Distractible - Life Plan

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

The guys discuss their life paths, including career goals, turning points, and what job they would have during the Zombie Apocalypse… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good evening, gentle listener, and welcome to Distractible, a Wood Elf production with your hosts, Beautiful Bob, Wily Wade, and Mesmerizing Mark. This week, the tripod of rambunctious rascals review the vicissitudes of life and how the best laid plans of mice and men can go all awry. Yes, it's time for Life Plans. Please prepare thy handkerchiefs and enjoy the show. Hey guys, welcome back to Distractible, the show where I'm the host today and I can talk about whatever the heck I want. And I can even put things in the wrong order, like that. I like how surprised you always sound. Hey, welcome to Distractible, where I'm the host. you always sound hey well we're doing a distractible or i'm the host yeah well it is surprising to win even if i kind of stacked the deck two weeks ago to make sure i would yeah funny how that happened that's so weird i'd lost a lot of episodes in a row and i was like well maybe i should start

winning more in a row yeah well we're not gonna let you pull that shit again unless we do so you watch yourself well you might have to because if i'm the judge you have to accept my ruling i think right maybe maybe it's not really in the bylaws i don't know anyway whichever one of the two of you interests me the most or gets the most points or yada yada is the winner of the next one gets the host or if i don't feel like picking a winner maybe both of you end up posting like you know this happened before not gonna happen but how you guys doing good pretty good pretty good anything interesting coming up or going on or anything you guys got any fun plans holiday season's coming up before

too long no no what what is that what does that mean i guess he's in denial about it. I don't know. What does Mark know that I don't know? No. No. No. Nothing will be happening. Holiday. No. This year?

I don't think so. Stop. We're fine. Everything's fine. I don't know what you're worried about. Don't do that voice. What do you mean? I don't like that. All right.

Fine, man. But everything's fine. Unsettling. Great small talk. I'm sorry, do you have a Wade soundboard over there? I should make the... Great small talk. Great, great, great, great small talk.

Wow, that's awesome. Wow, that's awesome. I don't know, man. What even happens? Well, this is gonna be a banger. I can't wait to judge you all. You know what? Two points for each of you right off the bat for just man blowing me away with talking in general love it to death you

want some positive stories when i'm on a diet and i don't like it all right oh yeah so hooray for me i've lost some weight good i have only been able to commit to a diet at all whenever i've also been exercising at the same time and i don't like like not just exercise like every now and like i die hard like okay every day or every other day i'm doing this which is not very often in my life but if i'm not doing both i can't really do either there's not meant to be offensive but it is i have a hard time imagining you doing that like it doesn't happen like i can see i mean i have seen because i've watched videos where mark works out but i can imagine mark like in a workout clothes on a stationary bike or pumping some weights i can't

imagine you in that scenario in any way based on what i know about you and how you behave how do you work out when you work out how do you what do you do i don't really like working out like what i would do i've got a gym membership i don't really like going to the gym all that much other than like using the elliptical money well spent but yeah 10 bucks a month what i enjoy doing is i actually kind of like just put on like a pair of shorts jogging shoes whatever i like going out and like running having earbuds in or something listening to music while i just kind of like run or jog or whatever i've never been big on lifting weights or anything i'm lucky i kind of have some natural tone in my shoulders and arms.

And from basketball, I guess my legs are somewhat toned. So I've never had to worry about that too much. I'm not really pushing for abs. But I'll do like sit-ups and push-ups. I'll grab a couple dumbbells. And I was doing like some different things where I'd like, you know, stand and like watch TV. And I'd be like twisting and lifting and sitting up and all that stuff. Oh, I thought that was the end of it. I was going to have to break it to you that that's not working out way i got some dumbbells i bought them i set them on the ground sat down

on the couch watch tv i got some of those bow flex select your weight twisty things and i set those on the ground and i've got one of those uh hanging from the doorway pull-up bars i hang that next to me and i just stand there and watch tv it's tough because i you know as i'm buying the dumbbells they've got the checkout they've got the king size candy bars but i'm like no i'm gonna be working out i'm on a diet so i just bought two of the regular size candy bars instead you space them out i was buy one get one free so i couldn't say no god wait don't take this the wrong way please do not but i literally can't imagine you out running i don't know what it is it's like i believe you're capable of it but you as a person that i've known for a long time

and i see people out running like i don't like i i that's a side of you i don't know yeah and i want to know that side it's not a side of me i'm proud of yeah fair okay fair this weird personal history you're like you you get back and you're in like running gear and molly's like hey what were you doing like i i can't talk about it we're married what do you mean you can't what the hell were you doing what why do you look like that i i don't know how to tell you this i was jogging she just drops a vase that she's randomly holding shatters on the ground starts raining drops ginger and ginger shatters on the ground ginger is wade's dog for the listeners who don't know that personal detail

was before the jogging incident or she shattered out of pure shock and awe oh man poor ginger and then gone the pieces is it one of those things where it's like a curse where the pieces still yip and they still piss on the floor oh god oh god just like sad distant howly moans come out of the pieces of the shattered eight pieces of paws into the vent for the nail trimming yeah oh my god you have to hide it in the attic so you don't ever have to worry about it, but at night you can hear it through the walls. Yes! You just throw a huge raw steak up in the room every once in a while,

all the pieces just glob onto it, it's a bunch of shattered shards just absorbing the steak into their pores. The pores. Pores. Fuck. Keep going. Their parts, they just suck it into their holes yes they do

their pores holes talk more about their holes no okay I tried I don't like that Pat I tried don't yes and me when I have bad ideas this is a little disturbing.

