It's Dan Time. Grab a seat. It's Dan Time. Yeah.
It's Dan Time. Only dance on the line. Only dance
all the time. This is the Dan Time podcast with
your host, Dan McGarrett. What all are you doing
the day after Christmas? How's everything shaping
up in your life? I hope you had a great Christmas
Eve, Christmas day, and now it's Friday, the
day after, now we got the weekend, now we got
New Year's. Hopefully you've had some fun, you're
taking reasonably good care of yourself, you're
maybe imbibing, ingesting, enjoying a little
bit of excess, maybe Maybe some excess and then
pulling back and then maybe going back to the
excess and and then taking another day off Hopefully
you're not on a holiday bender of whatever that
material substance food liquid You name it. This
is Now this is usually a fun time of the year
Especially when the calendar shakes out that
you get some extra time with your family or if
you don't have much family around your friends
or just some Screw around time if you like dabbling
in things and you have projects that you enjoy
But you don't have a lot of time for I like to
imagine that you're getting some Some time off
some real time off or you get left alone as much
as you'd like to be This is the Dan Time podcast.
If you've listened to it before, you know that
at one time, this was a regular thing every Sunday
night, maybe teetering into Monday morning often
times. But every week you got a new podcast episode
with a fellow Dan or somebody that I know to
generate a quality episode. And I've had to pop
the brakes. I had to slow down and focus on the
things that matter. And I've addressed this.
I just cannot keep up that schedule for now.
Maybe it takes another year, two or three or
five or 10. I don't know, but downtime in some
regularity will come back. But, you know, two
weeks, I'm sorry, two months ago, I brought you
the Halloween episode, a third annual installment.
With my brother Rob will always keep that going
It's fun. I love talking to Robert so two months
later Now a Christmas holiday episode used to
try to do one every year or 2023 and 24 had Dan
Kabelka Maybe both times this special I guess
you'd call it special holiday episode is really
just a ramble sowed I don't know if anybody's
already used that term but if not I'm taking
it nobody's used Dan time so I got that ramble
sowed is it's just me getting a getting the itch
to to plug in and turn on and get that red record
light going again Not much more to it than that
just you know it my outlet has been Has been
taken away from me but then again, it's me pulling
back but if you like to create something and
I'm not a musician I'm not an artist that can
turn a blank canvas into just a priceless composition
I do like to get some stuff get some things out
of my head and I don't know why this is so funny
I I don't know why and there's if you've listened
to the show especially the Travis episodes you've
heard some maybe it's misplaced laughter I just
sometimes start laughing anyway I have a brief
have an outline here and I'm gonna try to stick
to it and keep this to about maybe 20 minutes
because again this is just me talking and as
I've said before I'm not a huge fan of just talking
just me for 25 30 minutes I listen to shows and
I've said this before I will sometimes bail after
about 25 30 minutes if it's just a monologue
But I don't know how these guys do it where they
record an episode Twice a week maybe and they
talk for an hour and 20 minutes. I Don't know.
I don't know and then you have to imagine. Well,
they have They've got a child a spouse somebody
else in their inner circle That they're also
having conversations with are they stopping to
listen to these people or are they just? talking
on the mic and then talking at their people.
How does all that go? I just wonder. Anyway,
so one thing I've been thinking about here, 2025
and how we try to get into the holiday spirit,
how we try to be merry and bright. And it just
feels like we're going through the motions. Look,
your children are having fun. If you've got a
three, four, five, six year old, they like Christmas
time. Okay, they don't know what's going on here
in the world. They don't know the changes in
our day -to -day lives. Not just what's going
on around the world, conflicts around the world,
government stuff, politics. Not that so much,
just the way that we operate. They don't know
yet. They don't know that it's really, it's just
a big wear out, I guess you would say. So I made
a little tea chart here, 2025 versus 2000. 25
years ago, what things looked like around the
holidays or really any given day versus what's
being crammed, what you're cramming into your
head. in 2025. Okay. Present day, we have, and
this is just, I'm gonna keep this to communication
channels. Most people have a smartphone. Most
people. I don't know who those people are that
live in a civilized society and they're above
the poverty line. And a lot of people at or just
below the poverty line probably still have a
smartphone of some sort. Somebody in the house
has one. So if you're an average person, you've
got, and you're in the working world. Okay. Let's
just add that piece of criteria to it. First
of all, you've got your, your text messages.
