1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,840 This episode is brought to you by Thorne and I have some incredible news for any of you 2 00:00:03,840 --> 00:00:07,440 that are in the military, first responder or medical professions. 3 00:00:07,440 --> 00:00:15,880 In an effort to give back, Thorne is now offering you an ongoing 35% off each and every one 4 00:00:15,880 --> 00:00:19,800 of your purchases of their incredible nutritional solutions. 5 00:00:19,800 --> 00:00:27,280 Now Thorn is the official supplement of CrossFit, the UFC, the Mayo Clinic, the Human Performance 6 00:00:27,280 --> 00:00:31,480 Project and multiple special operations organizations. 7 00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:36,440 I myself have used them for several years and that is why I brought them on as a sponsor. 8 00:00:36,440 --> 00:00:42,080 Some of my favorite products they have are their Multivitamin Elite, their Whey Protein, 9 00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:45,840 the Super EPA and then most recently, Cynaquil. 10 00:00:45,840 --> 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the code BTS10, 20 00:01:33,120 --> 00:01:36,240 Behind the Shield 10 for a one time purchase. 21 00:01:36,240 --> 00:01:42,040 To learn more about Thorn, go to episode 323 of the Behind the Shield podcast with Joel 22 00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:45,720 Titoro and Wes Barnett. 23 00:01:45,720 --> 00:01:50,080 I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast 24 00:01:50,080 --> 00:01:53,160 and that is Rescue 1 CBD. 25 00:01:53,160 --> 00:01:56,560 For any of you who have listened to this podcast for the last eight years, you will have heard 26 00:01:56,560 --> 00:02:03,000 my own personal journey from using prescription pills after a knee surgery to finding CBD 27 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:05,880 and having incredible success with that. 28 00:02:05,880 --> 00:02:11,840 I then saw my son's wheezing diminish, my wife's anxiety and so many more kind of success 29 00:02:11,840 --> 00:02:12,940 stories. 30 00:02:12,940 --> 00:02:18,080 The problem is though, 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00:04:19,800 --> 00:04:21,920 podcast. 61 00:04:21,920 --> 00:04:26,320 This episode is sponsored by TeamBuildr, yet another company that's doing great things 62 00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:29,020 for the first responder community. 63 00:04:29,020 --> 00:04:34,280 As a strength and conditioning coach myself, who also trains tactical athletes, dissemination 64 00:04:34,280 --> 00:04:38,040 of wellness information is one of the biggest challenges. 65 00:04:38,040 --> 00:04:42,960 Now TeamBuildr is the premier strength and conditioning software for tactical athletes. 66 00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:45,960 And there are several features that really impress me. 67 00:04:45,960 --> 00:04:50,840 Firstly, there is a full exercise library, so you, the personal trainer, does not have 68 00:04:50,840 --> 00:04:53,560 to create that within your own department. 69 00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:58,920 Secondly, you can send out programming, but also individualize, which I love. 70 00:04:58,920 --> 00:05:01,240 So you blanket program for everyone. 71 00:05:01,240 --> 00:05:06,760 Now you can tweak based on someone's injury, someone's need to maybe drop some body composition 72 00:05:06,760 --> 00:05:11,440 rather than having to write a program for every single person on their own. 73 00:05:11,440 --> 00:05:16,000 Team Builder also allows you to build custom questionnaires to collate health and wellness 74 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:17,000 data. 75 00:05:17,000 --> 00:05:18,840 It integrates with wearables. 76 00:05:18,840 --> 00:05:22,560 And I think one of the most important things is obviously it tracks. 77 00:05:22,560 --> 00:05:28,960 To me, it's imperative that we as a profession start tracking our people from day one and 78 00:05:28,960 --> 00:05:35,840 then over the full span of their career, therefore catching potential wellness issues and injuries 79 00:05:35,840 --> 00:05:37,800 before they happen. 80 00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:41,680 Now if you want to try TeamBuildr, they are offering you, the audience of the Behind 81 00:05:41,680 --> 00:05:48,320 the Shield podcast, a free 14 day trial to experience all of the features. 82 00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:54,080 And if you want to take a deeper dive into Team Builder, listen to episode 1032 with 83 00:05:54,080 --> 00:05:58,120 Melissa Mercado or go to teambuildr.com. 84 00:05:58,120 --> 00:06:01,160 And I'll spell that to you because it's not as you think. 85 00:06:01,160 --> 00:06:06,480 T-E-A-M-B-U-I-L-D-R.com. 86 00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:08,080 Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. 87 00:06:08,080 --> 00:06:12,080 As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back 88 00:06:12,080 --> 00:06:19,540 onto the show actor and author of From Under the Truck, Josh Brolin. 89 00:06:19,540 --> 00:06:21,880 Now this is my third conversation with Josh. 90 00:06:21,880 --> 00:06:29,600 So if you haven't heard episode 82 or episode 385, I highly recommend that you do so. 91 00:06:29,600 --> 00:06:36,360 In those episodes we dive into his early life as an actor, his work on Only the Brave, writing 92 00:06:36,360 --> 00:06:38,600 and many, many other topics. 93 00:06:38,600 --> 00:06:44,240 In this conversation we talked about the recent Palisades wildland fires, the emotional journey 94 00:06:44,240 --> 00:06:52,200 his latest book took him on, generational trauma, mental health, addiction, post-traumatic 95 00:06:52,200 --> 00:06:57,320 growth, valuing our first responders and so much more. 96 00:06:57,320 --> 00:07:02,680 Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment. 97 00:07:02,680 --> 00:07:07,920 Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and 98 00:07:07,920 --> 00:07:09,980 leave a rating. 99 00:07:09,980 --> 00:07:15,080 Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for 100 00:07:15,080 --> 00:07:16,760 others to find. 101 00:07:16,760 --> 00:07:22,060 And this is a free library of well over 1000 episodes now. 102 00:07:22,060 --> 00:07:27,640 So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so 103 00:07:27,640 --> 00:07:32,760 I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them. 104 00:07:32,760 --> 00:07:36,320 Now I don't normally talk about this in the intro, but seeing as we referred to them several 105 00:07:36,320 --> 00:07:42,120 times in the conversation, Josh was incredibly generous to write the foreword of my first 106 00:07:42,120 --> 00:07:47,560 book One More Light and my second one kinda came out at the end of the last year. 107 00:07:47,560 --> 00:07:51,440 So you can find those both on Amazon and Audible. 108 00:07:51,440 --> 00:08:15,680 So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show, Josh Brolin. 109 00:08:15,680 --> 00:08:17,120 I brought two books with me. 110 00:08:17,120 --> 00:08:19,040 I grabbed the UK version. 111 00:08:19,040 --> 00:08:26,000 I got the UK version, which I like very much because it's more of a, you know, the US version 112 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:30,720 is a smaller version with like a bra that goes over that, which I think is kind of cool. 113 00:08:30,720 --> 00:08:33,840 But the bra always kind of climbs up to there. 114 00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:37,600 And then so it's Josh Brolin's forehead. 115 00:08:37,600 --> 00:08:41,200 And then I started reading this randomly. 116 00:08:41,200 --> 00:08:44,420 I just literally picked it up yesterday and I'm already halfway through it. 117 00:08:44,420 --> 00:08:49,160 And it's kind of a woman's, along the lines of what we were talking about earlier, it's 118 00:08:49,160 --> 00:08:55,840 kind of a woman's, from a woman's point of view about how to get away from, and it's 119 00:08:55,840 --> 00:08:57,840 40 years old, it's 50 years old. 120 00:08:57,840 --> 00:09:03,520 It's the 50th anniversary, but how to get away from certain distractions and get back 121 00:09:03,520 --> 00:09:09,320 to an essential self and therefore a more honest self. 122 00:09:09,320 --> 00:09:17,320 And that was 50 years ago, something that we're dealing with, obviously dealing with 123 00:09:17,320 --> 00:09:25,480 the same issues, but so much grander, so much more chaotic and so much, there's so much 124 00:09:25,480 --> 00:09:29,720 more to distract now. 125 00:09:29,720 --> 00:09:33,600 It's interesting when you say 50 years ago, because I've made that point with this one 126 00:09:33,600 --> 00:09:36,600 here. 127 00:09:36,600 --> 00:09:38,080 Man's search for meaning, Victor Frank. 128 00:09:38,080 --> 00:09:41,280 Whether that's backwards or not. 129 00:09:41,280 --> 00:09:48,960 When I released the first book, I had like complete white belt idea of what the whole 130 00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:50,600 process is going to be looking like. 131 00:09:50,600 --> 00:09:54,080 And it's like immediately as it goes out, you got to push, push, push and everything. 132 00:09:54,080 --> 00:09:59,680 And then you realize like, when you write a book, you've got two types of people. 133 00:09:59,680 --> 00:10:02,140 People who read it and people who haven't read it. 134 00:10:02,140 --> 00:10:03,520 And it's not a race. 135 00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:08,000 And so now here you are buying a book that was written 50 years ago that is absolutely 136 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:09,980 captivating to you. 137 00:10:09,980 --> 00:10:15,080 And it's irrelevant when that person picks it up as long as one day, hopefully they will. 138 00:10:15,080 --> 00:10:16,080 It's irrelevant. 139 00:10:16,080 --> 00:10:20,480 And it's something that exactly like you say, we forget because it's all about the first 140 00:10:20,480 --> 00:10:24,400 two weeks or it's all about getting on the New York Times bestseller list or it's all 141 00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:29,720 about doing as many shows and as many and you forget that this thing is going to be 142 00:10:29,720 --> 00:10:35,720 around and that people are going to find it even if it's out of print and in a used bookstore. 143 00:10:35,720 --> 00:10:43,420 Like me being at, what is it, Peter Harrington's, a rare bookstore in London and sitting there 144 00:10:43,420 --> 00:10:49,920 and having a, you know, James Joyce's Ulysses in front of me and literally leafing through 145 00:10:49,920 --> 00:10:51,760 it page by page. 146 00:10:51,760 --> 00:10:57,440 The first edition, the original edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, which was by the way, 147 00:10:57,440 --> 00:10:59,580 hated by most. 148 00:10:59,580 --> 00:11:00,920 What is he doing? 149 00:11:00,920 --> 00:11:05,760 Creating his own language, pompous, you know what I mean? 150 00:11:05,760 --> 00:11:14,520 And you're like, wow, man, so many of these books that were banned and that were, you 151 00:11:14,520 --> 00:11:22,840 know, thrown on the Montague fire and Fahrenheit 451 and like this is bad. 152 00:11:22,840 --> 00:11:31,800 And then, you know, 20, 40, 60 years later, praised as being something that changed the 153 00:11:31,800 --> 00:11:36,320 whole fabric of what literature is, you know. 154 00:11:36,320 --> 00:11:40,880 It's like the four food groups eat this and this and this and this and that's good. 155 00:11:40,880 --> 00:11:42,680 As long as you do that, that's good. 156 00:11:42,680 --> 00:11:47,280 And then 30 years later, they go, yeah, that's all off. 157 00:11:47,280 --> 00:11:48,280 That's all. 158 00:11:48,280 --> 00:11:53,280 Okay, you know, and you had something to do with this, but we talk about health a lot 159 00:11:53,280 --> 00:11:55,400 and we will talk about health and all that. 160 00:11:55,400 --> 00:12:00,900 So I've been off sugar with the exception of two different times for about a month and 161 00:12:00,900 --> 00:12:05,920 a half now because I went through the Dune to World Tour. 162 00:12:05,920 --> 00:12:11,200 I went through my book tour, which took me, you know, domestically national book tour 163 00:12:11,200 --> 00:12:13,640 and then took me to London. 164 00:12:13,640 --> 00:12:16,720 And I was sick pretty much that whole time. 165 00:12:16,720 --> 00:12:21,700 Like I did a podcast with Rogan and I remember about half of it and we were smoking cigars 166 00:12:21,700 --> 00:12:22,700 on top of it. 167 00:12:22,700 --> 00:12:26,820 But I remember at one point going, I don't know where I am. 168 00:12:26,820 --> 00:12:31,160 I don't know what's being said to me and all that, which I probably shouldn't admit, but 169 00:12:31,160 --> 00:12:34,600 it's just the truth. 170 00:12:34,600 --> 00:12:37,960 And then I got, you know, and I've been I'm a big carb guy. 171 00:12:37,960 --> 00:12:39,960 I'm a big sugar guy. 172 00:12:39,960 --> 00:12:42,580 So I just get bigger and I get bigger all the way around. 173 00:12:42,580 --> 00:12:47,120 You know, I wasn't I wasn't plunging, which I've been doing for 20 years. 174 00:12:47,120 --> 00:12:49,600 And I know is a big trend now. 175 00:12:49,600 --> 00:12:52,440 But anyway, I got pissed. 176 00:12:52,440 --> 00:12:55,000 Enough of is enough is enough mentality. 177 00:12:55,000 --> 00:13:00,260 I hit that, you know, that ceiling and I just went I'm fucking had it. 178 00:13:00,260 --> 00:13:03,280 And I stopped sugar and I started eating. 179 00:13:03,280 --> 00:13:04,280 This was my diet. 180 00:13:04,280 --> 00:13:10,560 Basically, it was two eggs in the morning with avocado, a protein shake with layered 181 00:13:10,560 --> 00:13:18,920 greens and Icelandic salt in the early afternoon, late afternoon, another one of those. 182 00:13:18,920 --> 00:13:23,640 And then at night, a salad with about four to six ounces of chicken. 183 00:13:23,640 --> 00:13:28,280 And I did that every day when I was in London and I was in England. 184 00:13:28,280 --> 00:13:30,240 I was also above London. 185 00:13:30,240 --> 00:13:33,840 And dude, I shrank so fast. 186 00:13:33,840 --> 00:13:38,120 All the unnecessary everything that was unnecessary. 187 00:13:38,120 --> 00:13:41,520 So now I'm down to the essentials. 188 00:13:41,520 --> 00:13:44,280 Now I'm down to I feel better. 189 00:13:44,280 --> 00:13:45,840 I move better. 190 00:13:45,840 --> 00:13:47,240 I think better. 191 00:13:47,240 --> 00:13:49,320 I'm sleeping better. 192 00:13:49,320 --> 00:13:50,520 I'm a better person. 193 00:13:50,520 --> 00:13:52,640 I'm less irritable. 194 00:13:52,640 --> 00:13:58,600 There's no adolescent shame spirals happening when I stick a huge handful of jelly beans 195 00:13:58,600 --> 00:14:04,200 in my mouth right before I go to sleep and hide the wrapper at the bottom of the trash 196 00:14:04,200 --> 00:14:05,840 can. 197 00:14:05,840 --> 00:14:11,040 It's crazy the effect and part of it came from this moment where I had heard just on 198 00:14:11,040 --> 00:14:17,800 some random video that a hundred years ago, which obviously no access to or less way less 199 00:14:17,800 --> 00:14:25,160 access to it and not everything was processed with sugar, which everything is now that on 200 00:14:25,160 --> 00:14:29,960 the average a human being would consume two kilograms of sugar a year. 201 00:14:29,960 --> 00:14:37,080 And now on the average they consume a hundred kilograms of sugar a year. 202 00:14:37,080 --> 00:14:38,080 That's insane. 203 00:14:38,080 --> 00:14:39,080 Yeah. 204 00:14:39,080 --> 00:14:41,480 Did you ever see Jamie Oliver? 205 00:14:41,480 --> 00:14:46,880 He did I think it was a Ted talk and he was talking and he's been big on the school food, 206 00:14:46,880 --> 00:14:50,000 which I think is such an important conversation. 207 00:14:50,000 --> 00:14:55,040 He demonstrated that with a wheelbarrow on stage and I forget it was like several wheelbarrows 208 00:14:55,040 --> 00:14:59,840 and they had this massive mountain of sugar and he's like, that's how much we a year. 209 00:14:59,840 --> 00:15:05,880 And when you see it per person per year on the average, when you see it, when there's 210 00:15:05,880 --> 00:15:11,640 evidence, when there's physical evidence, you think that possibly they can't possibly 211 00:15:11,640 --> 00:15:17,200 be true, but then you realize, oh, every time you dip your fries in ketchup, that the majority 212 00:15:17,200 --> 00:15:19,680 of that ketchup is made out of sugar. 213 00:15:19,680 --> 00:15:24,320 Anyway, it's not like an ex-smoker where I go around and I'm going sugar is horrible. 214 00:15:24,320 --> 00:15:28,280 And every time somebody eats sugar, I go gets bad and don't do it. 215 00:15:28,280 --> 00:15:32,840 But the conversation that you and I were having earlier and not that I necessarily, you know, 216 00:15:32,840 --> 00:15:39,720 it's up to you, but obesity, which I know is, you know, it's almost like it's not, you 217 00:15:39,720 --> 00:15:44,560 become part of the kind of system and you can't, it's very hard. 218 00:15:44,560 --> 00:15:48,600 You have to, you have to be very resilient and you, I think you have to be kind of used 219 00:15:48,600 --> 00:15:53,440 to the misfit mentality in order to live outside of a system. 220 00:15:53,440 --> 00:15:57,960 So if somebody's saying here, we're giving this to you, we're giving you access to it. 221 00:15:57,960 --> 00:16:03,520 We're giving you easy access to it and go ahead and consume it because it's good. 222 00:16:03,520 --> 00:16:06,520 I've heard so many people say, I go, you know, that's super bad for you. 223 00:16:06,520 --> 00:16:10,720 And they go, yeah, but it tastes good. 224 00:16:10,720 --> 00:16:17,600 How many doctors and nurses smoke, you know, if it was just as easy as making good decisions 225 00:16:17,600 --> 00:16:22,680 or even in that case, watching people die from the very thing that it does to kill you, 226 00:16:22,680 --> 00:16:27,640 all our hospital personnel and first responders would be in incredible shape. 227 00:16:27,640 --> 00:16:33,700 But if the environment is designed to make it extremely hard to have that healthy mental 228 00:16:33,700 --> 00:16:40,360 and physical, you know, outcome, then you get what you get, which is the, you know, 229 00:16:40,360 --> 00:16:45,800 the out of shape police officer and the smoking ER nurse, because you can't just tell someone 230 00:16:45,800 --> 00:16:47,680 make good decisions and you'll be fine. 231 00:16:47,680 --> 00:16:52,400 Get up at 5 a.m. have your liquid death and do your plunge or whatever the thing is. 232 00:16:52,400 --> 00:16:54,480 Yes, those are all tools. 233 00:16:54,480 --> 00:16:55,480 There we go. 234 00:16:55,480 --> 00:16:56,480 Shameless plug. 235 00:16:56,480 --> 00:17:01,320 But, you know, it's also the environment, you know, and I always tell people I grew 236 00:17:01,320 --> 00:17:03,000 up on a farm in England. 237 00:17:03,000 --> 00:17:06,960 We literally had food growing in the fields and in the orchard. 238 00:17:06,960 --> 00:17:11,480 How am I going to look down my nose at someone who grew up in Brooklyn and maybe the bodega 239 00:17:11,480 --> 00:17:15,780 was the only place they knew that food came from two totally different environments. 240 00:17:15,780 --> 00:17:17,600 So change the environment. 241 00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:19,960 You will change the masses. 242 00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:20,960 That's right. 243 00:17:20,960 --> 00:17:22,640 Change the environment and you'll change the masses. 244 00:17:22,640 --> 00:17:29,200 And the environment is almost impossible to change because greed is such a strong motivation. 