Somehow this ties in, though, to what I wanted to talk about today. Believe it. Not necessarily the shattering in the holes, but... I refuse to believe it. There's no way. Specifically when you said, knowing me for as long as you have, you can't imagine me being the guy out running. The topic I was originally going to bring up, but I think still works, is kind of like life goals, like expectations versus reality.

Like when we're young and we're taught like, you know, oh, you want to go be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. And like growing up, that mindset of like thinking we have it all figured out and then life giving us different paths along the way. Like how different is life? For us, I know it's very different than what we ever know. None of us could expect it to be what we're doing. life for us i know it's very different than what we ever know none of us could expect it to be what we're doing but like in general staying motivated to push toward our objectives and adapting to like the different changes and taking those paths and like i don't know i guess just in general life paths is kind of the topic of where did you start what were you pushing for because

i mean i have some idea i think bob has some idea but i don't know if everyone does of what our original goals were growing up and how they've changed over time and like when we take that branching path and when we're like too risky or too boring whatever like we've ended up in very strange place in life compared to i think where any of us expected to go my god you know my educational history you think i had a plan for that shit you think i meant to do all that random crap that i did well i hope a little bit of one no shot dude one of the scariest things about making a life path is like we're all expected to go to college and none of us have any idea what anything about money means growing up at least i didn't and the like when you hear like oh yeah you're gonna owe a lot of money it's like

oh i'm gonna make so much money i'll be able to pay that off pretty quick no and no but none of us understand that everyone i think in like junior and high school has that like i can't be hurt my life will be perfect i will be where i want to be i think a lot of us have that idea of like eh worry about that later the crushing reality oh my god i have mixed feelings about this i'm gonna broach broach this topic first. And I'm basically, if I had to summarize your non-specific topic, I'm approaching this with the idea of like, what did you want to be when you grow up almost, right? Like what?

Sure. And how did you end up? And what happened? And why aren't you that? Yeah. What happened to that goal? Which admittedly is a really fucked up thing to ask a fourth grader. What do you want to do for the rest of your life, Billy?

And be a farmer? Yeah, no. So my hot take on that is, and maybe I'm not alone in this, but I always felt alone. fourth grader what do you want to do for the rest of your life billy and be a farmer yeah no so my hot take on that is and maybe i'm not alone in this but i always felt alone people always talk about that shit like adults teachers parents always talk about like oh what do you what do you want to be when you grow up and they and kids kids will develop plans like i feel like a lot of my friends through childhood were always like oh i want to you know i the the generic stuff is really common they were interested in engineering or whatever and so they, oh, I want to, you know, the generic stuff is really common.

They were interested in engineering or whatever. And so they're like, well, I want to work on aerospace. I want to build rockets to space or airplanes or what, or like, I'll be a race car driver or whatever. Like I didn't have that. And I don't know if it's something that's wrong with me or if it's just a perspective that I had whenever that would come up people would ask me and literally even when i was young an adult would be like okay well what do you want to be when you grow up and i maybe not as directly as i would now and as comedically but like my inner response was i would look them in the face and think to myself why the fuck would i know that yeah legitimately i don't want to be anything i I'm a child. I want to go

outside or play video games. And everyone else always like had plans and through like high school, this really develops, right? Like you were saying, Wade, I went to school. We were all sort of expected that we were going to go to college. I was very lucky as a kid. And I went to a school in a district that was mostly well-off families, all expected to be able to go to college at the very least to get loans and be able to pay them off after the fact even in high school the reason i went to the school that i went to was because i was going to play football i played football for a lot of my childhood and my plan was i like football let me play football at college that's a legitimate plan that'll be my plan because everyone keeps telling me i need a plan and then i hurt my shoulder and i turned out i wasn't that good at football as good as i had

hoped i stopped liking it as much and at some point i was like all right fuck football i guess i like music i'm gonna get really into marching man and i got really good at tuba and enjoyed it a lot and so then my plan was i I guess, fucking music school. I don't know. Does that exist? And I learned what music schools existed around our area. And I learned that you have to audition for them. And I did that.

And my entire plan going into college was like, I'm expected to do this. And I guess I like music. So I don't fucking know. I'm getting a music degree. Am I alone in that? Or is that a more normal perspective than I feel like? Because I feel like all my other friends were like, I'm going to get this.

I'm going to have, I'm going to get an engineering degree. And then maybe I'll get my master's, but I'll get my employer to pay for that. And I was like, man, I don't fucking know. I don't want to do any of this. I'm still a kid. I want to do kid shit. I don't know. No, it's absurd.

It's absurd to me anyway, to ask a kid or to know. Like, I don't understand why they knew what they were doing in the first place just like what you said how do you know you're a kid i doubt anyone actually had like confident plans but then again there are people that like how do kids decide that they want to have a perfect attendance record how does that get decide who makes those decisions i would never have made that decision well that's the parents parents decide that sort of of that's definitely the parents yeah yeah but then like valedictorian like stuff like that why are you thinking about going to princeton when you're like four years old why is your parents putting this in your head like it is i guess it is just all parents right well for

me i had a goal growing up jurassic park came out when we were young and uh i loved jurassic park i loved dinosaurs and i had to switch schools between first and second grade i remember in second grade kind of being laughed at because i showed up and i forgot to bring my books to school one day and i opened up my backpack and all i had were dinosaur toys and like a dinosaur book because i was just so obsessed with dinosaurs so i wanted to be an archaeologist i wanted to be like dr grant i wanted to go and dig up dinosaur bones so badly and my mom and my grandparents used to buy me these little like kits where it was not like i don't know what the material was but you had like these little digging tools and you would dig through like these rocks or whatever. And you would dust off and find like dinosaur bones and