It's from your brother, your sister, your best
friend, the person you talk to a lot right now.
Maybe that's somebody from work or or whoever,
your one -to -one messages. Then you've got your
group texts. And maybe 10 years ago, there'd
be one group text with your extended family or
your immediate family that lives around the country.
So you've got that now, but it's within, it's
with multiple groups. I'm guessing. Then you
got your junk texts. This is just pure trash.
Spam. Don't click on it. Don't click that link.
You just, you know, this is I need to delete
and report spam. Although this seemingly never
gets reported or I don't, I don't know who looks
at this and says, Oh, let's, let's knock that
out because I keep getting those messages. Then
you've got marketing texts. This is from legit
companies. Maybe you agreed when you signed up
and you forgot to uncheck that box that you get
these messages from Jimmy John's or Taco Bell
or Kohl's or something. Then you've got your
doctor's appointment text. If your kids are in
school, now you've got text notifications to
remind you to go check the app and read about
that update. You've probably got an email attached
to all that as well. This is before we get to
phone calls. Okay, so then the calls coming in
you're probably not getting a phone call from
your best friend or Just a an acquaintance here
in town that you've been doing a lot of stuff
with this year Something I don't know depending
on the relationships Some of you may just pick
up the phone and blindly call somebody but probably
not a lot of those coming in But you are getting
a lot of junk phone calls pure junk You don't
answer them. And if you're, if you figured it
out, you know how to send those to voicemail
without even hearing it ring. Then you got the
marketing calls. Then if you've amounted some
debt in your life and you haven't, you haven't
paid it all, you're getting some creditor calls.
Now you're also getting, again, unless you've
figured out a way to control this to some extent.
notifications going off like crazy if you haven't
and I urge you I urge you to get in there stop
what you're doing stop listening to this podcast
now if your phone is just driving you absolutely
mad because you can't stop looking at it because
it's always buzzing or beeping go in there and
turn off all of your notifications that you just
don't need to know about immediately or at all.
This includes your social media notifications.
Turn that off. Facebook, Instagram. God help
you if you're on X. That heaping, heaping pile
of toxic waste. It's useless. It's just total
garbage. I have nothing for that platform. But
turn that stuff off. If you're tapping on it,
if you're tapping on that, those rounded edge
icons multiple times a day anyway, you don't
need, you don't need a red number popping up
to remind you to go there. Turn it off. Just
my recommendation there. Okay. I'm getting a
little heated. So we've gotten through the, all
the activity just on the. just on the computer
in your pocket. It's madness. It's absolute madness.
Now you got photos. You've got the stuff on social
media that you're choosing to look at. I guess
the doom scrolling, I don't know how much that
captures as a part of what we're just feel like
we have to look at. But on and on and on. So
there is in 2025, that's all the stuff. that
your eyeballs are fixated on every single day
multiple times a day nothing's excluded unless
you work the type of job where you just can't
look at your phone for eight hours this is what
we're dealing with how do you how do you get
out that's what i want to know how do you just
say i'm i want to go back I want to go back.
I was thinking about that this morning. Today,
December 26th, 2025, the first time that I seriously
thought about, all right, because I carry two
phones, one for work. What if I go back to a
flip phone for my personal phone? What if I just
do that? Could I go through a year doing that?
These devices are demonstrably addictive and
It's it's kind of freaky to think ahead if you're
anywhere from 25 35 45 55 years old and you're
trying to imagine the next 20 to 30 to 40 years
of your life 50 50 more years of your life. Is
this what it looks like? Now, I'm not saying
you're not active. We're not active people. We
don't get outside and explore the outside world
and have conversations at deli counters and coffee
shops and trains and we don't get out on the
water, on the slopes, on the links. We live life.