245 00:17:29,200 --> 00:17:32,920 Why would I want less when I could have more? 246 00:17:32,920 --> 00:17:35,380 You know, what did you what did you give? 247 00:17:35,380 --> 00:17:40,760 We talked about this earlier, you know, when you give away your money, you know, I know, 248 00:17:40,760 --> 00:17:45,300 like even me, I'll go, how do I figure out how to get a tax incentive in order to give 249 00:17:45,300 --> 00:17:49,280 away money so it's not as much money as it is? 250 00:17:49,280 --> 00:17:54,440 And this whole idea, I just dealt with somebody recently where they were asking a lot because 251 00:17:54,440 --> 00:17:59,200 the perception is and it's a correct perception. 252 00:17:59,200 --> 00:18:01,960 You have more than I do. 253 00:18:01,960 --> 00:18:05,720 So therefore you should give to me. 254 00:18:05,720 --> 00:18:13,720 And you go and then that person who doesn't have as much gets some and then they buy a 255 00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:16,560 lot of stuff for themselves. 256 00:18:16,560 --> 00:18:23,820 When you go, you're missing the concept of giving away is getting you missing the concept. 257 00:18:23,820 --> 00:18:29,840 And when you see people who are truly altruistic and people who truly give away and find a 258 00:18:29,840 --> 00:18:36,580 great happiness and solace in giving something away, then like that's the win. 259 00:18:36,580 --> 00:18:39,620 And it's very, very rare and becoming more and more rare. 260 00:18:39,620 --> 00:18:46,320 And I try to make myself do it because even me, I get sucked in by the greed monster. 261 00:18:46,320 --> 00:18:48,820 And I go, no, no, this is hard. 262 00:18:48,820 --> 00:18:50,660 I earn this. 263 00:18:50,660 --> 00:18:52,880 I earned this. 264 00:18:52,880 --> 00:18:56,880 I was on a set for 12 hours pretending to be somebody else. 265 00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:59,520 That was hard. 266 00:18:59,520 --> 00:19:05,120 Well, speaking of that, that's a good segue to one of the things I wanted to make sure 267 00:19:05,120 --> 00:19:06,120 that we did discuss. 268 00:19:06,120 --> 00:19:11,640 Obviously we're going to dive into the book, but you have been a diehard Californian for 269 00:19:11,640 --> 00:19:12,800 a long time now. 270 00:19:12,800 --> 00:19:19,880 You've also spent several seasons as a wildland firefighter volunteering in Arizona. 271 00:19:19,880 --> 00:19:26,680 Talk to me about your experience and the family's experience with these most recent fires because 272 00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:32,000 unlike some of the other ones, they clearly made a massive impact on the Hollywood world 273 00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:38,640 and some of the men and women that you adore and work alongside. 274 00:19:38,640 --> 00:19:51,860 I think, again, I try to be honest, especially in this day and age, about how I dealt with 275 00:19:51,860 --> 00:19:52,860 certain things. 276 00:19:52,860 --> 00:20:01,040 And the Woolsey fire that happened in 2018, Westland, our six-year-old, was six days old. 277 00:20:01,040 --> 00:20:04,640 And I walked outside and I felt those winds. 278 00:20:04,640 --> 00:20:10,080 I go outside with Catherine, we're holding hands and we're looking, we're in Santa Barbara 279 00:20:10,080 --> 00:20:13,480 now and we're looking around and she goes, wow, look at those winds. 280 00:20:13,480 --> 00:20:14,680 It's so amazing. 281 00:20:14,680 --> 00:20:18,040 And there's a completely different face that I'm holding. 282 00:20:18,040 --> 00:20:20,100 And I go, this is not good. 283 00:20:20,100 --> 00:20:23,520 It's a warm wind. 284 00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:26,000 It's set up for fire. 285 00:20:26,000 --> 00:20:28,400 And so the two very different reactions. 286 00:20:28,400 --> 00:20:34,060 So when I walked outside in 2018 in the Woolsey fire and I saw that smoke and the type of 287 00:20:34,060 --> 00:20:40,920 smoke and the winds and all that, I knew we were in a really bad situation with a six-day 288 00:20:40,920 --> 00:20:42,020 old. 289 00:20:42,020 --> 00:20:46,120 And I had my daughter Eden with me and I had her mother with it. 290 00:20:46,120 --> 00:20:51,600 So we all went out, we threw some things in the car, we left right away. 291 00:20:51,600 --> 00:20:57,220 We went to go right and it was already backed up all the way to Point Doom, from Venice 292 00:20:57,220 --> 00:20:58,220 to Point Doom. 293 00:20:58,220 --> 00:21:02,080 So it would probably be a seven to eight hour drive to Venice. 294 00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:06,120 And you're still in LA and you're in the smoke and thinking about residual smoke and thinking 295 00:21:06,120 --> 00:21:07,120 about all that. 296 00:21:07,120 --> 00:21:10,400 So I don't know why I had the instinct to turn around and head north. 297 00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:13,520 And it was basically heading into the fire. 298 00:21:13,520 --> 00:21:17,920 And it went from daytime, I think it was 930 in the morning, went from fairly light daytime 299 00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:20,480 with smoke around it in the distance. 300 00:21:20,480 --> 00:21:25,080 And I know the smoke was, the fire was traveling at like 40 miles an hour at that point with 301 00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:29,300 the winds and what people don't understand about fires, it's drying out things miles 302 00:21:29,300 --> 00:21:30,300 ahead of itself. 303 00:21:30,300 --> 00:21:33,960 So once it hit it, it's almost explosive. 304 00:21:33,960 --> 00:21:36,800 And that's why it can travel at those kinds of speeds. 305 00:21:36,800 --> 00:21:44,120 And so we went into the smoke and to the point where it was total night, black and around 306 00:21:44,120 --> 00:21:49,120 every, and my wife's screaming and she's saying RSV for the kid and this and inhaling the 307 00:21:49,120 --> 00:21:52,240 smoke, which she's absolutely right. 308 00:21:52,240 --> 00:21:56,920 And around every corner, we're praying, please, please, please don't be a roadblock or stop. 309 00:21:56,920 --> 00:22:02,400 And I heard that we were one of the last cars, if not the last car to be allowed to go north 310 00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:09,480 before they, you know, before Zuma got, you know, completely consumed with fire. 311 00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:17,240 So that being said, I would have loved to have been like Laird Hamilton and stayed and 312 00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:20,640 fought my own fires and helped everybody out. 313 00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:27,560 And I didn't and I and there's some guilt around that because it's it's my I think it's 314 00:22:27,560 --> 00:22:31,040 my go to to try and help as much as possible. 315 00:22:31,040 --> 00:22:34,260 And when you have a six day old, that's all you can think about. 316 00:22:34,260 --> 00:22:38,200 So during these fires, when people say, well, do you think we're in danger? 317 00:22:38,200 --> 00:22:39,200 Do you think we're in danger? 318 00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:40,200 I said, do you have children? 319 00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:41,200 And they go, yes. 320 00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:45,000 And I go leave. 321 00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:47,480 This is all material shit. 322 00:22:47,480 --> 00:22:52,040 This is all stuff that we've built up and we've created and it's meaningful, obviously. 323 00:22:52,040 --> 00:22:56,740 But we've created a big romance around about how valuable it is to us. 324 00:22:56,740 --> 00:23:00,960 And I know that there's valuable things into it, but ultimately, it's not more valuable 325 00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:01,960 than your life. 326 00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:08,320 So to answer your question, yes, I've known a lot of people that have lost houses in both 327 00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:11,000 fires, both of the major fires. 328 00:23:11,000 --> 00:23:20,480 To put it in perspective, the the Palisades fire was basically housewise and urban. 329 00:23:20,480 --> 00:23:25,880 The urban area was three full Manhattans is what was burned. 330 00:23:25,880 --> 00:23:27,360 When I think of it like that, I go. 331 00:23:27,360 --> 00:23:29,560 I mean, that's a lot of space. 332 00:23:29,560 --> 00:23:35,080 I think it's something like 13000 houses or 11000 houses or something like that. 333 00:23:35,080 --> 00:23:40,360 We know about 30, 35 people who lost their directly who lost their homes. 334 00:23:40,360 --> 00:23:44,240 And about 250 indirectly. 335 00:23:44,240 --> 00:23:45,280 And what do you do? 336 00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:49,200 You live in California, by the way, after the fires, there were the mudslides. 337 00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:53,040 And after the mudslides, there was an earthquake. 338 00:23:53,040 --> 00:23:54,440 That's California. 339 00:23:54,440 --> 00:24:00,480 I think it's a little more concentrated in Malibu and the Palisades and all that. 340 00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:04,560 But we did we did give some money. 341 00:24:04,560 --> 00:24:08,520 And I told you earlier that we I wanted to create incentive with that money. 342 00:24:08,520 --> 00:24:14,080 So we had basically like, what do you call it? 343 00:24:14,080 --> 00:24:18,360 Like a one day fundraiser. 344 00:24:18,360 --> 00:24:23,000 We ended up raising about one point five million dollars. 345 00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:26,560 So along with my money, it was about two million dollars. 346 00:24:26,560 --> 00:24:27,840 And that's great. 347 00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:34,160 But you're still not dealing with people face to face, you know, which is always an interesting 348 00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:35,160 thing to me. 349 00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:37,240 It's like a very rich thing to not deal with. 350 00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:39,000 So here, I hope this helps. 351 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:42,500 I hope this helps you, which I know it's needed. 352 00:24:42,500 --> 00:24:47,360 But at the same time, you know, going back to the to the fire stuff, when you're really 353 00:24:47,360 --> 00:24:52,480 in a in a there were a couple of structural fires that I did. 354 00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:56,240 And when people are there, when people are afraid and when they're screaming, all the 355 00:24:56,240 --> 00:25:03,120 stuff that you know very well and all the stuff that your first book was about. 356 00:25:03,120 --> 00:25:04,340 It's different, man. 357 00:25:04,340 --> 00:25:05,600 It's just different. 358 00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:09,440 It hits your heart and your mind and your soul in a very different way. 359 00:25:09,440 --> 00:25:12,880 And it becomes very personal. 360 00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:19,940 Which is why I think that I've stayed close with a lot of firemen in my life because there's 361 00:25:19,940 --> 00:25:25,000 something broken about them, but broken for all the right reasons. 362 00:25:25,000 --> 00:25:28,320 Do you know what I mean? 363 00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:29,320 Absolutely. 364 00:25:29,320 --> 00:25:30,320 So. 365 00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:36,360 Well, speaking of that, let's segue to the book then when I mean, for several years now, 366 00:25:36,360 --> 00:25:37,360 we've known each other. 367 00:25:37,360 --> 00:25:40,640 You've been talking about this writing that you were working on. 368 00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:44,920 I know you did some writing that was attached to the June project and the June book. 369 00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:47,440 But I'd love to kind of start at the beginning. 370 00:25:47,440 --> 00:25:52,860 What was the the absolute nucleus of you deciding to write that you the book that you ended 371 00:25:52,860 --> 00:25:55,520 up writing? 372 00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:58,480 Like how helping you out. 373 00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:00,560 Oh, you're welcome. 374 00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:02,280 People know. 375 00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:06,560 But honestly, it's like it's like the guy who's walking around with a briefcase with 376 00:26:06,560 --> 00:26:10,720 30 pages of a script written for 10 years. 377 00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:11,720 And they go, hey, what are you doing? 378 00:26:11,720 --> 00:26:14,440 You go, right in the script, write a script. 379 00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:16,240 But they're not actually writing a script. 380 00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:21,800 They're not actually laboring through what it is to be a writer, which you know, and 381 00:26:21,800 --> 00:26:23,440 I know. 382 00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:27,080 And you know, I became this guy that was like writing a lot of speeches. 383 00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:28,080 I wrote my own speech. 384 00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:33,400 I gave a, you know, award to the Coens or whatever. 385 00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:36,240 And somebody was, oh, who knew who knew he could write? 386 00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:39,640 And then, you know, and then people are asking me to write their speeches. 387 00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:40,640 And then I'm doing that. 388 00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:43,560 And I'm the go to guy writing speeches for somebody else. 389 00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:45,520 And then you start writing shit on Instagram. 390 00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:47,440 People go, you're amazing. 391 00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:51,760 You're amazing what you wrote, which it's really a paragraph or a half a paragraph. 392 00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:53,160 And all that's really nice. 393 00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:54,160 And I appreciate that. 394 00:26:54,160 --> 00:27:01,320 And for somebody who is held writing, you know, such high esteem in such a, you know, 395 00:27:01,320 --> 00:27:03,120 it's been my first love always. 396 00:27:03,120 --> 00:27:08,160 And it's been my mode of expression always from as early as I can remember, eight years 397 00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:09,540 old, six years old. 398 00:27:09,540 --> 00:27:13,520 My mom was finding poems at eight years old, circular poems. 399 00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:14,880 And then they went on to this thing. 400 00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:20,320 But it was always it was always my go to it was always things that I couldn't express 401 00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:27,800 in other ways, whether it was creative or otherwise, or personally, it always came out 402 00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:33,360 on a memo pad or whatever, you know, spiral notebook. 403 00:27:33,360 --> 00:27:37,720 And so when enough people are saying, well, you can write or enough people are asking 404 00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,560 you, can you help me write my book or whatever? 405 00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:44,280 You're like, am I full of shit? 406 00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:46,280 And and then you just sit down. 407 00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:51,040 I just sat down and started writing in the book, interestingly, started to dictate. 408 00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:53,920 I had kind of compiled some journal writings. 409 00:27:53,920 --> 00:27:59,160 And these aren't based on a lot of journal writings, maybe a few that I rewrote. 410 00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:04,120 But I sat down and I started to compile these journal writings and I sent it out. 411 00:28:04,120 --> 00:28:08,200 And I look back now on what I sent out to different agents. 412 00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:09,520 It was horrible, man. 413 00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:10,520 It was horrible. 414 00:28:10,520 --> 00:28:13,440 I mean, it was really bad. 415 00:28:13,440 --> 00:28:19,960 You know, and even even if I have any perceptive powers at all, people like, you know, they 416 00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:20,960 go up an octave. 417 00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:24,680 They were like, hey, man, I read your stuff. 418 00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:27,040 That's really good. 419 00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:28,040 Really good. 420 00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:30,440 You know, like, oh, I'm far. 421 00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:36,760 And then and then there was one lady, Kimberly Witherspoon in New York with Inkwell Management, 422 00:28:36,760 --> 00:28:39,320 and she said, yeah, you can write. 423 00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:43,340 I think we need to work on this and let's see where it goes. 424 00:28:43,340 --> 00:28:49,080 And I was like, oh, and and she was who I had a deep appreciation for. 425 00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:54,440 Anthony Bourdain was her first client ever. 426 00:28:54,440 --> 00:28:59,520 And and she was like, you have there's a danger in your writing that reminds me of him. 427 00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:01,680 And I want to see if you can really do this or not. 428 00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:05,400 And it was a challenge more than a you're so great. 429 00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:08,880 And let's go make money off what you've done in the movie industry and put your name on 430 00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:09,880 a book. 431 00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:10,880 And let's see. 432 00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:12,480 So I really responded to that. 433 00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:17,560 And and the book just lastly, the book started to really dictate itself as I started to put 434 00:29:17,560 --> 00:29:18,560 the book together. 435 00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:20,600 It wasn't supposed to be a book about my mother. 436 00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:24,520 And I think it's very, you know, the through line, I think, is my mother. 437 00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:32,880 And the through line is also can you grow up in, you know, chaotic vortex and actually 438 00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:38,960 grow up as opposed to blame that chaotic vortex on the rest of your life and say, well, I 439 00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:43,320 can't do it because that's what they did or the system I have to live within the system 440 00:29:43,320 --> 00:29:47,200 because that's the system that's been creative, that's been created. 441 00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:48,760 So what am I supposed to do? 442 00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:51,560 And that's what I meant earlier about that misfit mentality. 443 00:29:51,560 --> 00:29:57,440 I think I got the misfit mentality from my mother, you know, willing to be uncomfortable 444 00:29:57,440 --> 00:29:59,840 in order to do the right thing. 