trilobite bones and all that stuff. I used to love doing that stuff so much. And I remember specifically when I switched off from wanting to be that I wanted that for years and years. And in like junior high, we had to go to a computer lab or something and we took some kind of test that like determined your personality and it gave you a list of like 10 occupations that would be good for you and that was not on the list and i was so heartbroken that that was not on my list it was on somebody else's that i was like fine i guess i'll just pick one from this list that makes a lot of money and lawyer was on there and so i determined from that point on i was like okay well

i guess i want to be a lawyer and i just dedicated myself to it and like for the rest of high school and through college i was like whatever path i need to take to be a lawyer i'm going to take and it was purely because that i thought that that test told me i would not be a good archaeologist and so i just discarded the dream that's so sad sad yeah that's so sad man are you okay well yeah i mean obviously i didn't end up any of those things but at the time i was like i was really sad that that wasn't on my list of potential good careers for me my god that's nuts yeah no the whole idea of a kid knowing anything because when i was a kid i don't remember having any ambition at all like i can barely remember going through school let alone having a cohesive plan other than

when i was at school my only plan was getting home and playing video games that was the extent of my plan hell yeah yeah hell yeah there was nothing farther there was nothing a week ahead i didn't remember the homework that was due the next day let alone what my diploma was gonna say 20 years from then there's no way in hell. And it all boils down to parents like Olympic athletes. If you don't start training for the Olympics when you are six years old, you're never going to make it. Apparently like, oh, you should have started training way earlier, kid. Are you out of ambition now? Oh, it's too late. Like it's it's kind of it's kind of depressing when you think about it. Well, and that's the thing too. I don't think it's a bad thing. I understand the,

the urge that parents have to be like, I'm going to make sure my kid is set up to succeed. And I'm going to put some ideas in their head and like, it can go way too far. You can drive your kid to do stuff to fulfill your own dreams. You can drive your kid to do stuff they clearly don't want to do because they show promise and you want them to succeed. And you can ignore the important parts of, is this good for my child? Do they actually have an interest in this? Is this something that will be positive? I think it's not a bad thing inherently for parents to be like, look, you want to go to college. You know what college is? I'll explain that to you. And when you go to college, you get a degree, which sort of determines what

your work is. So you kind of have to pick what you want your job to be. But to get into college, you got to do all this other stuff. And if the kid is motivated, like I would say my wife, Mandy, she has four degrees, two graduate degrees, two undergrads. She has a PhD. She's like a brilliant person. I think she was always sort of destined in that direction. She has the sort of mind and tenacity of like, i don't know scientific researcher right and that's what she does she has a phd in statistics i think it was good that her parents pushed her and made sure she knew what she needed in order to go to a good school in order to get a degree that would be valuable that's all good i think it was good for

but i think there are a lot of kids who have that exact experience, but the parent is doing it for their own reasons. Because I think we're out of something with the idea that kids on their own don't necessarily give a shit about this. Kids don't have foresight. Kids don't understand how the world works. But if they're told what opportunities there are and they want that, that's fantastic. I think the fact that I would describe myself as an underachiever and how I would describe how I was in school and stuff would not surprise people.

That's why I'm hosting a podcast and I'm not, you know, winning Nobel Prizes anytime in my lifetime. Unless there's a Nobel Prize for podcasts. In which case, hmm? This is our submission. But just as a kid, I never had that. And my parents pushed me me but they always sort of let me pursue what i wanted to which led me to a very varied career i went to school for music i graduated with a degree in non-profit management or business management sort of stuff i went to law

school graduated with my law degree i have been a working musician i have done live shows youtube all this random shit we've done it's cool it's been super fun but i don't think it's necessarily what my parents would have picked for me if they were the type of parents that were trying to make sure i had a secure future right yeah definitely so i think it just sort of depends how your parents treat it if they let you do what you want or if they really drive you to do something regardless of what you want i don't know i don't think i was ever pushed to go for a specific career at all i was encouraged to do well in school and then everyone always asked like oh what do you want to be when you grow up or you know that's a question asked of you or my family whatever just it's a question that comes up like i said for me i enjoyed dinosaurs so i'd always say

jurassic park then i want to be an archaeologist but i think whatever my focus shifted toward really trying to work hard in schools after my dad died, I've always enjoyed attention. I love attention. I like people looking at me for whatever reason. And I have this fear of failure. And that combination, and then my dad passing away, my grandma was devastated. That was her son. Obviously, my brother and I were devastated.

There was a lot of sadness when my dad passed away. But I knew that my grandparents and my mom and everyone were always happy whenever I did well in school. And so I like doubled down in sixth grade. I worked my butt off to try to get straight A's. And I did. I saw that it made them happy. It kept me from that fear of whole failure thing. And then all of a sudden, like my ability to get straight A's and do really well.

