The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Burnt Out, But Optimistic

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

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Welcome back to the Matterfax podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MOFpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host Phil Ravley, Andrew and Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back, as Matter of Facts podcast. My name's Phil. This is Nick.

We're going to talk about being burnout, but a little optimistic. Absolutely. It is the season for burnout. Oh, Jesus Christ, isn't it, though? It is. It is. Oh, man. So admin work and then a whiskey-fueled bitch fest.

How about we do it in that order? True. Starting with the patrons, the patrons support the show. They support lunacy. Bad behavior, bad financial decisions occasionally. And they are in the process of participating in the, is it the third or the fourth annual MOF Secret Santa? Third?

Let's see. I've made. I think this is the third. Third or fourth, yeah. Because the first year I didn't give out a canon. I've made two Christmas cannons so far. That's how Nick marks, how many events, how many of these he's done, is whether he gave out cannons to people or not.

Yeah, the first year. we did that I can remember you guys doing the Secret Santa, I gave my brother a canon for Christmas. So technically I've made three Christmas canons. Christmas canons only in this group, although I have no room to talk is like my Secret Santa, I can't say what my Secret Santa is getting this year. I have always struggled with gift giving and my lovely wife knows this about me. Like I'm just God awful at it, mostly because I'd suffer from decision paralysis. Give me a list.

prioritized in order I will shop from the top down of the list so it's not just me oh god no god no

there are so many other things that have priority in my brain above and beyond what remembering the one thing that you've mentioned to me six months ago

I don't have room in my brain for that my wife does and it's fantastic that she does it's very helpful for me but no not me see the hell i run into with the hell gillian i run into is that i suffer from decision paralysis when it comes to gift giving because like i want to pick something that is like you know makes that person feel like wow this person thought enough of me to get this thing for me sure and unfortunately that the part of your brain that allows you to figure that out i was born without so i'm just really you know like lost

lost like a goose unless my wife gives me very firm, very directed direction. And then on the flip side of things, she always asked me what I want for Christmas. And I tell her just tie a bow around herself, which she keeps vetoing that idea for some reason. But I keep telling, my problem is like I'm an adult with a full-time job. So when I want something, I buy it. And if I haven't bought it, I probably can't afford it, which means if I can't afford it, neither can my wife. That's kind of how finances work. Well, I had this, I had that discussion. with my mom actually this year. She was asking me for a Christmas list.

And I said, with how much I work, I just buy the things that I need. I just, well, I'm 35. I've been working since I was 13. If there's something I desire that I want and it's a reasonable budget, I'm just going to buy it. I'm not going to wait. half a year. I'm just going to get the thing. Yeah. And at this point, I'm 35. If it's something that I've not impulse bought for myself or something that was not required for the house for me to buy, it's probably four to five figures minimum. Right? I mean, I mean, yeah. So this year,

it's all consumable, consumable tools for my lathe. That's my entire Christmas list. And let me guess someone was like that's all you want for christmas it's just tools somebody told me they said well indexable carbides aren't fun yes they are different definitions of fun that's like somebody telling me that ammo isn't fun oh sir i beg to differ mm-hmm uh there is a new face in the chat mountain survival i've lurked the last two shows economy took me out today lost my last climb from my handyman business i hate to hear off yeah but in the name of uh the christmas in the name of christmas giving and everything else like i think i saw earlier you were in utah so i will permit self i will permit self serving um what's where i look for here nigg self promotion

self promotion yeah throw throw your business name or your uh website in the chat i think you can do that um i don't I don't know if you two will pitch a history fit about it or not, but try. Sometimes they get weird about links. Worst case, give us your business name. We'll throw it up. Yeah. Anyway, doing capitalism harder. Code after disaster coffee, which, by the way, what did I tell you about ordering coffee if you don't use the MOF?