We do stuff. But we always come back. If you
spend enough time in a public place where it's
a beautiful day and there's enough adults around,
you will never be anywhere. Not even the beach
where you just don't need it. And it's really
hard to look at a digital screen, a black screen,
you know, like on, especially down here on the
Gulf Coast, the white sand, the sunshine. It's
very difficult for me to to really concentrate
on a small screen At the beach where people do
it. What was I saying? Yeah We go nowhere Where
we're around other people and No length of time
can go by without somebody without you seeing
somebody across the way or three feet away from
you With that that with the arm at the 90 degree
angle holding the phone and the neck down You
don't see it. You won't see it. So is this what
how does this evolve? How does this get better?
All right a lot of commentary there and you can
pretty much tell where I fall on this whole thing
You know and I'm in it I'm As someone that in
my earlier years, smoked cigarettes, you try
to look for, okay, how do I get out of this?
This isn't good. This as, as this, uh, you know,
this is something that I do regularly. It's not,
it's not healthy. How does this stop? How do
I get, how do I get this out of my system, out
of my, out of my diet, out of my routine? And
you quit, you don't smoke anymore. You need to
start eating healthier. You make some changes.
Doesn't happen overnight, but you stop. Now in
2000, go back 25 years, you had a brick phone,
a dumb phone, whatever they call them. One of
those Nokia phones. You had a landline telephone
at your house or apartment. You had an answering
machine of some sort or voicemail. Voicemail
wasn't primitive, it had been around a little
while. You had work email that stayed at work
and you might have had a physical camera or disposable
camera. What am I missing? That's it. You heard
what I rattled off a few minutes ago and it's
almost endless. That's what you had in 2000 as
far as the technology that you had to just look
at. And you didn't have to really train your
eyes on a lot of stuff you had the new Mac computers
That was coming along There was stuff that you
did America online that was coming along you
had some stuff, but you had to sit down on location
at your house at your at school or at your office
and then you left it and you went away and you
didn't do that for hours and you went and you
did something else but you know and people ask
if they weren't there you know younger people
ask was life more fun was it was it better back
then and i was 21 in the year 2000 here's the
difference you had good times you had bad times
and the things that were challenging in your
life They were there like they are today. But
you had time, I feel like, to absorb how you
felt. You had time, you had people that were
mentally available to talk to you about how you
felt. You could go and have a conversation with
somebody and there wasn't a distraction looming
in their pocket or in your pocket. So, yeah.
It was a great time going to see some live music,
doing stuff with friends, going places, traveling
in a vehicle, and people were just talking, were
smiling, were interacting. But I do remember
some of the growing pains and having questions
about things in life. And I'm gonna have to wrap
up this episode because I'm trying to do 20 -25
minutes here, and this is where we're going to
wrap up. But I think we can make some changes.
Maybe reverting to a flip phone is not going
to work for you. How do you listen to podcasts
on if you don't have a smartphone? And and you
want to listen in your car like this is an audio
format. This is not a video show really there
are some video episodes, but How do you listen
to Apple podcast Spotify if you don't have a
smartphone? There's all kinds of ways if you
look at it if you think about it where You're
really locked in You're locked in and we got
to find a way to Make some adjustments Probably
gonna be a part two to this episode. I hope you
enjoyed just some new content from Dan time There's
a little bit more a lot more on my mind, but
I've got a kind of cut it short here today Merry
Christmas. Happy New Year Happy Hanukkah Whatever
you celebrate Have some fun be present put some
of this stuff aside If the weather's nice enough
Go out to your favorite park, trail, natural
surroundings and just find a place to relax and
just be yourself. I appreciate you listening
to the show. Take care of yourself and hopefully
a new episode, a new bonus episode to follow
up this one coming at you soon.