There came like expectations that I would continue to do well. And with a lot of the problems my family has had over the years financially, and then with, you know, some of my siblings and so on and so forth, it just became like, oh, well, Wade will be the one of us that makes it. He'll do well. He's going to succeed. He's going to, and all of that expectation kind of like piled onto me. And I just carried, I was like, okay, well, I'm going to keep getting straight A's then I've got to, and I've got to be successful. If I end up being a archaeologist, I better be the best one. Or I better be top of my, if I become an attorney and I've got to be successful if I end up being a archaeologist I better be the best one or I better be top of my if I become an attorney I'm going to be a supreme court justice like I kept setting the bar almost to unreachable places because I was like I've got to I'm supposed

to I'm the I'm the hope of the family I've got all that weight on my shoulders and it was never specifically put on me by anybody but I kind of did it to myself because of the praise I received and that combination with that and fear of failure I don't think anyone ever pointed me in a specific direction of like, go to that career. I just wanted to be successful in whatever career I ended up pursuing. And I don't think I ever cared specifically about what I pursued back then. It was just about, okay, no matter which way I go, I'm going to make the most of it and try to be one of the best at it. Because I didn't really care. In school, like if I went back to school now, I would want to learn about technology. I would want to learn all the shit you guys know about cameras

I would want to learn that stuff and I would be practicing it in my free time I would want to know but when I was in school I didn't really care about what all I was learning It was about learning it to do well on the test so I could get the good grade and move on I never really cared to retain the knowledge I enjoyed philosophy and like it changed my way of thinking but like all the specific knowledge I learned none of it that I try hard to retain, none of it was like transformed to the point where I was like, I'm going to study Descartes so

hard. I will know every quote he ever said. Like I never got super into any subject. It was all just a means to the end of like, okay, this will get me to my career path and the success I want. I don't know. I don't know if many people pursue school and they actually like care about the learning along the way.

Or if it's just like, all right right just gotta get through this class so i can get my degree and then i can do what i want to do god is so sad man like jesus christ that's so sad yeah like just the weight of your whole family on your shoulders that's that's quite sad it was never intentional i just put it there yeah but man that's kind of crazy when you really think about it because well i mean i wish i had some things where i was like yeah i want to be i want to be a famous i don't know mountain blower upper i want to i want to i want to be the guy that explodes mountains i don't know can i be the guy that melts the south pole can i be that there have definitely been kids who were

given these prompts and were set up to be like okay pick what you're gonna do like pick your life yeah and some kid was just like oh i wanna wanna shoot big fish with guns in the ocean and like everyone was like oh i'll call fisherman. And the kid was like very specifically like, that's a big gun fisherman. Fire, firearm fisherman. Fire, fire. Did someone say fire? Fire!

And God damn it, he got there. You know what this is making me think of? And I have a funny personal story about this. Have you guys had big turning point moments that stick out to you? Because I had one. I mentioned I went to school for music. I basically did one year. In music school, you have to basically give recitals,

like a performance, solo performance, to show that you're improving, to show that you're good at your instrument, demonstrate your skills. And I had to give a recital and basically generally you either pass or you don't pass if you don't pass that's an issue if you don't pass it uh multiple times in a row you get kicked out because it's just like okay well you're not progressing and you know maybe maybe you're not good enough at this you at some point you have to show improvement and skill and at your instrument i did my first recital and it wasn't a

no pass but like i did it and they were like i guess you pass but like we want to see you again like pass kind of but you're gonna get tested again and like i did that and i was kind of disappointed by that but i was preparing for my next recital and at some point i went in for a lesson uh in music school you have like weekly lessons with your professor who usually plays your instrument is a professional is teaching you how to improve. I went in for a lesson with Tim, who is my professor. And like, I brought my, my tuba and everything and got ready. And he was like, want some lunch?

And I looked at him and I was like, I mean, sure, but we got things scheduled. And he was like, nah, let me take you to lunch we're gonna go have some lunch and we went to this place right by campus i'd never been to before it was the um what was that golden dragon twin dragon it was over on uh mcmillan street by campus and um i just remember this scene very specifically because it was like a very like from a movie sort of chinese place with the aesthetic of that with the you know paper lanterns around and things and I ordered this big bowl of soup for some reason I really wanted soup so I just got like a soup and we were sitting there

talking and like we sort of it was sort of awkward small talk we'd never really done this before and after a couple minutes after the food got there Tim just sort of looked at me and was like do you really want to be a musician and i looked him dead in his face and realized no one had ever asked me this and i had never like thoroughly answered that question myself and i was like i enjoy it i love playing tuba like i love what i get to do and performing and stuff it's fun he was like hey okay do you want to like live the life that you're going to live as a musician? And he's basically staring me down, not in a mean way, in like a fatherly way,

asking me like, are you sure this is the right thing? Because once college is over, I was set to get a music education degree, which means after college is over, I was going to be like a band director or work in a music department or teach general music to elementary school kids and i don't know how he could tell i don't know if it was just that he didn't think i was good enough at my instrument and he was just sort of challenging me to see what i would say but he looked right at me and i literally like he asked a couple times and finally it reached a point where i was like you know what tim i don't fucking know which probably means no like i don't know and he was like i'm just i'm concerned for you that like

maybe there's something you would have more passion for or you'd be more interested in i know you like music and that's fine you can enjoy tuba and you could be a great tuba player but like you're choosing your life and uh i've just you know i just see something that made me ask this and he was this really crazy moment we weren't like personal friends right he's my teacher we hang out a lot he saw something and he asked that question that no one else had really asked in a pointed way and i couldn't answer it and that was the conversation that led to me changing my major and graduating with a totally different non-arts bachelor's degree and it was it's just like this weird moment and tim is not that guy tim is a tuba

player if you know tuba players they're loud they drink a lot they're obnoxious one time we were in class in a studio class practicing orchestral excerpts we were playing the ride of the valkyries which is a very famous piece i'm sure anyone if you heard it you'd be like oh that yeah it's it's from an opera it's the tubas have this huge part where it's just it's in lots of movies and shit and tim was trying to express to us how you play this it's like an attitude right and he was like you gotta sing words in your head that make this make sense what i sing when i play this is i just think to myself i've got a big dick I've got a big dick. I've got a big dick. I've got a big dick. And like he was marching around the room and everyone is like, oh, that makes sense.