That I will be harassed mercilessly in public. Well, you were not, but one of our good friends ordered coffee this past week. And literally within 20 minutes of ordering and me not seen. an MOF, I texted him and said, you didn't use the GD promo code. Like, I am trying. It would be worse if it was me, though, because I've been the one riding you to tell people about it. Oh, no, no, I will, I will employ your wife. Good.

To harass you about that. If it comes to that. She's the one that will probably actually end up ordering the coffee, because I will forget. Excellent. Yes, this is why I had five pound bags on automatic ship. yes yes morgan you can get a shout out throw up the name for your book in fact do that because i probably will want to read it

yeah you might find some willing victims or i mean customers in this bunch and last but not least if you like merch if you like shirts if you like coosies if you like things like that in sport and small businesses merch is available at the southern gals links in the show description And in the honor of this topic, this is one of my wife's favorite shirts from the Raising Values line, burnout but optimistic. There's something about a happy little marshmallow that's on fire that just tickles my funny bone for reasons. It probably shouldn't. This has got to be the shirt that my wife gets the most comments on when she wears it.

Everybody loves this shirt. It's a vibe, isn't it? It is. It's a great vibe. Exactly. there she is all right morgan horde the book is called the kingmaker and the caliphate so if you're into reading i'm assuming fiction since the book is about sleep yourself although it could be nonfiction i mean it is 2025 i was going to say i don't know that i would

say for sure that it's fiction i mean the line between fiction and based in based in nonfiction is getting thinner and grayer by the moment. Nice. All right. It is fiction for now. It is fiction for now. It's also in my shopping cart. Excellent.

You can give us a book board on at a later date. Yeah. Yeah. Once it pops in, I will try to give it a read and we'll see. I like books about stuff like that. Jeff Jagg. It's payday today.

So suggest some things I should spend money on. Whiskey. definitely whiskey ammo coffee coffee that book the cover of that book is just fire by the way love the cover of that book oh you're welcome margaret all right two topic burnout fatigue in the blues everybody gets it yeah i actually recommended this because you know i don't i'm not super forthcoming about my workplace because i don't i'm not super forthcoming about my workplace because I try my best keep my extracurricular activities and my professional life as separated as humanly possible. But work's been kind of weird this year. Yeah? Yeah, a lot of

turnover, a lot of retirements, a lot of people leaving, not a lot of getting back into the office officially too, I believe, was this year. Getting back into the office. That was actually the least objectionable part of this whole thing. I mean, other than the fact that I'm losing like, you know, two hours in commute and the sleep associated with that and the time with my family, like, that part hasn't been awful necessarily the getting back into the office thing the part that has been really rough has just been the fact that like our workforce has been just strip mind we've lost i think the official the official word came down yesterday that we lost around little less than a quarter of the workforce and there's been no hiring to backfield those

positions so every time someone walks out the door it's basically like hand over everything you're doing to whoever's left behind and we figure it out and that's that is that is kind of like you know that's precipitating exactly what most of y'all can probably figure out is that we're reaching a point you know it's December we have several end of the year time critical tasks and we're just drowning in day-to-day work while trying to get those tasks done. It's just, it's becoming a compounding effect, and it's a lot of stress. Oh, I believe that. If I remember right back when I was in college, we were talking about like a business management class that all the freshmen had to take, project management, I think

it was called. And the professor brought up that you can afford to lose 10% of your workforce, no matter what the company does, you can lose 10% because the additional workload that you spread through that 90% is not as big of a deal. And you can, you can hire five to 10% fairly easily without disrupting corporate culture and without losing too much institutional knowledge. But man, 25% that's a lot. Yeah. And that's a, that's like a Taco Bell turnover. And the problem is is that this turnover has not been even across the board it's been certain areas we were we're not we're we're at i would almost say we're top heavy in some areas because like sure the those resonations didn't touch those areas and certain areas just got come like

turned from a three person shop to a one person shop or from a three person's shop i know one area that we had three people working one line of business all three left so we had to quickly grab someone from an airline of business, train them and throw, yeat them into the mall. And we've supported them as best we can to like, you know, take. But they're still trying to do the job of three people. Yeah. Well, now, I mean, let's let's be realistic here. I'm sure some of the time those days were not that busy for all three people.

