas: Is that a lot? Oh, okay.

0:32:20 Tom: For a lot of people that would be a lot yeah that wouldbe a lot I know it's a a halftime situation for Thomas. You wouldn't even get benefits at Thomas's. Yeah. So I was working. I was working pretty much all the time. I Was working constantly and I was working at this like crazy person's pace. Like it was just like it was crazy. So I would have two phones on my desk. I had two phone numbers, two phones. I had like three monitors.

0:32:24 Eli: Clarified you mean vacation

0:32:43 Tom: It was like fucking boiler room, but I was the whole boiler room.

0:32:43 Thomas: Yeah, how many podcasts did you have? No.

0:32:46 Tom: It was horrible. It was fucking horrible and it made me a stupider version of myself being under that much stress and having to do that much work meant that I suddenly yeah

0:32:51 Thomas: Oh, my God. Yeah I feel that. Thank you, Tom. I'm a fucking idiot now. I totally agree.

0:32:59 Tom: But like it makes you less creative it makes you less thoughtful because you never get to step back from the

0:33:07 Eli: Don't read the slack emails when we put them in there and then you try and read them right before the show this

0:33:11 Thomas: Absolutely do not. Yeah Yeah.

0:33:11 Tom: Emergency this is and this is a real thing and I remember coming to a

0:33:15 Eli: Is an intervention with you this whole episode's been a really passive aggressive bitchy way for us to get you to read our slack messages

0:33:17 Thomas: Yeah. This is okay. It's feeling pretty specific. And I'm still

0:33:27 Eli: And he's still not gonna

0:33:27 Thomas: Not going to. Thank you.

0:33:27 Tom: No I know he's like all the time in the world I'm not reading

0:33:30 Eli: Yeah lydia's on the line she's gonna read you a

0:33:34 Tom: That but like I remember sitting in my in my fucking chair and my shitty desk and looking up and being like this job is making me stupid and I have been a lot of things in my life but I don't want to be stupid and I I was like I gotta change I gotta quit this job I gotta find another job and I made a phone call among other reasons but I made a call and I'm like I got it I gotta get another other job, like right now. It went on for years though.

0:33:58 Tom: And that grind mindset, that grind mindset stops us. It prevents us from moments of self -reflection. Even when we have like a break, you need an extended break.

0:33:57 Eli: Letter

0:34:09 Thomas: Oh yeah. Cause I'm so burnt out that like, it can't, I don't know that I can get to that level of point where I feel anything other than like that feeling of, Oh, I still need to be doing something. Still need to be doing Something. It is like, I need a detox for for like months or something.

0:34:22 Tom: You do. Like I remember like Haley and I were having a conversation and I was like, you know, I don't actually know if I'm a morning person or a night person. I have no idea. I've no idea I would have to be able to sleep on my own rhythm for like a year before I think I would be able to figure out what my preference is or what my body's natural circadian rhythm is because I haven't allowed it to have any preference for decades yeah

0:34:46 Thomas: I've shocked my body out of all preferences.

0:34:48 Eli: It's why guys die when they retire like we all heard the story about the guy who like dies a week after retirement and like some of that statistics and some of it's you wouldn't mention it if you lived for eight years afterwards but some of its just like guys spend about a week going like oh no never mind time to breathe out real hard. Oh, there it is. All right. Goodbye, everybody.

0:35:17 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:35:19 Eli: The way men respond to rest is very interesting. It is a fascinating thing to watch the men in my life rest, not rest, or like how they couch rest in ways that are acceptable. This is going to sound like I'm being facetious, but I'm not. And it's also going to Sound weird and backbitey, but it's also not weird and and backbitey, one of the things that I strive for is the way that Heath Enright prioritizes his life. We make jokes about like,

0:35:50 Thomas: Don't believe any of the disclaimers you get. No.

0:35:54 Eli: Heath doesn't respond to text messages, right? And it's true that like Heath looks, teeth

0:35:58 Tom: Not at all hey heath congratulations on your marriage no response

0:36:00 Eli: Looks at our work, right, no response.

0:36:04 Thomas: You might you might get one a randomly a month later sometimes.

0:36:07 Eli: To be fair, he was worried you might ask for an invite. So here's

0:36:10 Tom: It was after the

0:36:12 Thomas: Yeah still could be a time lord.

0:36:14 Eli: The thing that I will say, right. Heath checks his work work messages once a day, maybe twice a day. Something important is going on. And the rest of the time he is living his life. I check my work messages. Once every second, right? Is I am just constantly, I mean, really think about 10 years ago, trying to explain notifications to yourself.

0:36:16 Tom: Fact

0:36:36 Eli: I am just constantly inundated, right.

0:36:35 Thomas: Oh man well I think you mean like 20 or 30 years but yeah 10 years ago we were still doing this we were already doing.