Wow. Taking notes. Oh, I got a big dick. That's him in a nutshell. He's exactly that guy. And also he's the guy who took me out for lunch and was like, what do you want to be when you grow up? And even when I was like 19, 20 years old, I was like, man, I don't fucking know, dude.

I'm just here because it's college. I don't know. You guys have that? Did you have anyone that like did that or inspired that in you or something at any point? No, man. I mean, the only time that I could compare to that is after my tumor got removed

and I got laid off from my job because up to that point, it was much like you had. No one really asked me what I wanted to do. It was just expected of me. I would go to engineering school and I would get an engineering degree and I would work at Turner Construction Company or I would work at whatever company I was working at at the time until the day I died. That's the kind of life that my dad wanted for me and, you know, kind of explained to me that it was a good life and it made sense at the time. But after my tumor got removed and I was sitting in the hospital thinking about all the like stupid things that I had done and how I didn't actually like any of it except the video games that I played. Like I can only imagine what it looked like from the outside.

But for the first time in my life, I felt free because I started exploring things. outside. But for the first time in my life, I felt free because I started exploring things. And Bob, you know this because every time we would go to Buffalo Wild Wings together, and we did this like every other week, we would go to Buffalo Wild Wings, I would have a new thing that I was doing. Like it started out with writing or then game design or then art, or then I switched even majors to go to art school for a little bit. But it was the first time in my life where I started asking myself that same question, what do I want to do? And I didn't know what the answer was. I just knew that I could not keep going with what I had been doing with like engineering school. It's not that I didn't like the classes. It's not that I didn't like the kind of stuff I was

learning or even what I was doing was all that unsatisfying. It's just that I didn't want to do it. I just didn't. That like, it's something very fundamentally, you could ask me a million times, like to explain my reasoning, but I wouldn't be able to tell you other than just like, I didn't want to do it. And that's it. That's, that's the limitation of that thought process is just like, no, I didn't want to do it. So me going through all those explorations of the different things that I tried doing with art, it's not that I thought, oh yeah, this is the thing that I want to do. It was just in the moment, I was like, maybe I want to try this and maybe I want to see how far I can take this. And maybe I want to see if this lights like some kind of spark in me, um, that I would

really want to explore further. And it never came down to like, Ooh, this is the thing. Even like, and I, I kind of will probably surprise some people by saying this, but even YouTube was never really the thing where it was like, oh yeah, this is the thing I'm passionate about. Like, this is what I love. I definitely caught a love for it and it was like, holy hell. But it was because it was successful and like it started getting a response and I was able to get that kind of feedback from people and like it felt like I was succeeding in something.

I think it was less about what I wanted to do more than I wanted to succeed on my own terms with whatever it was. And I think that's kind of like what I've learned with what I do nowadays, which is yes, make YouTube videos, but more just like, I like making things. I like creating and I like getting feedback from it. And I like seeing people enjoy the things that I make. It's just kind of an indescribable feeling that's not really tied down to a specific discipline because you can get that feeling from whatever you do. There's probably like blacksmiths that, you know,

take great pride in what they make and they can really cherish the idea that someone is out there enjoying what they've made or like in medieval days, using it to kill their enemies and purge the heretics and whatnot. But that's the good shit. Yeah.

Purging the heretics. Right, right. That's the good shit. But yeah, it's like if you're never really asked the question or you're never put in a situation where you're asked a question and then you can ask yourself what it is you want to do like you know that's the real tough question that's where a kid would be asked that and be like i don't know you know like kids do they just say i don't know a lot of things because you know they don't really know it's hard to know whenever you have zero experience with anything i mean learning about something way removed through books or whatever

like oh yeah i've watched law and order i know what law years are i want to be a lawyer i think whenever i went to miami university i was only there for a semester before i was transferred down to uc but i was going to join um oh god what was it called their mock trial program i was gonna join their mock trial program i remember i went to the first meeting about it and just every person i met there was so smug and not fun to talk to or interesting and i was like i don't this is too serious like these guys want to win mock trial i get it but like this doesn't seem fun this just seems like they want to win and be praised and i never went to a second meeting i wanted to do it so badly i did like three different programs where i did like mock trial and stuff

in high school and i was so excited to do it in college i remember going to that meeting and being so disappointed with how i felt afterwards the first time i questioned whether i really wanted to be an attorney and i shook the feeling i was just like yeah i do i'm fine and then you know as i continued to pursue that career path i I questioned it more and more. And by the time my ex and I split up and I was back in my mom's basement in like, you know, 2011, 2012. And I had my philosophy degree and I had taken my LSAT and everything. I was ready to apply to law schools. I was a hundred percent sure at that point, I was like, I don't want to do this. And I felt so defeated. It's like between losing the house, the dogs and my ex realizing I had a degree that by itself was not very useful and then not knowing what I wanted to pursue in life before drunk minecraft uh and starting

youtube and whatnot 2011 2012 was either the lowest or second lowest point in my life because I felt like despite all those expectations I had utterly failed in every way and had nothing. And I was right where I didn't want to be. I didn't have a single thing I felt like going for me right then. And all my friends, I mean, other than because, you know, I didn't talk a whole lot back then, other than like a couple of get togethers, like groups like that. And then Jesse being in town, it's like Tyler was out of town. He was in Colorado in school. Everyone had moved away to do their own thing, was pursuing their own goals. It was just like I was just alone and feeling like such an utter failure. And it was the first time i was forced to confront the fact of