That's just the nature of any work. Yeah. And kind of the killer of it is, it's like, you know, when you have the, I think there's a misconception in any organization that your goal is to minimize employee downtime, which to a certain degree, like I understand that point of view, but like what you end up with in a situation where everyone has to run it 100% continuously without that downtime is that sooner or later, the machine starts to falter. You can't run your people that hard for that long without some kind of consequence. And that's the only good thing that's come out of all this, this strife and this reduction of manpower, is that, you know, like you and I've talked much more candidly than I will on the open mic about my workplace. And you know, yeah, and that's reasonable.

And you know that for 12, 13 years now, I've been very outspoken, very loud, maybe even a little confrontational about just some of the stupid stuff that gets done because it's always been done that way. Yeah. And the one positive that is coming out of all this is that because out of sheer necessity now, there's almost nothing not on the table. So there are like we're we're getting we're getting money loosened up to do massive system improvements to do automations to do things I've wanted to do for years. But the answer was always right. Because before you had the brute force solution of the manpower, which you no longer have. And because of that it's it's forcing innovation. Now, unfortunately. Unfortunately, it's forcing innovation at warp speed at exactly the time where the people who need, who have the institutional knowledge, they have to be on hand to help build the automation also have to keep the machine running while we're rebuilding. Yeah, it's literally like trying to rebuild your engine while driving down the highway. It's quite a situation. In my opinion, it beats building all the automation and then laying the people off. I mean, this is true. there there is merit to that i i guess what i'm saying is like if there's one silver lining to this

ugly dark cloud it is that for the first time in my career i'm watch i like i can throw something out there and if i can prove hey this saves time this is more efficient i am getting greenlit to implement things at a pace never seen before so it's it's one of those situations where like yes the way this is being done is painful but the end all might wind of being better if we can all go out the other side of it. So, sure. But in the meantime,

I'm not going to lie. We're tired. I'm tired. Oh, I bet. And it's not just me. Like, you know, my daughter started high school this year. So she's been pretty much coming home straight to the shower,

straight to PJs, not going to bed, but like, you know, just full on, screw the world, screw everybody. I need to decompress mode,

which is fair. I remember high school. Yeah, well, and she's taking all, She's an eighth grader taking all ninth grade and AP classes. She's, she's,

that's rough. Yeah. And she's, she's brilliant. So she's handling it intellectually, but it's, there's a lot of work. And my wife is,

you know, a school teacher, which I have to tell y'all, your wife's a school teacher. There's a, there's up to a certain point in the year where there's not a lot of breaks, if any, the teachers just get rung the hell out.

Really until about Thanksgiving, And when they get that first little chunk of time off, and then after Christmas, it's like, you know, a couple of weeks off, work for a few weeks, a couple weeks off. And like, you know, it's basically like if I could just make the spring break without killing a child, I'll be okay. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard that. See, unfortunately for my wife, fortunately or unfortunately, she works through most of those breaks because she's actually part of the before and after school program. So that two weeks that they're closed for Christmas, some of the kids are still there. like 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Ouch. So. Yeah. Well. Comes with the territory, I suppose. Yeah. I mean, there's ups and downs to all of it. But like I said, I mean, that's, that, that is and not not making excuses. We, we also, you were supposed to remind me.

We were supposed to tell her by that for the, for the patrons who aren't in the patron chat and don't log into Patreon. But if you're a paying member of the, of the show and you're, you, Right. If you kick in a dollar a month, then you should be aware that on Patreon is the information for the 2026 MOF summer camp. And if you haven't already heard, you should log in a Patreon right now and avail yourself of that. And like, you know, shoot me a message through Patreon if I haven't already talked to you and you're planning on coming. And if you have no earthly idea what I'm talking about, sorry, you're not one of the cool kids, maybe Nick. Yep.