445 00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:07,720 But I think I, you know, I also inherited a lot of insanity that I have to, you know, 446 00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:16,920 I have to navigate with grace and tools. 447 00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:21,000 As you were writing, I mean, we talked and we were basically recording audio books at 448 00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:22,040 pretty much the same time. 449 00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:23,040 So I want to get into that. 450 00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:26,560 But when you were still going through the writing and then submitting it to someone 451 00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:31,800 who was then critiquing it, or probably I'm assuming numerous people, what was the level 452 00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:35,440 of imposter syndrome that was working at that point? 453 00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:36,440 I told you this. 454 00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:40,280 I said that I never felt that during writing. 455 00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:45,360 I mean, during writing, there was never a moment of I'm a shit writer. 456 00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:46,960 And it wasn't I'm a great writer. 457 00:30:46,960 --> 00:30:54,520 But I was really honed in on trying to be trying to clarify, be more specific, get rid 458 00:30:54,520 --> 00:30:56,680 of things that were unnecessary. 459 00:30:56,680 --> 00:31:02,560 And then if I went on some, you know, pinch on creative jag, I owned it. 460 00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:04,440 I was like, OK, this is what I'm doing. 461 00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,200 This is who I am, and this is honest. 462 00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:08,580 This is honest. 463 00:31:08,580 --> 00:31:13,280 And one of the greatest responses, many responses that I got from people who knew me, they go 464 00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:17,120 if nothing else, this book is 100 percent you. 465 00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:18,120 And I go, great. 466 00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:22,440 So if somebody says your book is a piece of shit, I don't really take it personally, but 467 00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:23,980 I get what they mean. 468 00:31:23,980 --> 00:31:26,320 I don't say, oh, you're saying that I'm a piece of shit. 469 00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:27,320 I go, no. 470 00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:29,400 But this is a manifestation of myself. 471 00:31:29,400 --> 00:31:35,040 It's that's brutally honest, especially with myself. 472 00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:43,320 But I think it was day two of doing the audio that I spiraled and I didn't expect it. 473 00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:47,480 I stuttered through the you know, I've had people call and say, God, you read it so well 474 00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:48,480 and all that. 475 00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:50,960 And I was like, yeah, that's not how it went down. 476 00:31:50,960 --> 00:31:53,240 I stuttered through this thing. 477 00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:54,240 Every line. 478 00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:58,640 I mean, there were times where I'd find a decent rhythm, but there were, you know, a 479 00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:01,840 lot of times where I would I would go, what is the matter with me? 480 00:32:01,840 --> 00:32:06,000 Like I read I'm OK with reading other people's books. 481 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:10,000 I'm OK with reading your book. 482 00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:15,520 And then I get to my book and and I'm stammering through it. 483 00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:23,000 And then I had the thought of I wish I could burn, you know, all evidence that this ever 484 00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:24,120 existed. 485 00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:25,680 I wish I'd never done this. 486 00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:27,520 Why did I do this? 487 00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:29,680 What am I trying to prove? 488 00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:30,840 Why not just write? 489 00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:32,280 Why not go back? 490 00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:37,840 Why not do what everybody else has done in their own very specific and personal way? 491 00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:41,360 Just write a trajectory of my life. 492 00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:43,800 You know, this is where I come from. 493 00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:45,600 This is what childhood was like. 494 00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:48,320 This is when I realized I wanted to be an actor. 495 00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:51,000 This was the development as an actor. 496 00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,480 This was inside the acting world. 497 00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:55,480 And this is what I hope for. 498 00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,640 This is what I this is how I look back on it. 499 00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:00,680 And this is what I hope for in the future. 500 00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:04,600 It would have been so easy. 501 00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:06,080 And maybe that will come someday. 502 00:33:06,080 --> 00:33:09,520 But that's not this book. 503 00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:13,680 I think what was interesting for me, you know, people always ask when you write, you know, 504 00:33:13,680 --> 00:33:14,680 was it cathartic? 505 00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:20,160 And I think there was an elephant elephant, excuse, not an elephant, an element of catharsis. 506 00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:21,160 There was an elephant of catharsis. 507 00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:23,440 It was amazing. 508 00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:27,000 But more so I think in in one more light than than kinder. 509 00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:31,480 But where I think I mean, you think about it when you go to mental health, you know, 510 00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:32,600 retreats and that kind of thing. 511 00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:34,400 Journaling is one of the things that they get you to do. 512 00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:37,020 And that's effectively what you're doing. 513 00:33:37,020 --> 00:33:41,840 But I think when you read it, and you allow your mind to relive these things, because, 514 00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:46,320 you know, in my second one, there's a lot of his calls that are actually my calls. 515 00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:51,160 And you allow yourself to go there, you allow yourself the emotions to come through. 516 00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:56,400 To me, it's almost the opposite of catharsis, where you're actually diving back in and undoing 517 00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:58,680 some of the healing that you got from the writing. 518 00:33:58,680 --> 00:34:00,200 Yeah, no, I agree. 519 00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:02,560 And I think and people ask me the same thing. 520 00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:04,800 This must have been very cathartic for you. 521 00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:09,220 And I go, the catharsis is happening now. 522 00:34:09,220 --> 00:34:10,220 And I see it. 523 00:34:10,220 --> 00:34:14,880 And it's almost not it's not even like a catharsis of wow, I feel purged. 524 00:34:14,880 --> 00:34:18,280 I feel cleaner now. 525 00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:21,880 You know, some of this play some of this book takes place in Santa Barbara. 526 00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:25,360 And the book was started long before I knew what we were moving back to Santa Barbara. 527 00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:30,360 And Santa Barbara was a place that I said, that's a place I will never move back to the 528 00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:32,520 place I spent, you know, jail time in. 529 00:34:32,520 --> 00:34:36,120 And I look at the I look at City Hall. 530 00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:41,660 And I go, Oh, I remember when I got off that bus on a chain gang with nine other guys, 531 00:34:41,660 --> 00:34:44,560 and I was released in front of my court, you know what I mean? 532 00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:49,240 So it's like not things that you necessarily want to relive, you can write in a book and 533 00:34:49,240 --> 00:34:51,720 kind of romanticize it and all that. 534 00:34:51,720 --> 00:34:55,520 But the idea of going back to a place like that, and having lost so many friends and 535 00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:57,680 all it was not attractive to me. 536 00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:02,000 Then whatever happened, and then we saw a house and then I got frustrated. 537 00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:03,520 And I put Santa Barbara on Zillow. 538 00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:07,600 And then suddenly, my wife is like, this would be amazing. 539 00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:12,440 And I mean, I've said this before, I ended up contracting a mild case of Bell's palsy, 540 00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:22,320 because I think it lived so deeply in me, my idea of what a life on not worth living. 541 00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:24,240 And that's how I saw it. 542 00:35:24,240 --> 00:35:25,680 And then I got back here. 543 00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:34,200 And I think part of the books, workings on me were were once I got back here, within 544 00:35:34,200 --> 00:35:36,360 a week, I started seeing things. 545 00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:41,000 I'm looking at my window now, started seeing things like, I remember when my girlfriend 546 00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:44,880 and I walked down that street, it was an amazing moment. 547 00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:46,880 I was 13. 548 00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:52,320 And I, you know, I kissed maybe one girl and I was trying to figure out like when I should 549 00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:56,200 try to plant one on whether it was appropriate or not. 550 00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,040 And all of these happier memories started to come back. 551 00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:06,320 So I think for me, the catharsis was exactly what the book was meant to be generally, which 552 00:36:06,320 --> 00:36:08,640 is life is messy, man. 553 00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:11,120 Life is really messy. 554 00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:16,520 You can be living in massive self destruction. 555 00:36:16,520 --> 00:36:22,080 And with whoever comes into your life and however lucky you are and whatever opportunities 556 00:36:22,080 --> 00:36:23,620 may come. 557 00:36:23,620 --> 00:36:29,060 And if you take responsibility and actually grow the fuck up and be an adult and start 558 00:36:29,060 --> 00:36:36,320 cultivating tools in order to live your life in a way that has, that's not so chaotic and 559 00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:40,320 not so self destructive. 560 00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:48,520 This book has shown me because I was so honest that, okay, that's happened. 561 00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:50,640 And that happened at that moment. 562 00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:53,680 This is not a definition of you. 563 00:36:53,680 --> 00:37:00,200 Your definition of you happens at every moment with every choice that you're confronted with. 564 00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:01,200 And don't forget that. 565 00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:04,680 So I'm sure that there was something in me that says I need to write this out because 566 00:37:04,680 --> 00:37:07,080 I need to grow the fuck up a little bit more. 567 00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:08,440 It's interesting. 568 00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:14,280 It's kind of came out in my writing a little bit was we have these things that are locked 569 00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:18,200 away, especially in my profession, you know, where we're constantly on these shifts are 570 00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:21,200 constantly in this high stress environment. 571 00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:25,280 It's a very good environment to just lock things that you don't want to address with. 572 00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:29,600 And I think this is why first responders tend to start struggling a little bit deeper in 573 00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:33,640 their career when the calls are less exciting and you've kind of normalized this, this kind 574 00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:35,520 of lifestyle. 575 00:37:35,520 --> 00:37:40,680 But what I realized is when you start unpacking these bad things, just like you alluded to 576 00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:42,400 attached to them are good things. 577 00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:46,200 I think when the body or the mind is like, we need to fucking lock this shit away. 578 00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:48,680 This is not good to think about right now. 579 00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:53,000 All the good stuff that happened around that gets kind of stuck in that trunk as well. 580 00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:56,960 And when, you know, when you start allowing yourself to work through, and I would argue 581 00:37:56,960 --> 00:38:00,040 turn those into strengths, I really believe that. 582 00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:05,320 When you start recalling all these good things exactly like you just said about being 13. 583 00:38:05,320 --> 00:38:09,360 And by the way, and I talked to you about this earlier, not that we prepped this whole 584 00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:15,120 thing, we were talking about something very different, but that I spent some time with 585 00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:23,200 somebody recently who is in such abject denial that there is there to me, my perception of 586 00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:25,840 it, there's no sense of self. 587 00:38:25,840 --> 00:38:34,840 You've denied all sense of self, and out of that can come this like smile, this perpetual 588 00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:36,440 smile, but you don't believe it. 589 00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:38,720 It's almost like serial killer smile. 590 00:38:38,720 --> 00:38:42,520 It's like, you know, happy. 591 00:38:42,520 --> 00:38:43,520 I'm happy. 592 00:38:43,520 --> 00:38:46,200 See, and that scares me. 593 00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:47,200 Like that. 594 00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:52,720 That's something that's always really scared me because when you confront yourself, it's 595 00:38:52,720 --> 00:38:57,400 especially if you've been living in a massive denial and you've developed a denial system 596 00:38:57,400 --> 00:39:07,280 that's really, you know, mechanistically, you know, attuned, you know, that you go, 597 00:39:07,280 --> 00:39:11,960 I'm okay with living with this as long as I stay away from any reality of myself or 598 00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:17,920 any opinion that I may have because I'll get shot down for it, or it'll be perceived as 599 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:20,840 dumb or bad or all that kind of stuff. 600 00:39:20,840 --> 00:39:25,440 And then when you get to a place where you say, you know what, I'm tired of this denial. 601 00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:30,800 I'm tired of not this gift that I've been given to live and whatever I've seen in my 602 00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:36,400 life, whether you're a firefighter and have seen the greatest horrors imaginable or me 603 00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:43,200 created the greatest horrors imaginable, whatever that is for me, and just say, you know what, 604 00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:49,320 what if what if you just allow whatever was intended from the beginning, whether you see 605 00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:54,100 it as God, whether you see it as this, you know, what was I intended from the beginning 606 00:39:54,100 --> 00:39:57,720 before all this stuff hit me? 607 00:39:57,720 --> 00:40:04,860 And can we get back to some kind of essence of we're really grateful to be here. 608 00:40:04,860 --> 00:40:07,480 We can rely on each other. 609 00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:12,680 We have people that will be honest with us and actually say, hey, man, I'm noticing something 610 00:40:12,680 --> 00:40:14,640 in you right now and you're a little off. 611 00:40:14,640 --> 00:40:18,800 You seem a little manic or you seem a little down. 612 00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:19,800 Can I come over? 613 00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:22,800 You want to spend a couple of hours together? 614 00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:28,800 There's a great video that my wife saw and she told me about it was some scientific and 615 00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:34,720 I'm going to say it crudely paraphrasing, obviously, but they put a rat in a cage and 616 00:40:34,720 --> 00:40:39,260 the experiment was they put a rat in a cage and then they put a small dish of potable 617 00:40:39,260 --> 00:40:43,800 water and then they put a small dish of like opium infested water. 618 00:40:43,800 --> 00:40:44,800 Right. 619 00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:49,720 And the rat went over and he tried both and then he got into the opium water and he started 620 00:40:49,720 --> 00:40:50,720 drinking it. 621 00:40:50,720 --> 00:40:53,560 He drank so much of it eventually OD right. 622 00:40:53,560 --> 00:40:58,880 And then they go, okay, so we as a whatever they, you know, whatever they concluded from 623 00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:03,760 that and then and then they go, well, what if you put a bunch of rats in a cage? 624 00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:04,760 They're going to be fighting. 