like maybe i should pursue something i actually do enjoy and i had no idea what that would be zero idea i think this is interesting too because what i'm hearing i think from all of us and maybe this is an inaccurate summary is that we're sort of maybe starting to figure it out sounds like mark kind of figured out what he likes i feel like like I have no idea. And I feel like it's a big, people don't like not knowing. I feel like getting comfortable with the idea of not knowing exactly where you're going with your entire life at any moment would help people cope because it does. It feels overwhelming and it feels like, how am i ever supposed to figure that out like i'm supposed to have a whole life plan i'm supposed to have a direction that i'm traveling

a goal that i'm going towards that's good to have you can't always have that and even where i am now i'm kind of like you mark streaming and youtube and stuff has worked out and has been really fun and i enjoy video games so like that's a huge plus. It's not the thing that gets me up in the morning. I'm still trying to figure out like what the hell, what is the thing that I value? What would I want to pursue? Given that time and money were not a concern, I still don't know what I would want to do necessarily. There's stuff I want to try and I'm sure something out there is I'll try it and that will absolutely just light my whole soul on fire. And I'll feel like that's the thing.

But that's like a lifelong quest to find that answer, to figure out what what you want to do. And I think this is a funny thing because this is all these talks that we're having is reminding me of all those like like things you see on Twitter and interactions people post online where our parents generation looks at our generation and is like, you lazy pieces of shit. What do you mean you don't know what you want to do? What you want to do is get a job.

You want to get a job that makes good money. You want to provide for your family. You want to contribute to society. That is a good thing to do. It'd be great if there were enough jobs that everyone could be employed and it was enough. You make enough money to live and be secure. That's a whole

separate issue. But I feel like that's separate from what do you actually passionate about? Yeah, you have to do the parts of life that are required to live in a society. We live in a society and that's not unimportant. But the idea that our generation is more concerned about like, okay, I have a day job, but what am I really interested in? What's my passion? Can I make that a side hustle? Can I make that my business? Can I succeed at something that I really actually care about? This job is fine, but that's such a, I don't know, it's a hard question. And I feel like different generations approach that differently. Our generation has their perspective. I'm really curious what like, like Gen Zers, how they're going to feel about day jobs working, you know, in the way the current system of employment and current cost of living is,

it's hard to deal with. It won't matter because the world's going to end. Yeah, that's true. It'll be over soon. But that's interesting. Yeah, it's it's kind of like that. I mean, that's a whole nother subject that we talked about life trajectories changing by force because of great natural phenomena occurring that is going to make us rethink our entire existence. That is another conversation for another day. That's even more depressing than this one. Sure is. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's come down to, I wanted to be a musician at one point. Like I thought that was what I was going to do because I was good at trumpet. Right. And then there's a difference between being good at something and enjoying the thing. Cause I was very good at trumpet. Like when I was freshman, freshman a year in high school like even when I first started trumpet I

became first chair and I had no idea that there was even a test to become first chair I just was drifting along and then suddenly I was in first chair and everyone was like no yeah you're really good at trumpet I was like well how do you know that how do you know that I literally asked everyone how you knew that I was good but I was there and it was the first time that I ever felt like I was good at something. So I took it very seriously for two years. I practiced very hard every day and I took private lessons and I was doing like really good at it. But when I got to freshman year of high school and then suddenly like the band was much bigger and like, like marching band started up and marching band really took my love of music out. I stopped practicing entirely because I was good at it

and people appreciated that I was good at it. And that was not enough for me. Like it was the first time that I realized like, oh yeah, just because someone appreciates what I can do doesn't mean that I appreciate what I can do. I hated practicing. I hated doing that thing. It was the expectation that other people put on me that was like, hey, you're good at this. Therefore it would be a shame if you gave up on it. You know, that's the kind of expectation that a lot of people go through with. And it makes them do things that they don't want to do. Like with even athletics or even with like Olympic dreams, parents can put these expectations because they want to live vicariously through their kids.

And it's not necessarily the things that they want to do. It's just like the dreams of your parents trying to be forced on you. Maybe not even forced, but like at least hoped, you know, hope that you take up what they love because you know you're their kid and you know if they wanted to do it of course you would want to do it right and just like are your dreams really your own not to make anyone paranoid about it but you know maybe you should ask that question well and sometimes you can pull a thread it doesn't lead you to the exact right place but it kind of branches off and leads you more places yeah like with drunk minecraft and youtube i love playing games with you guys and uh you know other friends and stuff and making youtube content but i found a couple years ago that the part of me that didn't enjoy youtube

is honestly the attention whore part of me that just loves having eyes on me now when we were doing the tour i realized how much i enjoyed having a live audience of people watching us do improv and watching us do stuff on stage i I hated warmups. I hated practicing. I hated learning it. I hated doing improv without somebody laughing. Like it was just whenever we would do like the warmup skits, there are cases we'd laugh at ourselves because it was really funny and stuff. But I always had this like nervousness. I don't know. There was some kind of like trepidation in me when we were doing the warmups. We would just do practicing before the shows. I always was just like antsy and like somewhat uncomfortable. And it's like, but whenever we had the full audience of people there it was

like i was like being ripped out of a cocoon i don't know if i performed better necessarily but i know that i was calm i was confident and i had this mindset of like we're live now so i gotta go out there and perform gotta do it if i screw it up hopefully that's funny too but regardless there's no you know practicing there's no saying oh let's try that again it, hopefully that's funny too. But regardless, there's no, you know, practicing. There's no saying, oh, let's try that again. It's just, that's what they get. So I got to go out there and do it. And I don't know, I enjoyed that pressure of it. With streaming versus making YouTube videos,