But anyway. Pop into the patron. But one of the things that is. my responsibility as the head cat wrangler for the show is i am supposed to like you know leave the charge on where are we doing summer camp next year and we were supposed to have made the decision at least four months ago so that yeah and it i told i told i've told everybody i've talked to you in the process of getting this together very quickly totally my fault i let it slide there's been a lot of stuff going on in the house a lot of stuff with gillian's family and i just

I let it slide. Every time I would get to the point of, okay, the house isn't on fire, everyone's fed, everyone's clean, everything's dealt with. I've got five minutes to myself.

That should have been five minutes. I just took to like, Hey, Gillian, let's sit down and figure out where we're going to do summer camp. Let's talk to everybody and get reservations made. And instead it wound up to be in five minutes.

I just stared at the wall because I was just exhausted. And that's on me. Sometimes you need that, though. Yes, but. two things so i had this thought right before the show why high performers struggle i think with a high performer struggle with burnout maybe worse which isn't say that they're more susceptible

or they feel it worse or get it more often but here's why i think high performers struggle with burnout harder than otherwise okay because on the one hand my normal pace is like foot to the floor engine on the red line go go go go go go go go until I'm exhausted. It's just, Captain neurodivergence. It's the way my brain works. I don't know how to do that whole,

you know, like modulate your gas pedal thing most people do. It's either all the way down or all the way off. Mm-hmm. So that's one problem. I feel like that kind of leads me down the road of burnout more often because I'm just constantly pushing as hard as I can until I have to take a break. But I think,

yeah, I could see that being a problem. But I think the other problem I have, and I suspect you have and I expect a lot of people have is have you ever gotten to the point of like you feel like damn I'm having a really rough day but you're almost embarrassed to complain because you know somebody's got it worse even as I think or or because you know that if you don't do it you're just going to make tomorrow harder yeah so and this is this is where I personally get really bound up I feel like the biggest dirt bag complaining about anything because I know people right now today good friends of ours who are having a rough time yep health problems dealing with their own issues at work struggles in their lives and as soon as i open my mouth to say damn i'm having a rough time i immediately think of those people and i'm like god i am a crap i am a crap basket if i even like voice this because that our person's got worse than i do i should just

suck it up quit being you know quit being a girl about it there there is that impulse Yeah. Yeah. That's, I suspect, especially like for high performers, for people that are very self-reliant, for people that are very independent, I suspect people that fall into those buckets probably struggle with burnout worse because the simple act of venting, which can't be therapeutic at times, also kind of feels a little bit voyeuristic to people that are in that bucket. It's like I don't want to complain about it because I feel like I shouldn't complain. I should just suck it up. Well, and in some cases, you just don't want the attention. That's another good one. You know, because great, now I have to, in depth, explain everything that's going on, why it is a problem, and then deal with their emotional response to it. Yeah. Sometimes that just adds a whole. whole other level of problem you have to deal with.

And especially if you are one of the, one of the tribe of neurodiversion people, like other people's emotion, like I barely understand my own emotions most of the time. So being able to like deal with someone else's emotions is already a struggle for me. So it's like, you know, like when I feel like I'm getting sympathy,

I have a hard time tell the difference between sympathy and pity. And I hate being pity. Yep. I can't distinguish between a person who's, commiserating and a person who's almost like, I don't know what the word is, but like, have you ever met that person? Like, whenever you talk about something going on your life, they've got something 10 times worse, they got to bring up to, like, ship the folks back to them.

Yeah. I can't. Yeah. I can't. We got a guy at work like that. But it's hard for me to tell the difference. So like, I get into this mode where I'm dealing with that other person's emotions and they're trying to, they're trying to like relate to me where I can't.

They may be trying to empathize, but it comes off as. Well, wait until you hear about this. But there lies the problem, me knowing that I can't tell the difference, it leaves it up to me as like, okay, how do I want to take this? Because I can't tell the difference. So how do I want to take this? And if I, if I choose to, like, give that person the benefit of doubt, which is what I usually do, because I try not to assume malice, but then it means I'm wide open.