625 00:41:04,760 --> 00:41:06,620 They're going to be fighting for the water. 626 00:41:06,620 --> 00:41:11,760 It's probably going to be even more chaotic and more destructive and that the want to 627 00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:17,120 go to the heroin water because they can't fucking deal with all these people. 628 00:41:17,120 --> 00:41:25,040 And they put all the rats in a cage and none of them ever even tasted the opium infested 629 00:41:25,040 --> 00:41:26,760 water. 630 00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:32,240 And that Malcolm Gladwell has a book called Outliers and in the beginning of Outliers, 631 00:41:32,240 --> 00:41:34,440 he talks about a priest. 632 00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:37,120 He talks about this one area. 633 00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:45,320 I think it was called Rosetta that when the big migration happened from Italy to New York, 634 00:41:45,320 --> 00:41:47,640 that there was this one all these other communities. 635 00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:51,400 I mean, they were mostly Italian, but there were also German and this all these other 636 00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:52,400 communities. 637 00:41:52,400 --> 00:41:56,440 People started dying on the average in their sixties instead of their eighties and nineties. 638 00:41:56,440 --> 00:42:01,600 But there was one community Rosetta in upstate New York where they were still dying in their 639 00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:05,200 eighties and nineties and they were doing they were testing the water. 640 00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:08,760 They were they were saying it was a going from olive oil to butter. 641 00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:09,760 What was it? 642 00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:10,760 What was it? 643 00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:15,240 And then finally they came down to it and they figured it out and it was this priest 644 00:42:15,240 --> 00:42:16,240 that had come over. 645 00:42:16,240 --> 00:42:21,080 It was an Irish priest actually, but he had come over from Italy to Rosetta and made them 646 00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:32,080 start re I can't think of the word, but re implementing what they had done in Italy originally. 647 00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:36,040 So all celebrations that they were living on top of each other. 648 00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:40,920 There were three generations per house and a small house and all this kind of stuff. 649 00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:47,320 So literally recreating what they had had in Italy, which looked from from from an objective 650 00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:52,280 point of view, which looked so chaotic and wrong and unattractive. 651 00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:59,060 And yet those people were living 20 to 25 years longer because it's about community. 652 00:42:59,060 --> 00:43:00,700 It's about sharing. 653 00:43:00,700 --> 00:43:03,880 It's about relying on each other. 654 00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:06,040 This idea of being able to rely on each other. 655 00:43:06,040 --> 00:43:13,000 And I can't think of a time, at least how I perceive it, where we feel less able to 656 00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:17,560 rely on our neighbor than ever. 657 00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:20,320 That experiment you were referring to, they called Rat Park. 658 00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:25,920 I had Johan Hari on who wrote Chasing the Scream and he talks all about it in his book 659 00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:28,000 and that was exactly it. 660 00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:31,800 He's got a phrase, the opposite of addiction isn't sobriety. 661 00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:34,880 The opposite of addiction is connection. 662 00:43:34,880 --> 00:43:39,040 So what they did, you had the rats and like you said, they were on their own and it was 663 00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:41,120 isolation. 664 00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:43,280 And then they actually expanded the cage. 665 00:43:43,280 --> 00:43:46,720 So they had other rats, they had things that they kind of interact with. 666 00:43:46,720 --> 00:43:49,280 And just like you said, they didn't touch it anymore. 667 00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:54,400 And I think if you look at what happened in COVID, there was a massive global experiment 668 00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:55,400 of the same thing. 669 00:43:55,400 --> 00:44:00,600 We know the impact of all that isolation on relationships, on mental health, on physical 670 00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:01,600 health. 671 00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:03,280 And so community is the answer. 672 00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:08,520 And when you see the divisiveness, even the lack of empathy from some people with, you 673 00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:11,920 know, members of Hollywood losing their homes, oh, they're just a bunch of rich people. 674 00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:16,280 No, they were human beings whose children's drawings were on the fridge that are lost 675 00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:20,280 and the grandparents jewelry and the photos you can never get back. 676 00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:25,960 And so the more we lean back into that community, the more we fix all things health. 677 00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:26,960 And what is that? 678 00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:27,960 And what is that? 679 00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:36,040 The idea of that is that money, that money disintegrates art. 680 00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:37,040 Do you know what I mean? 681 00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:38,200 You go, oh, well, you have money. 682 00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:40,120 Oh, you're, you're a successful actor. 683 00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:47,320 So all you're doing with your life is walking down a perpetual red carpet waving at people. 684 00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:51,560 What? 685 00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:56,600 And that's that thing that I talked about earlier about once if you're not, if you're 686 00:44:56,600 --> 00:45:01,040 not Abe Lincoln and going in the field, you know what I mean? 687 00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:02,240 How do you really know? 688 00:45:02,240 --> 00:45:06,640 It's easy to send people to war when you're on the ninth floor or you're in the White 689 00:45:06,640 --> 00:45:08,520 House or you're in the this and that. 690 00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:10,560 Because what does it mean? 691 00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:12,800 But but you know, have a bomb. 692 00:45:12,800 --> 00:45:18,400 Have your buddy blow up next to you and then see how you feel. 693 00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:20,480 You know, put yourself in the soup. 694 00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:22,720 And then are we are we still on? 695 00:45:22,720 --> 00:45:24,760 Yeah, I think so. 696 00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:25,760 Yep. 697 00:45:25,760 --> 00:45:27,960 Okay, good. 698 00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:35,040 And that's you know, even as an actor, you go, listen, if you're if you become successful 699 00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:40,640 and you're sitting there representing the human condition, how are you able to do that? 700 00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:45,560 If you don't understand how to do laundry and wash the dishes and wash your floor and 701 00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:50,040 take care of your kids while I have a nanny and I have a desk and I have a dad, not that 702 00:45:50,040 --> 00:45:52,520 housekeeper and have that like I get it. 703 00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:57,780 But at a certain point where you're no longer able to represent humanity, you might as well 704 00:45:57,780 --> 00:46:02,300 just play Kings and you know, it doesn't make sense. 705 00:46:02,300 --> 00:46:04,480 And that's why I go back to stoic readings a lot. 706 00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:06,440 You know, Ryan Holiday. 707 00:46:06,440 --> 00:46:12,240 I mean, I praise the guy for accessibilizing the stoic readings and you go back and you 708 00:46:12,240 --> 00:46:14,040 go, oh, yeah, the guy's excited. 709 00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:15,040 He's making a ton of money. 710 00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:16,600 He's got his own podcast. 711 00:46:16,600 --> 00:46:18,780 He's got whatever. 712 00:46:18,780 --> 00:46:25,000 If it's helping people out and I'm able to look at that having read Marcus Raylis, having 713 00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:29,440 read Epictetus and all that, and then going back and seeing this accessible version of 714 00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:34,920 it and waking up and really reading Daily Dad or waking up and really reading, you know, 715 00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:40,800 the Stoic or whatever is part of my ritual and saying, look, I need this to remind myself 716 00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:44,020 that comfort is death, man. 717 00:46:44,020 --> 00:46:45,280 It's OK to be comfortable. 718 00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:47,640 It's like you say about community community. 719 00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:50,280 I say it to community is everything community. 720 00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:55,640 I find extremely essential to growth. 721 00:46:55,640 --> 00:46:56,960 Community is son to a plant. 722 00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:58,840 Do you know what I mean? 723 00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:01,920 But being alone is good, too. 724 00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:09,360 Sometimes not isolated, not, you know, but alone to challenge yourself. 725 00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:13,480 Go out there like go stay in a play, go stay in a tent. 726 00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:15,480 Don't have electricity. 727 00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,200 Don't have a fucking toilet close by. 728 00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:19,800 You know, don't have batteries. 729 00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:20,800 Don't have music. 730 00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,200 See what happens when you just listen. 731 00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,720 See what happens when you're left with yourself. 732 00:47:26,720 --> 00:47:28,080 And I like that idea. 733 00:47:28,080 --> 00:47:31,280 I like that idea a lot, you know, and I think that I'm good. 734 00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:33,560 I've always been good at challenging myself that way. 735 00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:37,040 It's just a little more refined now. 736 00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:42,480 I think if anyone reads from under the truck, they will see like, for example, I mean, you 737 00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:45,880 obviously grew up in a Hollywood connected household initially. 738 00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:49,560 So they are well, you know, Josh obviously had it all handed to him on the silver platter 739 00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:55,140 and had this amazing, you know, probably money filled childhood. 740 00:47:55,140 --> 00:48:00,000 And then, you know, you actually listen, you read the book and you understand, you know, 741 00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:03,880 just like so many people, the reason why some people are great writers, great actors, great 742 00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:07,840 firefighters, is because of things that happened early on. 743 00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:11,800 What's interesting to me, so I want to go back even further before we kind of, you know, 744 00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:17,800 explore your early life, is the most recent book I wrote, it really hits the multi-generational 745 00:48:17,800 --> 00:48:22,520 trauma story hard because I think that this is a piece of the puzzle that a lot of people 746 00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:24,040 just aren't discussing. 747 00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:27,920 We look at our childhood, but what created our parents? 748 00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:29,820 What created our grandparents? 749 00:48:29,820 --> 00:48:35,800 So when you look back past your mother and or your father, what are some of the things 750 00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:41,560 that you identify as their upbringing that contributed to the kind of environment that 751 00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:44,460 you therefore were raised in? 752 00:48:44,460 --> 00:48:50,800 My mother, it's interesting because both my parents I look at, I come from a line of builders. 753 00:48:50,800 --> 00:48:52,560 So my dad was a builder. 754 00:48:52,560 --> 00:48:54,240 He built some houses. 755 00:48:54,240 --> 00:49:03,960 It was in his, you know, interest and his dad was a builder. 756 00:49:03,960 --> 00:49:08,740 My grandmother's father built a lot of Orange County down there. 757 00:49:08,740 --> 00:49:11,400 So literally comes from a line of builders. 758 00:49:11,400 --> 00:49:19,400 But my grandmother, my dad's mother was so kind and so incredibly gracious. 759 00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:23,120 And I said, and I've told the story and I won't tell the whole story, but one of the 760 00:49:23,120 --> 00:49:26,800 reasons I got sober is was Halloween night. 761 00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:29,400 I didn't intend to go out, didn't intend to drink. 762 00:49:29,400 --> 00:49:30,400 I did drink. 763 00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:32,760 I was late to see my grandmother on her deathbed. 764 00:49:32,760 --> 00:49:35,640 The next day I walked in, I stank. 765 00:49:35,640 --> 00:49:40,080 I had woken up on woken up on the sidewalk that morning, went in. 766 00:49:40,080 --> 00:49:42,640 I didn't pick my brother up like I was supposed to. 767 00:49:42,640 --> 00:49:50,280 He took a public bus down from Ojai to to Thousand Oaks or wherever my grandmother was. 768 00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:51,720 And then I ended up there. 769 00:49:51,720 --> 00:49:57,360 Everybody could sense immediately when I walked in, I smelled the way I looked and scratches 770 00:49:57,360 --> 00:49:58,920 all over my face. 771 00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:03,620 They all looked down and my grandmother lifted up her head at 99 years old and she looked 772 00:50:03,620 --> 00:50:07,840 at me and she smiled the biggest smile I've ever seen. 773 00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:14,080 And the first thought I said or I thought was how dare me, how dare me treat a life 774 00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:20,320 given a gift given and shit all over it like I'm shitting all over it. 775 00:50:20,320 --> 00:50:28,600 And this woman has gone through life on life's terms for 99 years and she lifts up her 99 776 00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:34,480 year old head with all those experiences and she looks at me and she's just happy to see 777 00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:35,480 me. 778 00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:38,720 And that was it. 779 00:50:38,720 --> 00:50:39,720 I was it. 780 00:50:39,720 --> 00:50:43,760 You know, I did what I needed to do in order to assure that it would last. 781 00:50:43,760 --> 00:50:51,960 But so I look at it so I look at my dad and his reactions in response to your question 782 00:50:51,960 --> 00:50:56,560 and I don't understand. 783 00:50:56,560 --> 00:51:00,120 I know his dad was a pretty severe guy, pretty stoic guy. 784 00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:06,680 And I don't mean stoic in the way we just talked about it, but you know, proud. 785 00:51:06,680 --> 00:51:09,500 And I think there was a lot of envy in their household. 786 00:51:09,500 --> 00:51:14,200 My dad became an actor, became fairly successful. 787 00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:16,440 The siblings tried to become actors. 788 00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:17,440 Nobody really made it. 789 00:51:17,440 --> 00:51:22,640 So there was that weird kind of ambiance that's that's created. 790 00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:30,680 But again, you go back and there's like my grandmother's father, Alan Mansour, you know, 791 00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:34,840 really like I hear stories about him and whether they're all true or not, whether they're all 792 00:51:34,840 --> 00:51:38,380 romanticized, which we all have a tendency to do. 793 00:51:38,380 --> 00:51:44,800 I look back at those stories and I go, I love that I'm made of that fabric. 794 00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:45,800 You know what I mean? 795 00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:47,600 And I rely on whatever that is. 796 00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:49,000 I'll go back and I'll go. 797 00:51:49,000 --> 00:51:52,360 Yeah, but I'm I'm the same blood as that person. 798 00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:55,880 The other side of that, kind of like what you're talking about, is there's people in 799 00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:59,400 my family where I go back and have that blood. 800 00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:00,400 Yet. 801 00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:04,440 What am I going to do with that? 802 00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:09,840 And in all the trauma. 803 00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:16,880 That trauma or chaos, I prefer to call it chaos in my past. 804 00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:20,780 All the all the. 805 00:52:20,780 --> 00:52:27,960 You know, my father, for whatever reasons, always went inside. 806 00:52:27,960 --> 00:52:32,580 My mother, for whatever reasons, always went outside. 807 00:52:32,580 --> 00:52:38,000 And what I heard about my mother's parents were also amazing things like great teachers, 808 00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:45,520 both of them teachers, you know, small town, Texas, Corpus Christi, small house, humble. 