I found that making a YouTube video, I would try to emulate you or, you know, somebody else that I watched where it was like, I'd be playing a game. It's like, okay, pay attention to everything. Find something interesting in my surrounding. Uh, uh, look at this stupid rock. Am I right? And then, you know, there's no feedback because you're just making a video and it's like

i don't know is that funny and i'd be questioning myself all along the lines whereas streaming i get instant feedback and i can feed off of that if there's a moment where i don't know what to say or what to do i can look at chat and like see what they're talking about like oh okay we can talk about food or oh okay yeah sass me i'll sass back and i found that streaming gives me so much more fulfillment than making a video did i hated editing i was bad at it and i hated it which is why having dana has been so excellent for youtube but i just found that i pulled the thread of i like attention okay where did that lead me that led me to making youtube content pulled that thread the tour love doing improv pulled that thread getting to be a part of heist and getting

to act in that i was like actually i really enjoy that too i like improv i like acting am i great at it i don't know but i really enjoyed it it's something different i enjoy both of those things way more than making youtube content and streaming it's like okay i can do all of that stuff and be live and i don't know for sure that i've even ended up where i wanted to be for sure now but i'm at least pulling the threads and realizing what i like i like attention that's a surprise. I like people laughing at me. I like people thinking I'm funny or at least making fun of me or sassing people. I think that we may not have to know

where we're gonna be growing up, but getting to start pulling those threads and seeing where we end up is interesting as long as we're willing to do it. And I think even if it doesn't end up being your career, it can lead to some pretty darn fun hobbies. Like if YouTube and Twitch ended up not being a career for me anymore,

I think I would still do it. I enjoy it enough to where even as a hobby i think streaming is a lot of fun now here's another like idea just to kind of shift gears a lot what if there was a zombie apocalypse and let's say you survived you crossed over the initial zombie purge and you didn't get bitten and you survived what would you be in the zombie apocalypse chain up lots of zombies and dangle food over them so they're facing me and then i still continue to perform in front of them and pretend that they think i'm funny as they're moaning and groaning wow you would be the fucking insane man that the group of survivors would stumble across what's the deal with airline food

what's the deal with airline food i know right i've grown too that would 100 be you because i was thinking about this i have this conversation a lot like oh god what skill do i have and it's like leadership question mark you know like what what could i possibly do like what skill do i have i don't remember anything from engineering school. I don't remember any of that. I'd be the ditch digger. I would dig holes in the ground for people to shit in. Like, that'd be my job. And I'm like, oh God, what do I do? Yeah, well, what would you guys do in the zombie apocalypse?

I 100% already have my role all plotted out. It's important. Yeah, yeah. It's useful. I would be a chef. Ooh. You gotta have food. you're right chef slash forager slash gardener depending on the situation of the apocalypse right that is one thing i have

found if we're talking about pulling threads uh and stuff i love food i love cooking food i like trying new things i love watching cooking shows i think i would be a more than adequate chef and resourceful and able to use and stretch things really well and you need that that's a great role that is true not super dangerous always protected not gonna get left if we're short you know if we start eating each other i'm the one who's got to cook that that's a good point that's a good role that's real that's job security and that's really what you gotta think about in the zombie apocalypse because even if your base gets raided by another group of survivors they're gonna be like hey can you cook and you're gonna be oh can i cook

doctors too doctors and cook yeah yeah doctor yeah but it's hard to be a doctor yeah that's hard although honestly my and mandy's recent experience with the medical system, in a zombie apocalypse, the standard for a doctor is going to be pretty low. That's true. What are people going to say? Like, yeah, I'm a doctor. Bring me with you. I'm a doctor. Like, no, you're not.

What, you got a cut on your leg? Let me tie this dirty shirt sleeve around that for you. I'm a doctor. There you go. We're not doing surgeries and shit. Yeah, that reminds me. for you i'm a doctor there you go we don't have we're not doing surgeries and shit yeah that that was like amy was just listening to last podcast on the left and not to steal stuff from another podcast but i'm totally gonna steal it um but they were talking about like doctors during the black plague and there were like doctors that specialized in looking at urine and and it was all

about diagnosing through your pee right and so the thing was if you had blood in your urine you know what the logical conclusion that they came to it was that you had too much blood and they needed to let some of it out obviously obviously your body is trying to drain itself of blood i can see this now i guess without any knowledge i could kind of see the logic of oh my body's spilling out extra blood i must be making too much i can i can see how they get there as much as i hate it but there's also like 10 other possibilities of why blood is in here i mean yes but at that point they don't even have germ theory you're right they don't understand the concept of microscopic organisms of of bacteria and viruses existing yeah they view humans as

like a sack of juice and there's a spot where the hard stuff comes out and there's a spot where the juice comes out and if you're leaking the wrong juice you're just not mixed right you gotta change the ratio of juice or you got too much of that type of juice yeah and they know how to get that red juice out of there so you're problem solved what was the name of this podcast just to make sure we're giving them credit for their you said it last podcast on the left right yeah i said it last podcast i hope it was them if it wasn't that's probably not right i don't know i'm probably right anyway whatever we you're our competition we don't care what you think. I'm sorry. I love your podcast.

No, it's below ours. It should stay there. Step on it. Step on the podcast. We have climbed the ladder by stepping on every podcast beneath us to get where we are. And we will be stepped on ourselves. That's how YouTube works. That's how podcast is going to work.