It makes a day easier when you do that. But then it also means I'm wide open to somebody like, you know, being malicious, because I just blank it out and say, nah, that person's, they're not, they don't really mean that. Yeah.

So, anyway, it's just, I have that thought sometimes of like, you know, like, I don't feel like I get burnout more often than other people do or that my burnout is ain't worse than anybody else's.

But I do feel like it's difficult for me to like, it's easy for me to deal with it by myself. It's much more difficult for me to express that to somebody else. Like I don't, I just don't, want to yeah yeah i could see that um i don't know that i think everybody gets it i think that people that are very self-motivated have a much harder time backing off and they will push themselves through the earlier like the earlier symptoms of burnout they will just keep pushing and then make

it worse on themselves because well it's got to get done somebody has to do it it's going to be me right i swear to christ my wife's the wife is listening to this she's rollergross because she's heard exactly those words come out of my mouth oh yeah well you know we're we're not terribly dissimilar individuals in fact my wife is more than once said that listening to you sounds a lot like listening to me mine too yeah yeah whoops whoops we're both nerds at married school teachers. Oops. I'm sure there's a psychological study to be done there. Believe it or not, there's this really weird thing with toolmakers that I know a fair amount of toolmakers and there's not a whole lot of us out there. Almost every one of us that I know is either married to a school

teacher, a daycare provider, or a before and after school program coordinator of some kind. Okay, so side note, I have joked out loud. And I get a mixed, mixed reaction, depending on what room I'm in. But I've joked out loud that it's such a good thing that I married a woman who has experience dealing with special needs children. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Jeff, right. Machinists and nurses, too. Weird combination. Yeah.

It seems to just wildly, wildly prevalent. Probably because machinists meet a lot of nurses getting stitches. Hmm. And Gillian, Gillian literally like came right out of college street. to Audubon Nature Institute to work as an informal educator. She's literally been teaching, well, she went from that to a school, to the Children's Museum back to the school. She's been working with children since she was 22 years old.

Excellent preparation for you. Excellent preparation for me. Could not have asked for better, for better, you know, a better, better training program that deal with special needs and needs children than have a special. needs husband emphasis on the word special yeah yeah could be worse but anyway it could be one of the train guys oh no I'm not a trained guy I have my I have my own forms of autism but not drains although I did happen across an Instagram channel that sucked like 25 minutes of my soul out because it was nothing but gigantic old

engines like think like the huge old engines they used to have running like mills and stuff like back the old steam engines that I was sending you you're welcome yeah that was 25 minutes of my life just scrolling one after another after another there's all these gigantic old engines and stuff pistons the size of freaking trash cans

if there's one good reason for you to come to Illinois it's the Sycamore steam tractor show unfortunately I don't think we had too much that cool stuff down here because we had people work in the fields for a lot you did you did but up here we had really cool steam tractors

I think last the biggest the biggest one they had there last time I was about two years ago the wheels the steel wheels for it were between 10 or 12 feet tall I can't remember but they were oh

the treads on the wheels were 26 inches wide yeah makes me wonder what the ground pressure was don't know 75 horsepower though oh and raggle fraggle is hearing what I said and saying oof I

so I understand historically accurate historically accurate but also it is worth pointing out that a disreport I can't think of many true Cajuns that had slaves because they cost too much damn money and we were dirt poor

yeah that that is the thing the Cajuns have going for him is too broke two broke no slaves lots of kids kids, oddly enough, which is kind of the same thing. Well, I mean, look at Midwestern farming families, too. They all had a dozen kids because about six of them would make it to adulthood due to farming accidents and other things. Yeah. Anyway.

So what is just passing and when does it become a problem? And I don't feel, I would be interested to see if you and I can come to a good consensus on this. because, like, my own experience is that, like, there have been periods in my life. I think of, like, military deployments and everything else where, like, taking a knee was not really an option. Like, it didn't, it, sure. I hate to say it didn't matter how bad it sucked, but it really didn't matter how bad it sucked. It was, I was going to have to just, you know, like ramrodded further down and just keep on plowing ahead until, you know, post-trax stress disorder and counseling afterwards. But there was no opportunity in that environment to say, I'm having a problem.