809 00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:48,800 But I never heard anything horrible. 810 00:52:48,800 --> 00:52:55,660 So I don't know where the insanity is, the specific insanity is of my parents and where 811 00:52:55,660 --> 00:52:56,660 it came from. 812 00:52:56,660 --> 00:53:01,600 But or whether it had to do with their surroundings and being in Hollywood and, you know, all 813 00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:05,840 that expectation and you've got to be a certain way and you have to be a certain level of 814 00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:07,960 success and all that. 815 00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:12,440 But the point is, is that when you get to a certain point. 816 00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:18,840 And I said this before is what point do you start taking ownership of your own life? 817 00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:21,640 So you go, OK, so I have this past. 818 00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:27,600 I could blame this past on everything that my present and whatever comes up in the future 819 00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:29,200 is. 820 00:53:29,200 --> 00:53:34,760 Or I can say every choice from here on out, which is what I've done, is mine. 821 00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:36,400 I can't blame it on my dad. 822 00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:38,480 I can't blame it on my mother. 823 00:53:38,480 --> 00:53:41,000 I can't blame it on how I was raised. 824 00:53:41,000 --> 00:53:42,280 I can't blame it on that. 825 00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:48,440 And then how do you start again, cultivating the tools, garnering and cultivating the tools 826 00:53:48,440 --> 00:53:50,320 that support that? 827 00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:55,040 You know, in your life, you're talking about firefighters that have gone through massive, 828 00:53:55,040 --> 00:54:02,120 massive traumas that have been privy to awful visuals and emotional content and seeing a 829 00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:07,000 decapitated child in the back of a car and like or a mother or whatever. 830 00:54:07,000 --> 00:54:11,600 And you just go like nobody, nobody should have those experiences. 831 00:54:11,600 --> 00:54:17,000 But these people are putting themselves out there to try and save who's savable to try. 832 00:54:17,000 --> 00:54:19,960 And it's a it's a massive thing. 833 00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:22,320 But what do you do with that? 834 00:54:22,320 --> 00:54:23,320 What do you do with that? 835 00:54:23,320 --> 00:54:25,080 Do you have people you can rely on? 836 00:54:25,080 --> 00:54:27,720 Do you have people that are going to take care of you? 837 00:54:27,720 --> 00:54:31,640 You have people that are going to call you out and say, you need to talk about this or 838 00:54:31,640 --> 00:54:32,880 we need to go through this. 839 00:54:32,880 --> 00:54:37,280 We need to we need to digest this in a certain way. 840 00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:40,720 You have it in a little folder in your body. 841 00:54:40,720 --> 00:54:42,340 And you go you go. 842 00:54:42,340 --> 00:54:46,780 That to me is the most important evidenced by what I just told you about coming back 843 00:54:46,780 --> 00:54:50,840 up to Santa Barbara and having a mild case of Bell's palsy. 844 00:54:50,840 --> 00:54:57,240 The last time I had Bell's palsy was 17 years before when my wife at that time and I were 845 00:54:57,240 --> 00:54:59,560 talking about moving to Santa Barbara. 846 00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:02,880 It's a theme. 847 00:55:02,880 --> 00:55:03,880 It's right there. 848 00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:04,880 Mm hmm. 849 00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:13,800 I didn't I didn't I didn't will it to happen and will my face to be hanging off my skull. 850 00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:16,120 But that's evidence right there. 851 00:55:16,120 --> 00:55:18,280 It's locked away. 852 00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:26,720 And if it's not dealt with, then you're really you have no control of how it's going to manifest. 853 00:55:26,720 --> 00:55:29,080 And that's a scary thought. 854 00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:32,960 I always use the phrase reasons, not excuses. 855 00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:39,680 So you look back and you know, realize that you had this kind of childhood that, you know, 856 00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:44,240 if one or both parents had left, then there's that feeling of, you know, I wasn't good enough. 857 00:55:44,240 --> 00:55:48,960 Or if you were abused in whatever way, you know, that you've you felt like you were one 858 00:55:48,960 --> 00:55:50,720 of the reasons why it happened. 859 00:55:50,720 --> 00:55:54,080 And then people reflect and they forgive themselves. 860 00:55:54,080 --> 00:55:56,200 But then I think then you that's when you discard it. 861 00:55:56,200 --> 00:56:02,720 If you don't allow yourself to have some grace on what happened to you that you were a victim, 862 00:56:02,720 --> 00:56:07,000 you weren't just a child when this happened, you had no choice in the matter. 863 00:56:07,000 --> 00:56:08,200 That's got to be acknowledged. 864 00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:12,680 But then I think that allows you to shed that skin and then move forward. 865 00:56:12,680 --> 00:56:18,160 Yeah, Howard Stern mentioned that he was you know, he took my book very personally, as 866 00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:19,800 did you. 867 00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:25,600 And and and he you know, we were on that we did that podcast for two and a half hours 868 00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:26,600 or whatever. 869 00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:30,960 And I got back to my hotel and he called me at my hotel and we talked for another hour 870 00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:32,000 about it. 871 00:56:32,000 --> 00:56:41,640 So and he kept saying when I was on his show, he kept saying, yeah, but it was it was wrong. 872 00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:48,320 There has to be some acknowledgement that that this was not OK. 873 00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:50,440 And I go, of course, there is. 874 00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:53,960 And not even of course, because I realize that people say, yeah, but you didn't know 875 00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:55,480 what they went through. 876 00:56:55,480 --> 00:56:58,440 And there's a lot of like justification and all that. 877 00:56:58,440 --> 00:56:59,440 And you do. 878 00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:00,440 I think you're right. 879 00:57:00,440 --> 00:57:04,100 You have to sit there and go, listen, this was not OK. 880 00:57:04,100 --> 00:57:09,040 You know, there's a reason why I have when I'm with my kids, it's much better now because 881 00:57:09,040 --> 00:57:14,400 I've really focused on it and tried to not lessen it, but tried to. 882 00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:16,200 My relationship with it is different. 883 00:57:16,200 --> 00:57:22,800 When my older kids were young, I would have flashes of the worst images imaginable of 884 00:57:22,800 --> 00:57:24,900 what could happen to my children. 885 00:57:24,900 --> 00:57:27,280 And it happened randomly. 886 00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:30,760 And it would just go, OK, so we're driving in a car right now. 887 00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:34,600 And then suddenly I'd see this whole scenario in a nanosecond. 888 00:57:34,600 --> 00:57:43,940 And it would be so bloody and awful, but I know it was me telling me, stay on point. 889 00:57:43,940 --> 00:57:47,960 Because if anything happens, you just want to be slightly ahead of it so you can actually 890 00:57:47,960 --> 00:57:52,740 be productive in in the assisting of it. 891 00:57:52,740 --> 00:57:58,280 But I also know it comes back from, you know, being raised by two people that were like, 892 00:57:58,280 --> 00:57:59,280 where are they? 893 00:57:59,280 --> 00:58:02,960 You know what I mean? 894 00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:09,920 They're a little clueless when it came down to the idea of true care. 895 00:58:09,920 --> 00:58:11,760 And I've seen parents like that even now. 896 00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:15,080 You know, the kid will go up to crawl up to a second floor. 897 00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:17,200 They're only a year and a half old. 898 00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:18,960 There's no railing on the second floor. 899 00:58:18,960 --> 00:58:21,160 And you and you and the mother's talking to somebody. 900 00:58:21,160 --> 00:58:23,800 And I'm like, what the fuck? 901 00:58:23,800 --> 00:58:24,800 Are you kidding? 902 00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:28,520 You don't have that sixth sense, whether it's a mother or father, by the way, but you don't 903 00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:34,440 have that sixth sense that's constantly living in your periphery now, knowing that that that 904 00:58:34,440 --> 00:58:38,880 kid's more than five feet, 10 feet away from you. 905 00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:45,360 That it could result in death. 906 00:58:45,360 --> 00:58:49,040 So I live in that in a big way. 907 00:58:49,040 --> 00:58:53,240 And I know that there is a historic reason for it. 908 00:58:53,240 --> 00:58:56,400 Partially. 909 00:58:56,400 --> 00:59:03,040 And now I just try to the relationship with it is different, but it still happens. 910 00:59:03,040 --> 00:59:04,800 It just happened yesterday in a big way. 911 00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:07,360 It used to happen like six, seven times a day. 912 00:59:07,360 --> 00:59:11,120 Now it happens once in a while. 913 00:59:11,120 --> 00:59:14,560 And then I start to think, oh, if it doesn't happen more, that means I'm getting lazy. 914 00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:15,560 I'm getting older. 915 00:59:15,560 --> 00:59:16,720 I'm getting something like that. 916 00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:18,800 But no, I just have a different relationship with that guy. 917 00:59:18,800 --> 00:59:19,800 Oh, there it is. 918 00:59:19,800 --> 00:59:22,020 Or maybe I'll say a little prayer. 919 00:59:22,020 --> 00:59:28,720 Maybe I'll say something just like, let me help me deal with this in a way that's sensible 920 00:59:28,720 --> 00:59:34,240 and has grace instead of just tweaking and then taking it out on my kids. 921 00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:35,240 Don't go over there. 922 00:59:35,240 --> 00:59:36,240 Don't go over there. 923 00:59:36,240 --> 00:59:37,240 Whoa, whoa, whoa. 924 00:59:37,240 --> 00:59:43,120 You know, which I try not to do because that can create more people like me. 925 00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:46,400 You don't want more people like me in the world. 926 00:59:46,400 --> 00:59:52,320 Well, I think the people listening, a lot of us, I know me, the moment someone hasn't 927 00:59:52,320 --> 00:59:56,280 come home and they were supposed to, or my son hasn't checked him when he was younger, 928 00:59:56,280 --> 00:59:57,280 he would check in a lot. 929 00:59:57,280 --> 01:00:02,800 We were kind of slowly loosening those apron strings. 930 01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:06,880 I'm not freaking out, but the first thought isn't, oh, he must just be a little late. 931 01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:12,480 It's like, oh, well, obviously he's been killed by a gang or driven off the side of a bridge. 932 01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:15,380 And it seems irrational, but then you think, well, what do you do at work? 933 01:00:15,380 --> 01:00:17,120 You see all those things in real life. 934 01:00:17,120 --> 01:00:21,280 So of course this is the tapestry that your brain is kind of pulling from. 935 01:00:21,280 --> 01:00:25,120 And it's hard, I think, for a first responder parent, just like you're talking about, to 936 01:00:25,120 --> 01:00:29,880 temper that and not be that helicopter parent that's paranoid about everything. 937 01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:34,800 Because if ever there's a profession that's justifiable to do so, it's the first responders 938 01:00:34,800 --> 01:00:37,120 and ER staff. 939 01:00:37,120 --> 01:00:40,760 And how badly do you need first responders? 940 01:00:40,760 --> 01:00:45,880 And how do we perceive first responders as we sit on the sidewalk walking down with our 941 01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:51,400 kids and you see a fire truck go by or whatever, and you stop and you wave, and you're so proud 942 01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:53,440 that they exist. 943 01:00:53,440 --> 01:01:00,640 And yet, if I'm the base, if I'm the least base, the story that I just told you, and 944 01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:10,440 whatever issues I have in these random visualizations, if that's the least of what those guys probably 945 01:01:10,440 --> 01:01:16,640 go through, those men and women go through, and we don't support that in some way, it's 946 01:01:16,640 --> 01:01:18,340 absolutely... 947 01:01:18,340 --> 01:01:20,240 Talk about lack of community. 948 01:01:20,240 --> 01:01:22,600 Talk about lack of care. 949 01:01:22,600 --> 01:01:23,600 Talk about selfishness. 950 01:01:23,600 --> 01:01:30,240 Where we're saying, thank you for helping us, then go away. 951 01:01:30,240 --> 01:01:34,480 Go be spastic somewhere else. 952 01:01:34,480 --> 01:01:37,600 Go have your mental issues somewhere else. 953 01:01:37,600 --> 01:01:38,600 We want to keep it happy. 954 01:01:38,600 --> 01:01:39,600 We want to keep it proud. 955 01:01:39,600 --> 01:01:42,640 We want to keep it patriotic. 956 01:01:42,640 --> 01:01:49,720 And that's such a lame thing to do, but to bring it back to this is like, it's messy. 957 01:01:49,720 --> 01:01:51,640 It's all messy. 958 01:01:51,640 --> 01:01:54,800 It's okay that it's messy. 959 01:01:54,800 --> 01:01:55,880 And then we die in the end. 960 01:01:55,880 --> 01:01:57,400 I wrote a gratitude list. 961 01:01:57,400 --> 01:01:58,400 It's so weird, man. 962 01:01:58,400 --> 01:02:02,360 I'm going to read this to you right now. 963 01:02:02,360 --> 01:02:06,280 I probably shouldn't, but there's a lot of things I probably shouldn't do that I end 964 01:02:06,280 --> 01:02:07,280 up doing anyway. 965 01:02:07,280 --> 01:02:08,280 I don't care. 966 01:02:08,280 --> 01:02:12,040 I don't know where this came from. 967 01:02:12,040 --> 01:02:15,940 I write a gratitude list every day and we just put together the gratitude list. 968 01:02:15,940 --> 01:02:20,760 My assistant and I just put together all the gratitude lists and that's 1300 pages of gratitude 969 01:02:20,760 --> 01:02:21,760 list. 970 01:02:21,760 --> 01:02:22,760 Wow. 971 01:02:22,760 --> 01:02:29,360 So today, what don't I want to read? 972 01:02:29,360 --> 01:02:30,360 Okay. 973 01:02:30,360 --> 01:02:31,560 Gratitude. 974 01:02:31,560 --> 01:02:33,680 People die and they don't come back. 975 01:02:33,680 --> 01:02:36,880 That's the first line. 976 01:02:36,880 --> 01:02:40,800 Sometimes they die right in front of us and other times we hear of it after the fact. 977 01:02:40,800 --> 01:02:41,800 How's John? 978 01:02:41,800 --> 01:02:43,600 Oh, he died last year. 979 01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:44,600 What? 980 01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:45,600 And that's that. 981 01:02:45,600 --> 01:02:46,600 They're gone forever. 982 01:02:46,600 --> 01:02:51,560 And the memory, they live, but even that changes and it all becomes a little more translucent 983 01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:52,920 over time. 984 01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:55,140 We were here, then we weren't. 985 01:02:55,140 --> 01:03:00,920 Almost as if we were never here with the exception of us knowing that we were here, our experiences 986 01:03:00,920 --> 01:03:03,240 today and now. 987 01:03:03,240 --> 01:03:04,520 Yesterday and tomorrow. 988 01:03:04,520 --> 01:03:11,200 Worry, anxiety, resentment, simple love, a few things, contentment. 989 01:03:11,200 --> 01:03:19,920 How for so long did I care so much about being valid, stout, praised, and if not, fuck you. 990 01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:25,120 This morning was the sun, seven and a half hours of sleep, rare, rushing out to meet 991 01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:31,120 the contractor of the house, intimate conversation, run back to the family and cook myself breakfast. 992 01:03:31,120 --> 01:03:36,040 Go back to the house with family, climb dangerously up to the now roofless second floor. 993 01:03:36,040 --> 01:03:39,320 We look out, see the whole property, smiles. 994 01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:45,760 We go to a kid's birthday, play, make things, no yearning, no envy, ease, chapel eats shit. 995 01:03:45,760 --> 01:03:50,160 My daughter, scraped up, hold her, ice, it's okay. 996 01:03:50,160 --> 01:03:56,620 Beach, the Rincon classic, I surfed it in 1980, old and new schoolers on the beach. 997 01:03:56,620 --> 01:04:04,360 We take our shoes off, feet wet, watch 13 year old surf heats in their iridescent jerseys. 998 01:04:04,360 --> 01:04:09,800 Walk back up to the truck, sit on beach overlooking the sea, dinner with Zerby, my oldest friend, 999 01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:12,760 87 years old, his wife Arnett. 1000 01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:17,760 Plan on Christmas performance next Christmas on stage here in Santa Barbara, drive home 1001 01:04:17,760 --> 01:04:23,760 and all take a shower together, blow dry their hair, laugh, mama reads to them, sweet. 1002 01:04:23,760 --> 01:04:29,680 I kiss them good night, now fire, reading, list, funny text, plan tomorrow, but it's 1003 01:04:29,680 --> 01:04:32,000 vapor until we get there. 1004 01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:36,440 I have soft clothes on, I hear music in my head, classical, I want to read more than 1005 01:04:36,440 --> 01:04:38,680 go to sleep early. 1006 01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:43,320 Look up at paperweight whales I got from kids on my birthday, I love them. 1007 01:04:43,320 --> 01:04:47,760 I love this life, it's not always easy, but there's more solace now than ever. 1008 01:04:47,760 --> 01:04:52,160 I don't worry as much about tomorrow and I know that some people will simply not like 1009 01:04:52,160 --> 01:04:54,240 me and that's okay. 1010 01:04:54,240 --> 01:05:00,600 My drum, my drumsticks, God's band, amen. 1011 01:05:00,600 --> 01:05:01,600 I love that. 1012 01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:05,040 Not a mention of Oscars, Rolex, Ferraris. 1013 01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:09,840 No, no, maybe I should go back and redo it. 1014 01:05:09,840 --> 01:05:11,880 I love the way my leather interior feels. 1015 01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:18,080 Which by the way, I haven't seen lists like that because I'm sent lists from a lot of 1016 01:05:18,080 --> 01:05:21,920 different people and all that and once in a while I'll read a list like that and I go, 1017 01:05:21,920 --> 01:05:25,440 all right, that's what you're into today. 