We've bested you once, Joe. We'll best you again. Wow. We're coming for you, Joe. Real quick to answer your question. I'd either be like, I don't know if I'd be like the overall leader, but I think a leadership type role because I don't know about you guys. In school, whenever we had to do group projects, I was always the person who had to organize

everything, make sure people were doing what they were good. Like I'd be like, okay, what do you, what part do you want to contribute to? And I would work with them all to figure out, okay, well, what do you want to contribute? What can you contribute? And trying to sort out people's strengths, weaknesses, willingness to do this, to contribute to? And I would work with them all to figure out, okay, well, what do you want to contribute? What can you contribute? And trying to sort out people's strengths, weaknesses, willingness to do this, unwillingness to do that. I was always the one who had to like start the initiative because no one else wanted to like take charge and do it.

Not saying that there's no one else out there that will, but I definitely was the one who was pushing that in every group project I was a part of, believe it or not. Yeah, but the problem with leadership is like in a zombie apocalypse, at least in media today, everyone wants to be the leader and leaders typically have a problem with getting bullets in their brain. They just can't stop finding bullets in the back of their skull. That's why I don't need to be the leader, but the very least I could like, you know, help.

It sounds like what you're describing is that you would be someone's crony. Maybe, maybe I'd be a crony i mean i'd go out and do stuff too i don't have a specific strength so i guess i'd go out and help scavenge and things the leader who killed the last leader who's now in charge you're the guy where the leader's giving a speech and is like all right now do that stuff i said and i love you guys and he walks away and then you step up to the front of the stage and you're like you heard him get your ass out there first mate it takes away the pressure of leadership and some of that responsibility but still makes me seem important enough to where they're not going to get rid of me and then when the old leader gets a bullet in the back of the head you're like i always hated that guy anyway good job new leader

i was believing you i've tried pushing your grievances on. They just ignored it. Honestly, that's the most job secure is like crony. And like crony really does have job security. No matter what era you're in, in the world. Cronies today. You know, if you're a good crony, you can go far. You never get too ambitious. You never do anything. It's the and friends of this apocalypse.

I'll take it. I know that role. I get to have some of the attention without any of the pressure responsibility oh god when's my bullet in the back of the head guys when's it coming for me well we ordered it a while ago it just hasn't been delivered shipping delays or something you don't get to know that you're right you're right i shouldn't if like it was surprises you know hey they're better if you don't know oh i'm supposed to be giving you all points uh bob you have earned 37 more points from the beginning okay mark let me see uh let's see i gave you guys both like two at the beginning he's got 37 mark you have because you are okay with the bullet and you gave me the role

of crony happily you know what you get 39 points you're up by two points right now hell yeah so this whole conversation has spawned a question in the back of my mind it's really just festering i can't get it out is this a comedy podcast uh did anything funny happen during this or did we just have a really serious talk about life stuff we lost more in this one than we did during the other one i hosted the dreams i guess i'm just i'm not a funny host i suppose you're not a funny host when i think about distractible one the title we kind of go off on random tangents i think the reason we did this to begin with was we just wanted to hang out and if we want to talk about something funny we'll have a funny episode if we want to talk about something serious well the sir i think that the three of us with uh three peens in a pod and

now distractible it's just kind of like whatever we've always done things our own way which i think is what makes it fun and keeps things interesting is we don't try to maintain a specific thing when we were trying to talk about the theme of this the show we were like ah this uh no ah this uh too specific we always wanted to keep it like broad and open because i think we just like hanging out and thankfully our audience has always enjoyed just kind of hanging out with us this is getting too meta that's very self-indulgent if i'm honest yeah that's pretty that's a lot. We're idiots and we came up with a dumb podcast because we couldn't think of anything organized.

And the point system is just a loose, cobbled together rule set to keep some structure to something that never could actually work in the first place. It's an illusion. No, it's a hook to keep our audience here for the whole episode. We want that retention.

Exactly, you're all fools and we got you trapped and you're gonna subscribe on every podcast app who won i actually really care about who wins okay well after that and uh taking away how i feel and demeaning me a little bit you lose one point you win by one point mark all right all right i feel a cheated. I feel like I offered a personal story and brought some. Oh, no. Yeah, you were robbed. You were fucking robbed, my dude. No, you should have won.

Everyone at home knows it. But, you know, hey, this is what the crony gets you. You get a bullet to the back of the head. Good job there, Wade. You really did it. I always believed in you. Thank you. See, Bob, I always feel like you should win,

but I usually end up awarding Mark in my brain some pity points that allows him to win occasionally in my brain you're always pretty much the winner but but i them's the rules there bob's here i got a speech to make i want to thank everyone who believed in me all of you at home who knew that i was going to be the one to win because i'm just the best. Thank you all so much. And more thank you to Wade than I ever could say in a proper sentence. So I won't thank him at all because I would never live up to it. He knows how much I care, so I won't even bother saying it. That's just the kind of friendship that we have.

You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? You do, and I won't say it anymore. Back to you, Wade. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in and listening to Distractible. Thanks to Mark and Bob for joining and Mark for his lack of praise. We'll see you next week for whatever I guess Mark decides to talk about. Make sure you check out the website.

We have one of those. Might have some more cool stuff coming out soon. Maybe. Or maybe. Download us on all the different apps. Shout out to whoever is the one who came up with the idea of putting little garnishes on your plate that you don't really eat you just kind of look at but you know i don't think that that person's ever gotten the praise that they deserve so i just only want to shout

them out what's happening i'm the judge i decide well okay i'm wrapping up okay i just wanted to shout that out and i guess uh thank you to our sponsors and see you all next week podcast out