0:36:42 Eli: I'm constantly inundated with messages, notifications, things about my job. And I like to think of myself as a relatively unplugged person I should be aiming for healthier levels of engagement with my job and here's the fucking crazy thing I'm the boss the argument can be made for people like tom who work at a fortune 226 company or fucking people who work at a bank or doctors or nurses or shit but I'm it's me I'm a third of my company the other two are smarter than me But it's not like I'm only answering Facebook messages because if I don't, Noah calls me on my cell phone and is like, why the fuck haven't you answered my message? I am the driving force behind why I'm overworked. And my audience has never, not once in my 10, 11, 12 years of podcasting said, you don't respond quickly enough or you don'T make enough content. They love my content right they love that we put this show out they were excited but no one says why the fuck aren't there two gams a week I've never under any circumstance

0:37:27 Thomas: Dude, I, I'm, this is not a no, but I promise, but just cause it happened to me, like literally it, it doesn't happen. You're totally right. Like, yes. And except like the one time it does. Cause when I announced I'm going to swap doing, you know, like the live Wednesday video away, I'm gonna give people that, but then I'm to step back from Monday and Friday. And I had someone literally be like, why are you deprioritizing this show? So I was like, I literally put out to like an episode intro where I was like, hey, I'm dying and I need to see my kids once in a while. And I had someone be like unacceptable, quitting Patreon. It was like it was like a longtime patron, like whose name I recognize.

0:38:32 Thomas: I love how there's just a segment of people who are just psychopaths, I think, and then just like say that to you. Yeah.

0:38:32 Eli: So I will say to be fair in the creator economy and we could do a whole show about like the creator economy and the illusions about the creator economy versus what it actually is but like in the creator economy once you do something you have to do it forever no matter what happens and so like that is a huge even if you don't like all the way to it even if you try it once the conversation becomes just about why you aren't doing it I think it was to no it was trump's first election was when we skipped a few skeptocrats in a row the biggest feedback we get about skeptocrat these days is still well that's the show they don't do as as often it doesn't matter that we've been doing it significantly more regularly for eight or ten years now it's that is the myth right look at incredulous like we love our buddy Andy Wilson and obviously it's not how he makes a living it's Not that big a deal but like the thing people talk about when they talk about incredulous is like what century is it coming out this year right like and that's fine but like it also means that that pressure becomes self

0:39:43 Eli: -created and at a certain point, we as people who get to make our own stuff, and I guess I'm just talking about me and Thomas here because Tom has a grown -up job, we who get to make her own stuff but that includes more and more people every day, we have to say, and I'm stopping here, I choose to make this much less money, I choose to do this much less because I'm prioritizing my rest and my well -being. When I took this teaching job this year, every friend I spoke to, every single friend, because I've been trying to get a full -time teaching position for years, right? It's been something really exciting, something really wonderful for me. And so I obviously told all the people I love about it. Every single person said, what are you dropping? What are you getting rid of? And then the conversation had to be that the answer was nothing.

0:40:31 Tom: Yeah and why do you think you feel that intensity of pressure like where do you think that because I I get that I do I get that where do you think that intensity of pressure comes from

0:40:44 Eli: Well, I know where it comes from for me, which is that like my dad defined himself as a failure because of financial reasons, right. Right. Like my favorite person, if given any more, because the thing that I don't know if I've talked about this, but like my dad, for as positive as he was about other people, was wildly negative about himself. Talked about how fat he was, talked about how out of shape he was. What a loser he was? What a failure he was like. You could not talk to my dad for two or three extended minutes without him saying, yeah, I'm getting so fucking fat or whatever the case might be. So he imbued in me that the the value he had on himself and therefore the value I should have on myself came from this being in a financially positive situation and what you do for others the thing he always used to say is like I'm gonna buy your mom a house by the water your mom's gonna have a house buy the water oh man if this hits get your mom little house by water it was always about what he could do for other people so my life is about feeling like I haven't to quote tom Tom Curry, earned my rest

0:41:49 Eli: Unless I have done something for other people that day.

0:41:51 Tom: Yeah yeah I like I can relate I can relate real hard to that I I do still, and I will always, I, I don't even know that I want to fix it because I don't know what would be left if I fixed it. Like, I do believe that a big part of the value that I add to other people's lives is like the shit that I do and provide. It's impossible for me to separate taking pride in providing for people and providing means a lot of things to me. You know, it means, you know, providing financially, but it also means providing in terms of making sure that everybody's needs are met. These are things I do and I do well. And because I do them and I did them well, I'm proud of them. But then if I'm probably them, then I'm responsible for them. Right. Which means that like the quality of that can never lapse in my mind, because then the place that I that I offer value from will be reduced. And in my mind, why would people value me the same if something they value about me is reduced? I don't actually think that most of the people in my life would see me as wildly less than, but I don' t want to run the risk.

0:43:07 Tom: It's a risk that no matter how many times the people that love me say, you're being ridiculous, say, I'll never put them in the position to test it if I can avoid it. Because I don't fully trust. I don't fully trust it. I'll never fully trust that because I was just I grew up embracing that message and being fed that message that like, yeah, that's part of your fucking role, man. That's why you have value.

0:43:34 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:43:41 Eli: All right, gentlemen, on that cheery note, what did the lion order at a Chinese restaurant? Lo mein.

0:43:50 Tom: You oh man oh my god that one is particularly bad that one is particularly bad

0:43:55 Thomas: These are are bad and you should feel bad. Just letting you know that. Can I get feedback? Yeah, thank you. Finally, something interesting.

0:43:59 Eli: Okay. Good to know. I'll try and find more weather-related ones.

0:44:49 Eli: I'd take suck -to -tick corner over meat called Annie twice on Sundays, Jesus.