1018 01:05:25,440 --> 01:05:30,000 But I think things like that and I think why your book, being a very honest book, I think 1019 01:05:30,000 --> 01:05:37,840 this book being a very honest book and moral Lindberg, A Gift from the Sea, your book, 1020 01:05:37,840 --> 01:05:48,000 my book, is you put it out there in that we go what matters, what's essential, what's 1021 01:05:48,000 --> 01:05:50,080 my experience? 1022 01:05:50,080 --> 01:05:55,880 How can I be 100% authentic without apology? 1023 01:05:55,880 --> 01:05:56,880 You know what I mean? 1024 01:05:56,880 --> 01:05:58,140 And do I care? 1025 01:05:58,140 --> 01:06:00,840 That's the biggest thing when it comes down to it. 1026 01:06:00,840 --> 01:06:01,840 Do I care? 1027 01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:05,000 Why do I write a book like this when I know I'm going to get shit for it? 1028 01:06:05,000 --> 01:06:06,460 Like what about your second marriage? 1029 01:06:06,460 --> 01:06:07,460 What about that? 1030 01:06:07,460 --> 01:06:08,460 What'd you guys do? 1031 01:06:08,460 --> 01:06:10,840 And you go, yeah, that's not what the book is about. 1032 01:06:10,840 --> 01:06:18,760 The book is about seeing through a human being's lens go through the process of life on life's 1033 01:06:18,760 --> 01:06:24,240 terms and all the other shit that was put on top of it and having to kind of navigate 1034 01:06:24,240 --> 01:06:29,480 through that shit and find the pony at the end. 1035 01:06:29,480 --> 01:06:35,080 When I read it, it's hard not to think about that scared little boy and I think when your 1036 01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:37,560 brother is attacked, is it the bobcat? 1037 01:06:37,560 --> 01:06:38,560 Is that right? 1038 01:06:38,560 --> 01:06:39,560 Wolf. 1039 01:06:39,560 --> 01:06:40,560 Wolf, okay. 1040 01:06:40,560 --> 01:06:45,360 And you know, so as a small child and the helplessness that must have been felt and 1041 01:06:45,360 --> 01:06:53,280 the instability of the kind of tornado that was your mother and the life around her, I 1042 01:06:53,280 --> 01:06:59,080 think again about that kind of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and that need for security and safety 1043 01:06:59,080 --> 01:07:01,120 and the opposite obviously is that fear. 1044 01:07:01,120 --> 01:07:08,800 And I had that fear when I reflect on my early life, I was a very anxious child. 1045 01:07:08,800 --> 01:07:10,940 Where did the healing begin for that? 1046 01:07:10,940 --> 01:07:17,800 Where did you start to shift from this kind of chaos that had you been raised in a lot 1047 01:07:17,800 --> 01:07:25,160 of the early times and obviously the unhealthy coping mechanisms to actually start to find 1048 01:07:25,160 --> 01:07:29,720 out who you were and kind of hold that little boy's hand in your psyche and bring him up 1049 01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:32,320 to modern day, present day. 1050 01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:37,720 I think it was a twofold. 1051 01:07:37,720 --> 01:07:44,000 I mean, the process never ends, first of all, but one was I had kids very early on. 1052 01:07:44,000 --> 01:07:48,440 You know, I had kids 19 when she was pregnant and 20 when Trevor was born. 1053 01:07:48,440 --> 01:07:49,440 Trevor's 36 now. 1054 01:07:49,440 --> 01:07:55,780 I have a 36 year old, a 31 year old, a six year old and a four year old. 1055 01:07:55,780 --> 01:07:58,920 So I will be raising children my entire life. 1056 01:07:58,920 --> 01:08:05,680 I think I had a couple of years in there where I could wake up later. 1057 01:08:05,680 --> 01:08:15,760 But I think that being in my life brought a value that I wouldn't have had in my life 1058 01:08:15,760 --> 01:08:17,400 had my child not been born. 1059 01:08:17,400 --> 01:08:19,560 And I mean the value, not the child. 1060 01:08:19,560 --> 01:08:22,960 It was a value that I had to look outside of myself. 1061 01:08:22,960 --> 01:08:28,040 I was forced to look outside of myself, but that still didn't do it. 1062 01:08:28,040 --> 01:08:32,080 You know, I was sober for three and a half years and then I went back out and then I 1063 01:08:32,080 --> 01:08:39,160 was sober for five years and then I went back out because I saw sobriety as some kind of, 1064 01:08:39,160 --> 01:08:40,160 you know, ball and chain. 1065 01:08:40,160 --> 01:08:44,560 It was keeping me from something, keeping me from being myself when the truth of the 1066 01:08:44,560 --> 01:08:52,760 matter, it was keeping me from manifesting that angst that you're talking about feeling, 1067 01:08:52,760 --> 01:08:53,760 that pain. 1068 01:08:53,760 --> 01:09:01,640 And the only way I felt like I could manifest it was through drinking and the chaos that 1069 01:09:01,640 --> 01:09:04,200 would ensue. 1070 01:09:04,200 --> 01:09:06,520 And you know, I would turn around. 1071 01:09:06,520 --> 01:09:08,240 I mean, it was so reactive. 1072 01:09:08,240 --> 01:09:10,960 I was so reactive. 1073 01:09:10,960 --> 01:09:12,960 And it was super fun sometimes. 1074 01:09:12,960 --> 01:09:17,680 I was a fun drunk until I wasn't, you know, and then I turn around and, you know, I'd 1075 01:09:17,680 --> 01:09:20,280 see a group of guys talking, a bunch of preppy guys. 1076 01:09:20,280 --> 01:09:25,200 I remember this one time and I just turned around and I ran as fast as I could and I 1077 01:09:25,200 --> 01:09:26,960 jumped on top of all of them. 1078 01:09:26,960 --> 01:09:31,320 Just a big fight broke out and it's just what I needed to do. 1079 01:09:31,320 --> 01:09:34,120 Everything in me was like, it's time. 1080 01:09:34,120 --> 01:09:35,740 And I don't think there's no thought. 1081 01:09:35,740 --> 01:09:37,640 And it was so great that there was no thought. 1082 01:09:37,640 --> 01:09:39,240 Get out of your head. 1083 01:09:39,240 --> 01:09:41,040 Get out of the fear. 1084 01:09:41,040 --> 01:09:45,400 Like what can you do to just not feel fear for a second? 1085 01:09:45,400 --> 01:09:49,360 You know, I'd get up in public speak and my trachea would close up and I'd be shaking 1086 01:09:49,360 --> 01:09:50,360 that much. 1087 01:09:50,360 --> 01:09:53,680 And that's there's no confidence in that. 1088 01:09:53,680 --> 01:09:55,160 There's zero confidence. 1089 01:09:55,160 --> 01:09:58,360 There's zero sense of self in that. 1090 01:09:58,360 --> 01:10:06,080 You know, so then when I got sober this last time, 11 and a half years ago, I realized 1091 01:10:06,080 --> 01:10:10,560 at a certain point, it's like, oh, you got to get rid of that thing that keeps getting 1092 01:10:10,560 --> 01:10:12,040 in the way. 1093 01:10:12,040 --> 01:10:13,880 And then the work starts. 1094 01:10:13,880 --> 01:10:16,640 Then it's this what I call a spiritual process. 1095 01:10:16,640 --> 01:10:23,600 And finally, you know, seeing everything that happens is an opportunity and a lesson. 1096 01:10:23,600 --> 01:10:29,000 So even when shitty things happen to me now, especially now, there's something in me that 1097 01:10:29,000 --> 01:10:32,640 gets a little happy because I know the slap is coming. 1098 01:10:32,640 --> 01:10:34,940 The wake up is coming. 1099 01:10:34,940 --> 01:10:38,840 And I think that goes back to that discomfort thing to what would be discomfort, what would 1100 01:10:38,840 --> 01:10:41,200 be uncomfortable. 1101 01:10:41,200 --> 01:10:48,180 And normally, you'd react in a way that would push it down or push it away or find a distraction 1102 01:10:48,180 --> 01:10:53,480 or go watch a movie or go to this, go watch the news and get into all the political extremism 1103 01:10:53,480 --> 01:10:56,440 that is fucking meaningless. 1104 01:10:56,440 --> 01:11:02,280 You know, just has to do with people spinning and bad, good and, you know, all that stuff 1105 01:11:02,280 --> 01:11:06,080 and go, how do you how do you look at yourself? 1106 01:11:06,080 --> 01:11:15,080 Honestly, honestly, that's the toughest part to really, to really speak to yourself about 1107 01:11:15,080 --> 01:11:18,560 how you feel. 1108 01:11:18,560 --> 01:11:20,960 Even if there's judgment. 1109 01:11:20,960 --> 01:11:23,240 And then go, OK, where do I take it from here? 1110 01:11:23,240 --> 01:11:26,880 So that's how I know myself to be right now. 1111 01:11:26,880 --> 01:11:31,440 And then things happen that you go, oh, why does this have to happen to me? 1112 01:11:31,440 --> 01:11:36,640 Whereas now I'm more in a place where I go, oh, shit's happening. 1113 01:11:36,640 --> 01:11:38,640 There's a humbling coming. 1114 01:11:38,640 --> 01:11:46,460 And with that humbling, usually comes, you know, for lack of a better phrase, a better 1115 01:11:46,460 --> 01:11:48,680 version of me. 1116 01:11:48,680 --> 01:11:54,240 And to me, like what I said before, getting closer to what I think was intended before 1117 01:11:54,240 --> 01:12:01,520 all this, all these additives, all these preservatives and additives were injected. 1118 01:12:01,520 --> 01:12:04,160 You know, I care about people. 1119 01:12:04,160 --> 01:12:08,760 I'm a super sensitive guy. 1120 01:12:08,760 --> 01:12:14,320 I love community, but I don't need to be around people all the time. 1121 01:12:14,320 --> 01:12:18,600 That's how I've you know, I love writing. 1122 01:12:18,600 --> 01:12:22,320 I like acting. 1123 01:12:22,320 --> 01:12:26,960 I find it to be a major pain in the ass and talk about confronting your own fears, in 1124 01:12:26,960 --> 01:12:30,400 which I know exactly why I'm an actor. 1125 01:12:30,400 --> 01:12:32,300 It's not because my dad was an actor. 1126 01:12:32,300 --> 01:12:34,580 It's not because of any of that. 1127 01:12:34,580 --> 01:12:45,780 It's because I have a fear of confronting my emotions in the rawest way that you can. 1128 01:12:45,780 --> 01:12:52,280 So I chose that profession in order to perpetually challenge that. 1129 01:12:52,280 --> 01:12:54,680 And I'm the better person for it. 1130 01:12:54,680 --> 01:13:01,800 I'm, you know, I've put myself in that situation and over a 40 year period, I see where it's 1131 01:13:01,800 --> 01:13:04,300 helped me. 1132 01:13:04,300 --> 01:13:09,320 One of the things that I've talked about quite a bit recently, and this is in the first responder 1133 01:13:09,320 --> 01:13:14,360 mental health conversation, we've kind of got stuck on the whole, we should smash the 1134 01:13:14,360 --> 01:13:20,320 stigma conversation, which if you think about it, apart from taking away guilt and shame 1135 01:13:20,320 --> 01:13:23,440 from someone who's struggling, that's all you've done. 1136 01:13:23,440 --> 01:13:25,000 You haven't really provided solutions. 1137 01:13:25,000 --> 01:13:28,320 You haven't provided a kind of path for growth. 1138 01:13:28,320 --> 01:13:33,920 And where I think the real kind of accelerator of this is going to be is showing the post 1139 01:13:33,920 --> 01:13:39,160 traumatic growth story, putting hope in the person that you will become if you actually 1140 01:13:39,160 --> 01:13:40,720 have just done the work. 1141 01:13:40,720 --> 01:13:43,920 And of course, everyone's got their own unique toolbox, which I think is another part of 1142 01:13:43,920 --> 01:13:44,920 this. 1143 01:13:44,920 --> 01:13:48,520 You can't just say, well, if you just do EMDR and take psych meds, you're going to be golden. 1144 01:13:48,520 --> 01:13:49,780 Everyone is different. 1145 01:13:49,780 --> 01:13:50,860 But talk to me about that. 1146 01:13:50,860 --> 01:13:58,580 You said the better version of yourself, that road that you've been on, how much value, 1147 01:13:58,580 --> 01:14:04,960 how exciting is it when you storytell now who you are versus that that strong, you know, 1148 01:14:04,960 --> 01:14:11,880 that strong, that young struggling actor that did kind of, you know, to and fro for so long? 1149 01:14:11,880 --> 01:14:19,080 I think when I wrote stories before as creatively viable as I think they were, they were to 1150 01:14:19,080 --> 01:14:20,840 be uninvisible. 1151 01:14:20,840 --> 01:14:23,120 They were to materialize. 1152 01:14:23,120 --> 01:14:27,760 So whether it be the writing or whether it be living in my life in a way where people 1153 01:14:27,760 --> 01:14:30,560 I'd wake up in the morning and people say, you know what you did last night? 1154 01:14:30,560 --> 01:14:31,860 And I go, no, what? 1155 01:14:31,860 --> 01:14:33,820 And then they tell me. 1156 01:14:33,820 --> 01:14:36,480 And I felt that I existed. 1157 01:14:36,480 --> 01:14:42,320 And I understand, which is ironic to me, obesity. 1158 01:14:42,320 --> 01:14:46,280 You know, that's another thing that I deal with in my family. 1159 01:14:46,280 --> 01:14:51,920 And I go, I could never understand why the person didn't didn't have the incentive that 1160 01:14:51,920 --> 01:14:57,440 even if I created it and said, hey, I'm going to get a trainer or we got a gym and just 1161 01:14:57,440 --> 01:15:00,320 go, you know, and then you'll be healthier. 1162 01:15:00,320 --> 01:15:02,640 And as you get older, it's going to be more of an issue. 1163 01:15:02,640 --> 01:15:07,840 And then this and hospital and diabetes or this or thyroid problems. 1164 01:15:07,840 --> 01:15:11,680 And and they didn't have the incentive. 1165 01:15:11,680 --> 01:15:12,760 And then it hit me. 1166 01:15:12,760 --> 01:15:14,500 It's the same thing with being a drunk. 1167 01:15:14,500 --> 01:15:18,280 It's like I can finally be who I want to be. 1168 01:15:18,280 --> 01:15:21,020 You're too afraid to talk to a girl when you're drunk. 1169 01:15:21,020 --> 01:15:23,800 But if you're drunk, you go grab her hand. 1170 01:15:23,800 --> 01:15:27,660 And for some reason, she comes with you readily. 1171 01:15:27,660 --> 01:15:30,200 And you're like, how did that happen? 1172 01:15:30,200 --> 01:15:31,800 That's just a change. 1173 01:15:31,800 --> 01:15:38,840 That's me creating or allowing the drunks think it think that it's allowing. 1174 01:15:38,840 --> 01:15:40,000 That's who's in me. 1175 01:15:40,000 --> 01:15:44,840 That super confident guy, which is inaccurate. 1176 01:15:44,840 --> 01:15:46,300 It's false confidence. 1177 01:15:46,300 --> 01:15:51,220 It's this creation. 1178 01:15:51,220 --> 01:15:55,520 But that you're not invisible, that suddenly you're this force, that you're this Bible 1179 01:15:55,520 --> 01:15:58,700 force that people are are seeing. 1180 01:15:58,700 --> 01:16:02,900 And I think the same thing has to do with obesity, you know, it's like, yes, you're 1181 01:16:02,900 --> 01:16:09,800 surrounded by, you know, a system that feeds you shit that creates obesity faster than, 1182 01:16:09,800 --> 01:16:11,980 I think, anywhere in the world. 1183 01:16:11,980 --> 01:16:16,760 But without that obesity, without people saying, hey, man, have you thought about losing some 1184 01:16:16,760 --> 01:16:17,760 weight? 1185 01:16:17,760 --> 01:16:22,200 You thought about, you know, I mean, you got to take care of yourself, man. 1186 01:16:22,200 --> 01:16:24,380 That's attention. 1187 01:16:24,380 --> 01:16:27,560 And if you lose the weight, what are they going to talk about? 1188 01:16:27,560 --> 01:16:31,560 Hey, man, how are you? 1189 01:16:31,560 --> 01:16:32,560 How are you? 1190 01:16:32,560 --> 01:16:35,920 You know, and I think that's a really interesting dilemma. 1191 01:16:35,920 --> 01:16:37,320 And it's something that came up. 1192 01:16:37,320 --> 01:16:45,800 But you know, how I've learned ultimately is I like the feeling of humility now. 1193 01:16:45,800 --> 01:16:49,560 And I see the difference between humility and humiliation. 1194 01:16:49,560 --> 01:16:53,280 You know, you talk about shame and guilt and spiraling and shame and guilt. 1195 01:16:53,280 --> 01:16:56,020 And I used to do that all the time. 1196 01:16:56,020 --> 01:16:58,560 And now I like being humbled. 1197 01:16:58,560 --> 01:16:59,680 I like learning. 1198 01:16:59,680 --> 01:17:01,920 I like being wrong. 1199 01:17:01,920 --> 01:17:04,380 You know, I go, oh, I saw it this way. 1200 01:17:04,380 --> 01:17:07,520 And then suddenly I see it. 1201 01:17:07,520 --> 01:17:10,440 It's not even perceived as I saw it as wrong. 1202 01:17:10,440 --> 01:17:13,300 I just saw it in that way for that amount of time. 1203 01:17:13,300 --> 01:17:16,720 And then somebody illuminated me to something else. 1204 01:17:16,720 --> 01:17:20,760 And I go, that works better in solution. 1205 01:17:20,760 --> 01:17:22,720 Solution doesn't exist without work. 1206 01:17:22,720 --> 01:17:24,720 It's just a concept. 1207 01:17:24,720 --> 01:17:26,120 You know, you should live. 1208 01:17:26,120 --> 01:17:28,040 Hey, you should get sober. 1209 01:17:28,040 --> 01:17:29,040 Just don't drink. 1210 01:17:29,040 --> 01:17:31,840 Well, you get sober and don't drink and don't do anything about it. 1211 01:17:31,840 --> 01:17:35,080 They're called dry drunks and they're called dry drunks for a reason. 1212 01:17:35,080 --> 01:17:38,960 They're still everything they were drunk. 1213 01:17:38,960 --> 01:17:39,960 They're just sober. 1214 01:17:39,960 --> 01:17:43,080 It's just not drinking. 1215 01:17:43,080 --> 01:17:45,400 But all the behavior is still there. 1216 01:17:45,400 --> 01:17:59,360 And until you get into that, until you get into that opportunity to actually grow toward 1217 01:17:59,360 --> 01:18:08,520 the sun, regardless of how messy it is and actually like the messiness of it. 1218 01:18:08,520 --> 01:18:09,680 I don't know, man. 1219 01:18:09,680 --> 01:18:12,960 This whole stalemate thing is just not for me. 1220 01:18:12,960 --> 01:18:14,600 And that's how I saw drinking. 1221 01:18:14,600 --> 01:18:19,480 I became, I got to the point where I go, this is redundant. 1222 01:18:19,480 --> 01:18:20,480 This is redundant. 1223 01:18:20,480 --> 01:18:21,480 And I don't like redundancy. 1224 01:18:21,480 --> 01:18:28,320 I don't, you know, and the fact that I'm creating it was not okay with me. 1225 01:18:28,320 --> 01:18:29,880 So I did something about it. 1226 01:18:29,880 --> 01:18:31,440 Did that answer your question? 1227 01:18:31,440 --> 01:18:32,440 No, it does. 1228 01:18:32,440 --> 01:18:33,440 It does. 1229 01:18:33,440 --> 01:18:34,440 It's funny. 1230 01:18:34,440 --> 01:18:35,440 It kind of parallels a couple of things. 1231 01:18:35,440 --> 01:18:37,360 Firstly, I had Ethan Souple on a couple of times. 1232 01:18:37,360 --> 01:18:41,060 And if you remember American History X, he was always that kind of size. 1233 01:18:41,060 --> 01:18:45,920 Now he's got a podcast called American Glutton and he's in great shape and trying to spread 1234 01:18:45,920 --> 01:18:50,200 the word on not only his journey, but getting all these other people that have been on that 1235 01:18:50,200 --> 01:18:52,760 kind of weight loss journey as well. 1236 01:18:52,760 --> 01:18:57,280 But Johan Hari, the author I mentioned earlier, there's a story in one of his books and it's 1237 01:18:57,280 --> 01:19:00,860 about a trial they did for obesity. 1238 01:19:00,860 --> 01:19:03,520 And I think they were giving people just intravenous nutrients. 1239 01:19:03,520 --> 01:19:04,520 That was it. 1240 01:19:04,520 --> 01:19:08,720 So the whole point was if we just give them all the macro and micronutrients, they should 1241 01:19:08,720 --> 01:19:09,720 lose weight. 1242 01:19:09,720 --> 01:19:15,400 So I had one test subject who was like the rock star of the study and she lost the most 1243 01:19:15,400 --> 01:19:20,680 weight and then one day she just stopped coming and they tracked her down and she was already 1244 01:19:20,680 --> 01:19:24,200 put on a bunch of weight and she was a KFC or something. 1245 01:19:24,200 --> 01:19:26,120 And they were trying to figure out what was going on. 1246 01:19:26,120 --> 01:19:32,080 And one of the scientists just asked a question. 1247 01:19:32,080 --> 01:19:34,000 Do you remember when you first started eating? 