And even though, I'm sure I could have vented about it to all the guys I was with, they were all dealing with the exact same problem I was, which may, again, going back to what I said before. There is some benefit to commiserating. Yeah, but at the same time, like, how do you complain to the guy that just lived through the exact same thing you did that it's bothering you when it's. It's bothering him too. Horribly dark jokes. I mean, there's a correlation between horribly dark jokes in the military and first responders and just people with a really dark sense of humor. Maybe this is why the whole idea of racism has always fallen flat with me because I think to myself, I'm like, I have said the most awful things humanly possible to friends of mine that I serve with, and they've said twice as bad back to me, and no one ever got their feelings hurt. it's the intention of what you say though oh good when this microphone turns off i should fill you in

on some of the jew jokes i threw down on the hound on a friend of mine you should hear some of the jew jokes my buddy's grandma used to rattle off and she is jewish this dude was jewish and italian i had them over i had some material oh yeah i had them over the barrel it was well you know you got good friends when they're making those kind of jokes. Yeah, but he could dish it out just as well as he could take it, trust me. Good, good. Oh, that's, that's important. I mean, being able to mock each other is a great way to relieve stress.

Because having a good laugh at your own expense sometimes is fantastic for you. It is. You know, I do, I do think that there's another situation that applies really closely with your situation in the military where you couldn't really complain and could. couldn't really take a knee on it, financial stress. You know, burnout from just not being able to not being able to either through your own designs or ill fortune make your budget balance. Yeah. And I feel like we've seen a lot of this in society recently where people get into this new thing called doom spending where it's like my finances are screwed. I'm fucked anyway.

So yeah, let me screw it up even worse. And it's like, I'll never get out. so why should I even try? Yeah, it's like the guy that has a drinking problem locking himself in a brewery. It's like, I understand that this is a reaction to the stress and the hopelessness of the situation, but it's actually making the situation a lot worse in the process. Absolutely. But you're right.

I mean, when you talk about financial stress, you know, most people's reaction is like, well, if I could just like loosen the reins a little bit and spend some money and, you know, go on a vacation or buy that thing that I've been wanting, it would let me like get over this little hump. But then that blows your budget in half for a couple of months, or you put it on a credit card pay interest on it. And it just, it compounds the original problem because the very thing you did as a stress relief is what caused the problem that generated the stress. Right. If not, if not originally, your response to the stress created more. You know, I think, I think where it becomes a problem is where you're, is where healthy coping mechanisms no longer work.

that it's not it's not passing anymore i would give it that and i would all and i guess probably to the same point i would say that when when either the stress or the reaction to the stress impacts your ability to adult it's like whiskey and seven up everybody that knows me knows i am a very casual drinker i have bottles of whiskey sitting over there on the shelf that are literally four years old because i just don't drink super often And like, if you buy me a bottle for an occasion, it will probably be a year and a half old before it gets cracked open. And probably a year and a half after that, it'll get finished off. But I've known people over the years that, like, they'll stop and get a fifth on the way home.

It'll be gone by the next morning. Eish, that's not great. And here's the problem. The first time you get so shithouse hammer that you get a DIY or you miss work or you don't miss work. You're a functional alcoholic, but you blow hot because you had an accident at work and you lose your job. Like the minute this starts to affect your ability to handle adult responsibilities, I think we've reached a point where it's obviously a problem. But yeah, I think it's undeniably a problem at that point. But then the gray area is what happens if you're stressed?

You're not like drinking. You're not doing cocaine. You're not, you know, you have needle tracks on your arms. Nothing too crazy. You're still making it to work. But now you're fight with your coworkers. You're getting into arguments. You're short-sighted.