1248 01:19:34,000 --> 01:19:35,120 And she said yes. 1249 01:19:35,120 --> 01:19:39,520 And they said, was there any significant event during that time? 1250 01:19:39,520 --> 01:19:43,040 And she said, yeah, that was when my grandfather started raping me. 1251 01:19:43,040 --> 01:19:45,760 And she was, I forget now, seven years old. 1252 01:19:45,760 --> 01:19:50,560 So this is the other part with the whole obesity conversation that ties into opiates and alcohol 1253 01:19:50,560 --> 01:19:57,040 and porn and gambling and all these other things is, you know, what were those traumas? 1254 01:19:57,040 --> 01:20:03,200 Because for her, when she became slim, she started garnering attention from the opposite 1255 01:20:03,200 --> 01:20:06,200 sex, which had a complete startle reflex. 1256 01:20:06,200 --> 01:20:11,640 And so she went back to being air quotes unattractive because that was the defense mechanism. 1257 01:20:11,640 --> 01:20:15,960 So you start kind of peeling back these layers of whatever the struggles that someone have 1258 01:20:15,960 --> 01:20:21,500 and how it's manifesting through addiction or food or, you know, you name it, even exercising 1259 01:20:21,500 --> 01:20:24,080 too much and anorexia and bulimia. 1260 01:20:24,080 --> 01:20:27,480 It's hard not to be a victim. 1261 01:20:27,480 --> 01:20:30,120 It's hard not to be a victim and a victim. 1262 01:20:30,120 --> 01:20:31,620 That's why I say the messiness. 1263 01:20:31,620 --> 01:20:37,840 That's exactly what I mean, because when you're living in the problem and somebody says, here's 1264 01:20:37,840 --> 01:20:42,040 the solution, all you got to do is live in the solution. 1265 01:20:42,040 --> 01:20:47,560 But you don't, people don't talk about that's why self-help books are 75% of the bookstore 1266 01:20:47,560 --> 01:20:54,000 now because they, most of them don't work because they go, oh, this feels good reading 1267 01:20:54,000 --> 01:20:55,000 this. 1268 01:20:55,000 --> 01:20:59,840 It gives me hope, but there's no, there's no reality in the fact that even if you're 1269 01:20:59,840 --> 01:21:05,840 in the solution and living a good life that you can so easily go back and there's one 1270 01:21:05,840 --> 01:21:10,800 issue that happens that triggers you or whatever, and then you'll throw yourself back into the 1271 01:21:10,800 --> 01:21:15,320 initial problem and living into the initial problem or initial victimhood or whatever 1272 01:21:15,320 --> 01:21:19,100 it is, because that's your comfort zone. 1273 01:21:19,100 --> 01:21:24,440 Even if it feels like shit, even if you're an abject pain, it's what you know, that's 1274 01:21:24,440 --> 01:21:27,720 exactly the story you just told me. 1275 01:21:27,720 --> 01:21:31,600 So the people start going, oh my God, you look great. 1276 01:21:31,600 --> 01:21:33,760 Well all that, I mean, it does several things. 1277 01:21:33,760 --> 01:21:38,440 It tells you that how you've looked has been shitty and that you've been shitty this whole 1278 01:21:38,440 --> 01:21:39,760 time. 1279 01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:40,760 You know what I mean? 1280 01:21:40,760 --> 01:21:44,040 And then the other thing is how do I deal with this newness? 1281 01:21:44,040 --> 01:21:51,360 I don't understand who I am in this new body and this new attention and this new. 1282 01:21:51,360 --> 01:21:57,680 So if I go back to this, at least I know, at least I have the drumstick and the thing, 1283 01:21:57,680 --> 01:21:58,760 I can bite into it. 1284 01:21:58,760 --> 01:22:00,040 I know what that is. 1285 01:22:00,040 --> 01:22:02,360 I know what people's reaction is going to be. 1286 01:22:02,360 --> 01:22:04,540 It's my comfort zone. 1287 01:22:04,540 --> 01:22:10,120 It's my comfort zone, no matter how uncomfortable and painful it is. 1288 01:22:10,120 --> 01:22:13,680 And that's why I talk about it and let's say even with this book, it's like, look, it's 1289 01:22:13,680 --> 01:22:15,640 a messy life. 1290 01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:17,840 And the thing is, there's never any style. 1291 01:22:17,840 --> 01:22:18,840 It's like quitting sugar. 1292 01:22:18,840 --> 01:22:20,760 It's like, oh, I'm going to go on a diet. 1293 01:22:20,760 --> 01:22:23,080 I'm not going to go on a diet. 1294 01:22:23,080 --> 01:22:25,680 I'm going to figure out a lifestyle. 1295 01:22:25,680 --> 01:22:28,000 I love sugar, man. 1296 01:22:28,000 --> 01:22:32,040 I have key lime pie that I was given for my birthday and I have chocolates that I was 1297 01:22:32,040 --> 01:22:35,380 given to my birthday because people know I love chocolate. 1298 01:22:35,380 --> 01:22:37,720 So they're going to give it to me. 1299 01:22:37,720 --> 01:22:39,280 Congratulations. 1300 01:22:39,280 --> 01:22:40,280 Another year. 1301 01:22:40,280 --> 01:22:41,280 Yay. 1302 01:22:41,280 --> 01:22:42,440 Now do this thing. 1303 01:22:42,440 --> 01:22:49,140 And I have that on just because I wanted to see and my blood, my, my, what is it? 1304 01:22:49,140 --> 01:22:53,680 My blood sugar levels or whatever my glucose levels were, were pretty, you know, they're 1305 01:22:53,680 --> 01:22:54,680 pretty even. 1306 01:22:54,680 --> 01:22:58,920 And then I had my birthday and I had a piece and I hadn't eaten most of the day and I had 1307 01:22:58,920 --> 01:23:04,080 a piece of key lime pie and I had two chocolates and the fucking thing started doing this. 1308 01:23:04,080 --> 01:23:09,960 So that's all elation crash elation crash. 1309 01:23:09,960 --> 01:23:10,960 And I know it. 1310 01:23:10,960 --> 01:23:17,360 And when I did it, I was like, my God, what I've been missing. 1311 01:23:17,360 --> 01:23:19,560 Means I know this. 1312 01:23:19,560 --> 01:23:22,840 I know how to be drunk and I had to wake up on a sidewalk. 1313 01:23:22,840 --> 01:23:27,720 I know how to do that better than most. 1314 01:23:27,720 --> 01:23:30,800 I know what that is and I know how to live in them. 1315 01:23:30,800 --> 01:23:36,080 But what if you take the less comfortable way and then you see people, like I said, 1316 01:23:36,080 --> 01:23:40,980 you know, it was like four or five years into my sobriety where my kids and I wasn't asking 1317 01:23:40,980 --> 01:23:41,980 for it. 1318 01:23:41,980 --> 01:23:44,760 I wasn't that dick who was like, see what I've done. 1319 01:23:44,760 --> 01:23:46,400 I mean, I've been sober four years. 1320 01:23:46,400 --> 01:23:49,360 I've been like, I mean, what else do you expect? 1321 01:23:49,360 --> 01:23:50,360 What do you want from me? 1322 01:23:50,360 --> 01:23:52,240 You know, I wasn't that guy. 1323 01:23:52,240 --> 01:23:57,960 I go, I saw something change in my older kids and there was they loved me. 1324 01:23:57,960 --> 01:24:00,400 I know they loved me. 1325 01:24:00,400 --> 01:24:03,560 But there was a trust and it was skewed. 1326 01:24:03,560 --> 01:24:06,520 It was and then it went good. 1327 01:24:06,520 --> 01:24:08,040 And then I started getting calls. 1328 01:24:08,040 --> 01:24:10,200 Hey, what do you think of this? 1329 01:24:10,200 --> 01:24:11,200 Or I have an issue. 1330 01:24:11,200 --> 01:24:12,200 What do you think of that? 1331 01:24:12,200 --> 01:24:14,200 What do you think I should do? 1332 01:24:14,200 --> 01:24:16,280 Hey, how are you? 1333 01:24:16,280 --> 01:24:17,280 How's your day? 1334 01:24:17,280 --> 01:24:18,280 Wow. 1335 01:24:18,280 --> 01:24:24,840 I mean, that's stuff that can make me just ball because that's everything you want to 1336 01:24:24,840 --> 01:24:27,600 be able to rely on. 1337 01:24:27,600 --> 01:24:28,920 And that's what you get work. 1338 01:24:28,920 --> 01:24:36,200 You know, I tell my sponsors that and I know this is not a podcast of sobriety, but we 1339 01:24:36,200 --> 01:24:40,240 we say it's not about you anymore. 1340 01:24:40,240 --> 01:24:43,040 You work on you to help others. 1341 01:24:43,040 --> 01:24:44,760 You become a power of example. 1342 01:24:44,760 --> 01:24:48,080 You show people that you can do it, that it exists. 1343 01:24:48,080 --> 01:24:51,560 You don't just give people hope. 1344 01:24:51,560 --> 01:24:58,240 You show them that the process works when you are relentless in your pursuit to be one 1345 01:24:58,240 --> 01:25:00,200 percent better each day. 1346 01:25:00,200 --> 01:25:02,920 You don't have to be perfect at the end of the thing. 1347 01:25:02,920 --> 01:25:04,280 You're going to die at the end of the day. 1348 01:25:04,280 --> 01:25:06,720 It's all going to be fucking meaningless. 1349 01:25:06,720 --> 01:25:14,280 You know, but what's the process of living this time that we're gifted here? 1350 01:25:14,280 --> 01:25:16,240 And what if it's not about you anymore? 1351 01:25:16,240 --> 01:25:17,520 I feel so bad. 1352 01:25:17,520 --> 01:25:19,480 I feel that this I feel so horrible. 1353 01:25:19,480 --> 01:25:20,480 I feel this. 1354 01:25:20,480 --> 01:25:21,480 Okay. 1355 01:25:21,480 --> 01:25:23,560 What are you doing about it? 1356 01:25:23,560 --> 01:25:26,120 You know, I want to I want on that gratitude list. 1357 01:25:26,120 --> 01:25:27,120 Okay. 1358 01:25:27,120 --> 01:25:28,120 You get on the gratitude list. 1359 01:25:28,120 --> 01:25:31,080 If you miss it for 10 days, we're going to kick you off. 1360 01:25:31,080 --> 01:25:36,480 Gratitude first day, gratitude list, the second day, gratitude list, the third day, four days 1361 01:25:36,480 --> 01:25:38,040 goes by. 1362 01:25:38,040 --> 01:25:39,680 Well, what happened? 1363 01:25:39,680 --> 01:25:44,160 Well, I was feeling like, you know, I read yours and yours is really well written. 1364 01:25:44,160 --> 01:25:46,880 And it kind of intimidated me and I didn't want it. 1365 01:25:46,880 --> 01:25:49,280 Okay, so we can talk about that. 1366 01:25:49,280 --> 01:25:50,280 Do me a favor. 1367 01:25:50,280 --> 01:25:53,280 Don't miss a list. 1368 01:25:53,280 --> 01:25:54,800 That's the requirement. 1369 01:25:54,800 --> 01:26:00,920 You are you are it's not just a list for yourself. 1370 01:26:00,920 --> 01:26:04,440 You are responsible to other people. 1371 01:26:04,440 --> 01:26:06,780 The list is no longer for you. 1372 01:26:06,780 --> 01:26:09,960 Other people's lists are for you. 1373 01:26:09,960 --> 01:26:11,040 You're giving. 1374 01:26:11,040 --> 01:26:16,000 This is an act of giving and it's and it's learning how to receive and it's learning 1375 01:26:16,000 --> 01:26:18,560 how to see the gem and receiving. 1376 01:26:18,560 --> 01:26:22,600 Yeah, I don't want on this list anymore. 1377 01:26:22,600 --> 01:26:25,320 It's too much work. 1378 01:26:25,320 --> 01:26:27,360 Leather interior. 1379 01:26:27,360 --> 01:26:29,280 It's too much work. 1380 01:26:29,280 --> 01:26:30,280 This is not fun. 1381 01:26:30,280 --> 01:26:36,420 And you go maybe not now, but later you'll start to thrive on the ship. 1382 01:26:36,420 --> 01:26:41,960 This will be so much better than any leather interior you'll ever have in any car that 1383 01:26:41,960 --> 01:26:42,960 you own. 1384 01:26:42,960 --> 01:26:45,360 I guarantee it. 1385 01:26:45,360 --> 01:26:52,600 And it is it's a it's a it's a spiritual treasure. 1386 01:26:52,600 --> 01:26:58,320 This is what I'm trying to impart on the fire service, especially at our level. 1387 01:26:58,320 --> 01:27:03,600 My firefighters, engineers, captain, lieutenant kind of rank that, you know, they're really 1388 01:27:03,600 --> 01:27:07,600 the ones that are doing a majority of the work battalion chiefs to the people that are 1389 01:27:07,600 --> 01:27:12,800 on shift that are there every third day or whatever the shift pattern is and being told, 1390 01:27:12,800 --> 01:27:15,360 you know, you can't go home, stay another day. 1391 01:27:15,360 --> 01:27:18,680 We're short staffed again and again and again. 1392 01:27:18,680 --> 01:27:24,520 We're such a selfless, you know, servant mentality, which is beautiful. 1393 01:27:24,520 --> 01:27:28,760 And you know, let's give pay homage to all the volunteer firefighters are out there doing 1394 01:27:28,760 --> 01:27:30,080 this for free. 1395 01:27:30,080 --> 01:27:34,480 However, that can also be taken advantage of, and we've got to the point now where our 1396 01:27:34,480 --> 01:27:39,400 men and women, I mean, perfect LA city, LA County woefully, woefully understaffed. 1397 01:27:39,400 --> 01:27:44,600 So who's holding that PT log as Navy SEALs are falling left, right and center? 1398 01:27:44,600 --> 01:27:48,560 Everyone else who's still holding the log, you know, it's getting heavier and heavier. 1399 01:27:48,560 --> 01:27:53,840 But it's a hard sell to get the firefighters to say, we do need help. 1400 01:27:53,840 --> 01:27:56,060 We do need more rest and recovery. 1401 01:27:56,060 --> 01:28:00,680 So where I'm trying to shift the focus is that, all right, take it off you for a second. 1402 01:28:00,680 --> 01:28:05,320 Doesn't your child deserve to have you at that dance recital at the Donuts with Dads 1403 01:28:05,320 --> 01:28:07,380 or whatever it is? 1404 01:28:07,380 --> 01:28:11,520 Don't they deserve to have you when you come home with a smile on your face, not completely 1405 01:28:11,520 --> 01:28:13,920 burnt out and walking on eggshells? 1406 01:28:13,920 --> 01:28:19,060 You know, doesn't your partner deserve to have you, you know, well rested and not thinking 1407 01:28:19,060 --> 01:28:23,800 about whatever God awful call and you know, now your relationship, your marriage starts 1408 01:28:23,800 --> 01:28:25,500 fraying more and more and more. 1409 01:28:25,500 --> 01:28:26,920 So I love that. 1410 01:28:26,920 --> 01:28:33,560 You know, what you said about the sponsors and the sponsors is that's absolutely, I think 1411 01:28:33,560 --> 01:28:36,520 the most important message to this community. 1412 01:28:36,520 --> 01:28:40,960 If you don't think that you value the rest and recovery and time and all these other 1413 01:28:40,960 --> 01:28:45,240 things, then look to the people that adore you. 1414 01:28:45,240 --> 01:28:46,920 They deserve to have you home. 1415 01:28:46,920 --> 01:28:51,220 They deserve for you to be healthy, to have a lifespan that you can one day be a grandfather 1416 01:28:51,220 --> 01:28:53,120 to their children. 1417 01:28:53,120 --> 01:28:57,360 But you know, we've become so beat down and they're so under, excuse me, overworked and 1418 01:28:57,360 --> 01:28:58,360 under slept. 1419 01:28:58,360 --> 01:29:03,520 You can't critically think, you can't question, well, hey, is this a great environment that 1420 01:29:03,520 --> 01:29:04,520 we're in? 1421 01:29:04,520 --> 01:29:06,800 And the answer is fuck no, it's terrible. 1422 01:29:06,800 --> 01:29:08,760 But we have to stand up and fight. 1423 01:29:08,760 --> 01:29:14,200 But going back to that, take the, take the focus off you and put it on people around 1424 01:29:14,200 --> 01:29:16,840 you that depend on you and that love you. 1425 01:29:16,840 --> 01:29:23,320 I think that mentality will hopefully help shift the focus and get the fire service as 1426 01:29:23,320 --> 01:29:29,680 I always say, educated and angry enough to actually band together and demand an environment 1427 01:29:29,680 --> 01:29:34,440 that actually provides health and performance, not disease like we've seen for so long. 1428 01:29:34,440 --> 01:29:35,440 Yeah. 1429 01:29:35,440 --> 01:29:39,440 And you don't want to, you don't, you don't want it just to be about not that it's hollow. 1430 01:29:39,440 --> 01:29:44,840 It's not a hollow presentation because what the first responders are doing is incredible. 1431 01:29:44,840 --> 01:29:46,320 But what about the whole person? 1432 01:29:46,320 --> 01:29:48,320 So you just want them saving lives. 1433 01:29:48,320 --> 01:29:49,560 You want to be able to clap. 1434 01:29:49,560 --> 01:29:53,160 That's hollow patriotism, another form of hollow patriotism. 1435 01:29:53,160 --> 01:29:55,600 And you go, what about that person? 1436 01:29:55,600 --> 01:29:56,600 Exactly what you just said. 1437 01:29:56,600 --> 01:30:00,960 And looking back and you go, who are they with their family? 1438 01:30:00,960 --> 01:30:02,220 Who are they with their kids? 1439 01:30:02,220 --> 01:30:08,400 If you see a great teacher teaching your child in elementary school, and then you found out 1440 01:30:08,400 --> 01:30:12,680 that they're beating their kids and their wife is this and he's fucking around and he's 1441 01:30:12,680 --> 01:30:17,560 doing all this, are you, are you going to think they're a great teacher any longer? 1442 01:30:17,560 --> 01:30:19,520 No, of course not. 1443 01:30:19,520 --> 01:30:21,520 You're going to try to get that guy fired. 1444 01:30:21,520 --> 01:30:22,520 You're going to be like, what do you mean? 1445 01:30:22,520 --> 01:30:25,240 He beats his kids and he does, and that he's a horrible human being. 1446 01:30:25,240 --> 01:30:29,400 Why, why do I want him around my kid? 1447 01:30:29,400 --> 01:30:30,400 You know what I mean? 1448 01:30:30,400 --> 01:30:31,960 Well, the presentation is good. 1449 01:30:31,960 --> 01:30:34,160 Well, our kids learning like crazy. 1450 01:30:34,160 --> 01:30:37,280 Yeah, but it's not all about me. 1451 01:30:37,280 --> 01:30:40,160 It's not all about my kid. 1452 01:30:40,160 --> 01:30:41,160 You know what I mean? 1453 01:30:41,160 --> 01:30:46,600 It's I mean, ultimately selfishly it is, but when it comes down to it, you go, if there's 1454 01:30:46,600 --> 01:30:59,140 this underlying laceration, then there has to be a place for those people to go to help 1455 01:30:59,140 --> 01:31:02,480 stitch it up and stop the bleeding. 1456 01:31:02,480 --> 01:31:04,320 You know what I mean? 1457 01:31:04,320 --> 01:31:11,560 And I like that as a metaphor because it's like, it's like, you can't deny the laceration. 1458 01:31:11,560 --> 01:31:14,040 The person going through it can't deny it. 1459 01:31:14,040 --> 01:31:18,560 And the person and the people around that person can't deny it. 1460 01:31:18,560 --> 01:31:22,960 And that's why I say they get into that, that denial of it's okay. 1461 01:31:22,960 --> 01:31:23,960 I'm a hero. 1462 01:31:23,960 --> 01:31:24,960 I'm a hero. 1463 01:31:24,960 --> 01:31:25,960 I'm a hero. 1464 01:31:25,960 --> 01:31:27,680 My hero, my hero, my hero. 1465 01:31:27,680 --> 01:31:33,160 And that's where you talk about the stoics and like what's heroic about who was it? 1466 01:31:33,160 --> 01:31:38,480 I can't remember, but he used to go out in the street for two weeks and live, live like 1467 01:31:38,480 --> 01:31:43,720 everybody else and live with no food and live with just one blanket and beg for bread or 1468 01:31:43,720 --> 01:31:52,760 whatever just to tap into the realities of what he was representing, what, you know, 1469 01:31:52,760 --> 01:31:54,080 which I like that stuff. 1470 01:31:54,080 --> 01:32:03,000 It's like creative community, you know, creatively putting yourself in a position uncomfortably 1471 01:32:03,000 --> 01:32:10,160 to identify, to be able to identify, you know, and, and, and I say this just as a last thing 1472 01:32:10,160 --> 01:32:18,760 is that, you know, you just said it of, of these firefighters. 1473 01:32:18,760 --> 01:32:20,960 Why would you not want to care? 1474 01:32:20,960 --> 01:32:22,960 Why would you not want to follow through? 1475 01:32:22,960 --> 01:32:24,940 Why do you just want the presentation? 1476 01:32:24,940 --> 01:32:27,600 You go to Europe and you see a lot more of that. 1477 01:32:27,600 --> 01:32:32,500 I know it's not perfect, but you feel, you see a lot more respite. 1478 01:32:32,500 --> 01:32:35,260 You see a lot more siesta. 1479 01:32:35,260 --> 01:32:39,400 You see a lot more dinners that last for two hours and I'm the worst man. 1480 01:32:39,400 --> 01:32:40,400 I want to eat. 1481 01:32:40,400 --> 01:32:41,400 I go in a restaurant. 1482 01:32:41,400 --> 01:32:42,960 I want to be in and out of there in 15 minutes. 1483 01:32:42,960 --> 01:32:50,480 I got shit to do, you know, and, and I just shut everything down professionally. 1484 01:32:50,480 --> 01:32:56,080 I know what jobs I'm doing in the future, but I just, the award shows and all this kind 1485 01:32:56,080 --> 01:32:57,080 of stuff. 1486 01:32:57,080 --> 01:33:01,880 And I just went like, I just, I just did a, I just did work in London. 1487 01:33:01,880 --> 01:33:03,560 I did the dune two tour. 1488 01:33:03,560 --> 01:33:09,440 I did the book tour and I did another job in London and now I'm asked every day to do 1489 01:33:09,440 --> 01:33:10,800 something. 1490 01:33:10,800 --> 01:33:12,960 And I go, so what does that make me? 1491 01:33:12,960 --> 01:33:14,680 Oh, it's like, oh, okay. 1492 01:33:14,680 --> 01:33:15,680 Okay. 1493 01:33:15,680 --> 01:33:16,680 Okay. 1494 01:33:16,680 --> 01:33:17,680 I'll do this for you and I'll do that for you. 1495 01:33:17,680 --> 01:33:22,240 And I have to stay relevant and I have to stay relevant and have to stay relevant. 1496 01:33:22,240 --> 01:33:26,700 And you go, no, like now I'm starting to feel resentment. 1497 01:33:26,700 --> 01:33:29,280 Now I'm starting to see people on the street and they go, hi. 1498 01:33:29,280 --> 01:33:37,000 And I'm going, you know, you got, you know, I don't want to deal with anybody, you know? 1499 01:33:37,000 --> 01:33:39,840 And I go, but that's not how I want to be. 1500 01:33:39,840 --> 01:33:41,760 So what am I going to do? 1501 01:33:41,760 --> 01:33:42,760 Take action. 1502 01:33:42,760 --> 01:33:43,760 Yeah. 1503 01:33:43,760 --> 01:33:47,120 But what's the consequence? 1504 01:33:47,120 --> 01:33:49,440 Does it matter? 1505 01:33:49,440 --> 01:33:50,800 Does it matter? 1506 01:33:50,800 --> 01:33:52,680 What if Hollywood doesn't want you anymore? 1507 01:33:52,680 --> 01:33:53,680 It's okay. 1508 01:33:53,680 --> 01:33:56,080 We'll, we'll get, then I'll start trading stocks again. 1509 01:33:56,080 --> 01:33:57,120 I don't know. 1510 01:33:57,120 --> 01:33:58,860 I always figure it out. 1511 01:33:58,860 --> 01:34:04,360 But what's important is waking up this morning and going to our property with my family and 1512 01:34:04,360 --> 01:34:08,080 then going with a friend and going and we'll get, you know what I mean? 1513 01:34:08,080 --> 01:34:11,880 It's like, there are moments that you can't take back. 1514 01:34:11,880 --> 01:34:17,920 And there are moments that are being represented, you know, for all of us right now that that's 1515 01:34:17,920 --> 01:34:19,800 the nectar, man. 1516 01:34:19,800 --> 01:34:21,640 This is the nectar. 1517 01:34:21,640 --> 01:34:28,840 And if you miss the nectar, and if you, and if you deny other people their nectar, because 1518 01:34:28,840 --> 01:34:33,800 of your selfish wants, not okay. 1519 01:34:33,800 --> 01:34:34,800 Not okay. 1520 01:34:34,800 --> 01:34:35,800 But I'm 57. 1521 01:34:35,800 --> 01:34:40,800 So it's taken me a while to get there, you know, and I'm not there yet. 1522 01:34:40,800 --> 01:34:45,200 I still resort back to selfishness sometimes and greed sometimes. 1523 01:34:45,200 --> 01:34:52,560 And you know, so great. 1524 01:34:52,560 --> 01:34:53,560 Thank you. 1525 01:34:53,560 --> 01:34:54,560 Thank you. 1526 01:34:54,560 --> 01:34:55,560 Namaste. 1527 01:34:55,560 --> 01:34:56,560 Thank you. 1528 01:34:56,560 --> 01:34:57,560 Thank you. 1529 01:34:57,560 --> 01:35:06,600 You know, I'm still victim to to all the little pitfalls of the ego. 1530 01:35:06,600 --> 01:35:10,800 But I like being slapped awake a lot. 1531 01:35:10,800 --> 01:35:14,560 I like and part of the process of doing this was being slapped away. 1532 01:35:14,560 --> 01:35:17,140 I didn't even realize it. 1533 01:35:17,140 --> 01:35:21,600 My life is my life selfishly is better because I wrote this book. 1534 01:35:21,600 --> 01:35:22,600 My life is better. 1535 01:35:22,600 --> 01:35:24,200 We talked about this earlier. 1536 01:35:24,200 --> 01:35:29,600 You know, when somebody comes and has a real emotional or personal personal response to 1537 01:35:29,600 --> 01:35:34,320 one of the many stories in this book, that's gratifying. 1538 01:35:34,320 --> 01:35:36,080 And that brings people together. 1539 01:35:36,080 --> 01:35:40,560 When somebody comes and says, that's the worst fucking book I've ever read in my life. 1540 01:35:40,560 --> 01:35:43,440 I don't know how gratifying that is. 1541 01:35:43,440 --> 01:35:48,660 But there's something that I like about it where I go, that's a reaction. 1542 01:35:48,660 --> 01:35:49,660 That's a reaction. 1543 01:35:49,660 --> 01:35:56,120 And there's something that you expected of me because you have put me you have pigeonholed 1544 01:35:56,120 --> 01:36:01,780 me as this certain thing and not as a full fledged human being. 1545 01:36:01,780 --> 01:36:02,780 And that's OK. 1546 01:36:02,780 --> 01:36:04,520 I can deal with that. 1547 01:36:04,520 --> 01:36:10,440 But I'm not going to I'm not going to be that half a human for you. 1548 01:36:10,440 --> 01:36:14,040 And this is this is proof. 1549 01:36:14,040 --> 01:36:19,640 This is me challenging myself again and again, making sure I haven't slid into that status 1550 01:36:19,640 --> 01:36:28,480 quo that adheres to everybody else's idea of what I should be given what I do. 1551 01:36:28,480 --> 01:36:34,520 Well, like I told you, I thought it was amazing because we've gone back and forth. 1552 01:36:34,520 --> 01:36:38,360 I mean, you know, early on, I was reading those Instagram posts and you were talking 1553 01:36:38,360 --> 01:36:45,040 about how that was kind of almost like a sounding board for some of your, you know, artistic 1554 01:36:45,040 --> 01:36:50,680 writing ideas and developments and how you then update it and correct things and change 1555 01:36:50,680 --> 01:36:52,040 things. 1556 01:36:52,040 --> 01:36:57,560 But the use of words really are, you know, they are said the paintbrush on your your 1557 01:36:57,560 --> 01:36:58,560 palate. 1558 01:36:58,560 --> 01:36:59,560 I mean, truly. 1559 01:36:59,560 --> 01:37:03,480 And some of the chapters are obviously kind of more like a traditional chapter would be 1560 01:37:03,480 --> 01:37:05,720 and some is more like poetry form. 1561 01:37:05,720 --> 01:37:10,740 And I love the way that it's all over the place in an organic way. 1562 01:37:10,740 --> 01:37:17,880 But also, like I said before, the the pendulum element of going from time to time, you know, 1563 01:37:17,880 --> 01:37:23,640 time zone to time zone, it really underlined that struggle. 1564 01:37:23,640 --> 01:37:26,280 So it wasn't a linear line like, yeah, this was happened. 1565 01:37:26,280 --> 01:37:28,480 And then I was struggling and then I got sober. 1566 01:37:28,480 --> 01:37:30,380 And now life is great. 1567 01:37:30,380 --> 01:37:34,860 You even feel yeah, this like there's there's one of the chapters and you're on a plane 1568 01:37:34,860 --> 01:37:38,800 and you're talking about how attractive the stewardess is and you're having these sexual 1569 01:37:38,800 --> 01:37:39,800 thoughts. 1570 01:37:39,800 --> 01:37:44,280 But let's be honest, a lot of us male, female see other people, especially if we're inebriated, 1571 01:37:44,280 --> 01:37:45,460 we have some of these thoughts. 1572 01:37:45,460 --> 01:37:49,640 And it was just so raw and visceral. 1573 01:37:49,640 --> 01:37:53,240 And the lack of that linear nature, I think, is what makes it so attractive. 1574 01:37:53,240 --> 01:37:57,600 And I think maybe some of the people who are pushing against it is because it is holding 1575 01:37:57,600 --> 01:37:58,600 up a mirror. 1576 01:37:58,600 --> 01:38:00,000 And I hope that my books hold up a mirror. 1577 01:38:00,000 --> 01:38:04,220 And I've had visceral, you know, responses from people with that as well. 1578 01:38:04,220 --> 01:38:10,340 But I think it's so refreshing, because that's how life is this frickin, you know, like tug 1579 01:38:10,340 --> 01:38:14,020 of war between all these different monkeys in our mind. 1580 01:38:14,020 --> 01:38:18,520 And I think the book that you wrote, which, as you said, you know, was the book that you 1581 01:38:18,520 --> 01:38:21,300 wanted to write, that is your book. 1582 01:38:21,300 --> 01:38:23,080 So someone can pick it up and say it's great. 1583 01:38:23,080 --> 01:38:24,960 Someone can pick it up and say they don't like it. 1584 01:38:24,960 --> 01:38:30,040 But what a beautiful reaction, because it's still the book that you wanted to write. 1585 01:38:30,040 --> 01:38:38,520 Yeah, it's, you know, we won't get into a hole. 1586 01:38:38,520 --> 01:38:45,720 I won't need some long frame, but even, you know, 1997, my son and daughter sit close 1587 01:38:45,720 --> 01:38:46,720 to each other. 1588 01:38:46,720 --> 01:38:51,040 The doors are open close by short bursts of a morning fog have crept inside and tickle 1589 01:38:51,040 --> 01:38:52,040 at their feet. 1590 01:38:52,040 --> 01:38:57,600 They eat cereal out of orange soup bowls and read on the glass table out of the encyclopedia 1591 01:38:57,600 --> 01:38:58,600 of the bizarre. 1592 01:38:58,600 --> 01:39:04,680 My daughter legs tucked under her, her hips, leans her shoulder against his keeps peeking 1593 01:39:04,680 --> 01:39:10,660 at him when he speaks about a family that had the last name 1792 and how they all named 1594 01:39:10,660 --> 01:39:12,400 their kids after months. 1595 01:39:12,400 --> 01:39:18,240 August 1792 eight pounds one and a half ounces born June 3rd 1963 was one. 1596 01:39:18,240 --> 01:39:23,960 He gives him a look of wide eyed surprise and all I see is how much she adores him worships 1597 01:39:23,960 --> 01:39:25,440 him almost. 1598 01:39:25,440 --> 01:39:29,920 Their history is protected, they look after each other stepping honorably through the 1599 01:39:29,920 --> 01:39:33,660 viscosity of this life parents only a hindrance. 1600 01:39:33,660 --> 01:39:38,280 They light candles with their eyes, they flame their youth together always together traveling 1601 01:39:38,280 --> 01:39:43,880 through a book of the bizarre, not realizing how absurd it is that he isn't pulling that 1602 01:39:43,880 --> 01:39:46,180 he isn't pulling her hair. 1603 01:39:46,180 --> 01:39:48,600 And that she isn't in my lap. 1604 01:39:48,600 --> 01:39:55,520 You know, that's what it's, you know, I think if there was ever a mistake, and I brought 1605 01:39:55,520 --> 01:40:00,920 it up early on and then I said, now fine, was calling it a memoir. 1606 01:40:00,920 --> 01:40:03,460 It's not a memoir. 1607 01:40:03,460 --> 01:40:15,680 It's their stories, paintings, memories, anecdotes, their personal meanderings. 1608 01:40:15,680 --> 01:40:23,280 So you know, if you're, you know, the four year old with the mother crying on the phone 1609 01:40:23,280 --> 01:40:29,440 screaming and the father comes home and she's throwing the big Mexican coffee cups through 1610 01:40:29,440 --> 01:40:37,600 the window at him and you know that total fucking utter chaos. 1611 01:40:37,600 --> 01:40:42,080 And then, and when I wrote that I wrote it in a different way. 1612 01:40:42,080 --> 01:40:48,000 And then I was like, I want this to be like a, like a Dr. Sue story. 1613 01:40:48,000 --> 01:40:51,280 Once upon a time there was a little boy named John. 1614 01:40:51,280 --> 01:40:55,880 I wanted to almost read like a children's story, like something that's going to be really, 1615 01:40:55,880 --> 01:40:57,680 really nice. 1616 01:40:57,680 --> 01:40:59,840 Because childhood is nice. 1617 01:40:59,840 --> 01:41:05,960 You pick flowers and get on your bicycle and the flag is flopping above you and all this 1618 01:41:05,960 --> 01:41:10,280 kind of stuff and you go, but some childhoods aren't so nice. 1619 01:41:10,280 --> 01:41:24,400 Most childhoods have something in them that, that justify trauma, the idea of trauma. 1620 01:41:24,400 --> 01:41:25,400 And that's okay. 1621 01:41:25,400 --> 01:41:27,000 Again, that's okay. 1622 01:41:27,000 --> 01:41:30,940 You know that she talks about it and I keep bringing up her book only because I'm reading 1623 01:41:30,940 --> 01:41:37,480 it right now, but she talks about it in that she goes there. 1624 01:41:37,480 --> 01:41:45,080 There is this idea of community, this idea of spending time with yourself, first of all, 1625 01:41:45,080 --> 01:41:46,640 to be able to come to terms with something. 1626 01:41:46,640 --> 01:41:54,960 But this idea of community and feeding off that community is, is so utterly important. 1627 01:41:54,960 --> 01:42:01,240 It's so to reveal in yourself those things that you would hide otherwise. 1628 01:42:01,240 --> 01:42:06,840 How can we, how can we, I don't know really how to put it, but how, you know, for me, 1629 01:42:06,840 --> 01:42:10,800 I feed off it more right now than I have mostly. 1630 01:42:10,800 --> 01:42:13,280 Before I was kind of like, I want to travel. 1631 01:42:13,280 --> 01:42:14,960 I want to get in boxcars. 1632 01:42:14,960 --> 01:42:16,880 I want to go through the Mojave Desert. 1633 01:42:16,880 --> 01:42:21,320 I want to do all the crazy romantic literary things that I can do. 1634 01:42:21,320 --> 01:42:22,320 I'm going to go to France. 1635 01:42:22,320 --> 01:42:24,960 I'm going to visit Rambeau's grave site. 1636 01:42:24,960 --> 01:42:28,080 I'm going to go drink wine at Jim Morrison's grave site. 1637 01:42:28,080 --> 01:42:29,400 I'm going to go, I want it. 1638 01:42:29,400 --> 01:42:30,400 I want to fill it. 1639 01:42:30,400 --> 01:42:32,680 I want to fill it, which I'm happy that I did. 1640 01:42:32,680 --> 01:42:35,240 I did all those things. 1641 01:42:35,240 --> 01:42:41,600 And then when it comes down to it, you go, who, who do I want to share it with? 1642 01:42:41,600 --> 01:42:43,800 I said it to my wife yesterday. 1643 01:42:43,800 --> 01:42:47,220 My wife said this morning, she said it this morning. 1644 01:42:47,220 --> 01:42:50,880 She got up before the kids and she looked at me and she goes, I'm so into you right 1645 01:42:50,880 --> 01:42:51,880 now. 1646 01:42:51,880 --> 01:42:52,880 And I was like, really? 1647 01:42:52,880 --> 01:42:53,880 That's cool. 1648 01:42:53,880 --> 01:42:56,360 I just turned 57. 1649 01:42:56,360 --> 01:42:57,880 That's cool. 1650 01:42:57,880 --> 01:43:05,160 And she goes, I said, I said to her, the difference that I feel now that I've never felt before 1651 01:43:05,160 --> 01:43:10,480 is you're somebody I want to go through this with. 1652 01:43:10,480 --> 01:43:15,400 I'm not putting an expectation on you to lift me into a different place, to get me away 1653 01:43:15,400 --> 01:43:21,200 from myself, to get me away from pain, to distract me. 1654 01:43:21,200 --> 01:43:26,240 That if we really look at this insanity of raising children, which by the way, I'm so 1655 01:43:26,240 --> 01:43:31,960 surprised these kids haven't come in here and just gone, hey, Papa, we just got, you 1656 01:43:31,960 --> 01:43:33,600 know, cause that's how it always is. 1657 01:43:33,600 --> 01:43:35,480 I don't know why they're not doing it now. 1658 01:43:35,480 --> 01:43:36,960 It's worrying me. 1659 01:43:36,960 --> 01:43:45,520 But that you want to go through it with somebody that you want to just share it, that you want 1660 01:43:45,520 --> 01:43:50,920 to, that you want to partake in that give and take and say, look, you're going to get 1661 01:43:50,920 --> 01:43:51,920 older. 1662 01:43:51,920 --> 01:43:57,040 I'm going to get older and it's all good because there is no perfect anymore. 1663 01:43:57,040 --> 01:44:03,800 We live in the beauty of messy imperfection and that's okay. 1664 01:44:03,800 --> 01:44:05,600 Yeah. 1665 01:44:05,600 --> 01:44:07,560 Love it. 1666 01:44:07,560 --> 01:44:10,560 Well I think that's the perfect place to round off this conversation. 1667 01:44:10,560 --> 01:44:15,320 So firstly, for people listening, the book is from under the truck. 1668 01:44:15,320 --> 01:44:17,820 Where are the best places to find the hard copy? 1669 01:44:17,820 --> 01:44:20,800 And then what about the audio book? 1670 01:44:20,800 --> 01:44:28,440 The audio books people are seeming to like, you know, which I was, I liked the idea of 1671 01:44:28,440 --> 01:44:35,480 people buying a hard cover book, but there's www website that we created that gives you 1672 01:44:35,480 --> 01:44:40,560 many opportunities to buy it from different places, whether mom and pop or whether it's 1673 01:44:40,560 --> 01:44:45,280 Barnes and Noble and, and Amazon and all that, it gives you the choice. 1674 01:44:45,280 --> 01:44:54,240 So that's www from under the truck.com and the audio book, you know, you get an audible 1675 01:44:54,240 --> 01:44:59,200 or you can get obviously Amazon, whatever. 1676 01:44:59,200 --> 01:45:06,180 But it's available and it's out there and there's nothing that I have found more solace 1677 01:45:06,180 --> 01:45:09,800 and not me walking into a bookstore. 1678 01:45:09,800 --> 01:45:13,200 Even though I went to the oldest bookstore and I can't wait, it's called a Hatchard's 1679 01:45:13,200 --> 01:45:17,080 maybe the in London, the oldest bookstore in London. 1680 01:45:17,080 --> 01:45:23,160 And to see my book displayed up there was special for me. 1681 01:45:23,160 --> 01:45:31,760 But the better version of that is people sending me videos or pictures of them in bookstores 1682 01:45:31,760 --> 01:45:40,060 and saying, or reading the book or them having bought the book and they go home like that. 1683 01:45:40,060 --> 01:45:45,480 That makes me truly happy, but it's out there right now and it's done much better than I 1684 01:45:45,480 --> 01:45:46,560 thought it was going to do. 1685 01:45:46,560 --> 01:45:48,400 So I'm happy about that. 1686 01:45:48,400 --> 01:45:49,680 I don't think I told you this. 1687 01:45:49,680 --> 01:45:50,680 I don't know. 1688 01:45:50,680 --> 01:45:55,520 I can't remember if I did or not, but when I came to visit you in Atlanta, we did that 1689 01:45:55,520 --> 01:45:59,200 kind of book signing for that charity giveaway that we're doing. 1690 01:45:59,200 --> 01:46:03,200 And then you also recorded the forward for my book. 1691 01:46:03,200 --> 01:46:08,600 And it was only after I did that, that I was like, why the fuck did I ask one of the people 1692 01:46:08,600 --> 01:46:12,240 with the best voices in Hollywood to narrate my audio book? 1693 01:46:12,240 --> 01:46:17,480 So the right after I'm like, hello, I'm James Kearing. 1694 01:46:17,480 --> 01:46:20,600 To this day, I'm like, what an idiot. 1695 01:46:20,600 --> 01:46:25,080 No, that was by the way, that was a very powerful process. 1696 01:46:25,080 --> 01:46:29,000 And I won't go off on a whole tangent, but that was a very powerful process. 1697 01:46:29,000 --> 01:46:36,920 I know for you and for me to go, I mean, the gall to read your writing and for you to put 1698 01:46:36,920 --> 01:46:39,720 yourself out there as vulnerably as you've put yourself out there. 1699 01:46:39,720 --> 01:46:47,640 And for me to go, bro, you're all surface and like go deeper. 1700 01:46:47,640 --> 01:46:51,920 Like I know you and I know you're more capable. 1701 01:46:51,920 --> 01:46:53,320 And that's what I'm talking about. 1702 01:46:53,320 --> 01:46:55,940 You want a friend to be able to do that. 1703 01:46:55,940 --> 01:47:02,760 You want somebody to say, you're more capable. 1704 01:47:02,760 --> 01:47:04,440 You have the capacity to go deeper. 1705 01:47:04,440 --> 01:47:05,440 And you did. 1706 01:47:05,440 --> 01:47:06,440 And it was phenomenal. 1707 01:47:06,440 --> 01:47:11,800 I love that book and people love that book. 1708 01:47:11,800 --> 01:47:19,120 So yeah, man, again, the teaching becomes the lesson. 1709 01:47:19,120 --> 01:47:23,720 What could come across easily is some kind of literary arrogance, which why I would have 1710 01:47:23,720 --> 01:47:25,680 because I hadn't written a book. 1711 01:47:25,680 --> 01:47:30,360 You wrote a book before I wrote a book. 1712 01:47:30,360 --> 01:47:33,200 And what that throws me into is, you know what? 1713 01:47:33,200 --> 01:47:38,040 If you're going to be like that, you know, be a power of example. 1714 01:47:38,040 --> 01:47:43,840 Don't just be somebody on the sidelines and saying, come on, you can do better than that. 1715 01:47:43,840 --> 01:47:47,420 Look at, you know, and it's put yourself out there. 1716 01:47:47,420 --> 01:47:57,480 So if that's the community that you and I look forward to in everybody, then let's continue 1717 01:47:57,480 --> 01:48:03,280 along the trajectory of care that we're on because I think we're doing a right thing 1718 01:48:03,280 --> 01:48:28,920 no matter how many people shit on it.