You're short-tempered, your argument with people. Like, what happens when it's, it is obviously affecting your performance of work? It's affecting your work relationships. But it hasn't risen to the point of like a full-blown blowout or blowover. But obviously, it's starting to creep in. And by the way, this works in the exact opposite because, like, Gilling and I work, I've worked really hard over the years. And so it was so of my wife to leave work at work, to not come home and be like in a mood because of some stupid stuff. And you can be very difficult to do

It can be extremely difficult to do Like I am the first one to say that Anybody that knows me knows I will tell you what I think is the right thing to do I will say in the same breath I don't always manage to rise to that level I try I really try hard I do my best to stick to it

But when I don't practice what I preach It's not an act of omission It's just failure I'm human Sometimes Oh yeah We all fail at that. And, and, you know, that's one of the problems I have with work from home. Because there's no separation. Right. You lose that boundary. You lose that barrier. I mean,

sometimes, sometimes what I really need is the 10 minute or 15 minute drive home just to clear my head. No radio on. Nothing, nothing I have to be focused on other than not wrecking the vehicle. So I will say that having been, like having worked from home and work from an office, I will say that what has always made it work for me is I cocoon myself. Like this, this room that the podcast takes place in when I was working from home, my work laptop was right here on this L-shaped desk. So I would do my work on the laptop and the second monitor. And then sometimes I would literally work, shut this down, turn 90 degrees, and start podcasting. Like there were days where just I'd be working later. I'd be working on weekend.

Things would just bump against chair. And that's how it would happen. But what I worked really hard to do was I would work in here. And the only two things I do in this office, or than store stuff, like all the on the shelves behind me, is podcast and work. So I didn't do that thing where, like, I'd go work. on the dining table. I'd go sit on the couch. Yeah, you created your own artificial separations. Exactly. So that when I

left this room, work stayed here. Good. And fortunately, my wife and I schedule was such that, like, I usually had about a half hour before she would get home. So I had that time to decompress, take a deep breath, let it all out before she would get home. Of course, that meant. She sometimes had to have a half

hour when she got home. And, you know, sometimes I was, in that situation where I would be like super happy and upbeat and, you know, ready to talk. She's still burned out from the day. Yeah. Hey, it happens. Jeff.

Jeff, I got to use the code. That's all right. Shame. I mean, I'll call it a charitable donation. Yeah, I mean, I'll call it a charitable donation.

But I'm really trying to screw up capitalism by giving you all a discount, you know, just saying. Yeah. Raggle. Life is hard sometimes. It is. It is. You know,

it's some days. It's just going to be rough. Nothing you can do about it, but get through it sometimes. Yeah. So we kind of already started talking about how to mitigate burnout. Like,

you know, having separation between the stress and your personal life, trying to compartmentalize compartmentalization is a beautiful thing. If you do it, some people can't. And, uh,

like, I don't know how that works where you can't compartmentalize things, but I'm told some people cannot. Yeah, I don't know how that works either. I'm good at compartmentalizing to the point where it's bad. If I am told something at work, I have the good fortune of working with some family members of mine. And if they tell me something family related at work, by the time I get out of my truck at home, it's gone it's completely out of my brain

so I don't work with any family members but I have I have goldfish memory and what I have done is I take this little murder screen and I turn this into my own personal little don't forget anything

like I literally tell people in the middle of my wife and I have a conversation or my daughter or anybody else I will just pull my phone out and start typing on it and people think I'm being rude and I'm like no no no

exactly the thing I'm making notes I am making a note the reminders app on the phone love that you can put a reminder in you can put it in a different you can put it whatever list you want in you can actually put a time a date and time for it to remind you and then that shows you can do a geolocation yes and you better believe but I have literally like I have used the reminders app to the fullest extent if I ever lose my phone I am I'm done I will I will I I'm completely done. But I'm the same way of work. Like my calendar, my boss just had to walk in my office one day while I was like, you know, arrange things on the calendar. And she was shocked because she's, she knows like, because of the level I'm in, we're in a lot of the same meetings, but she's in a lot of executive meetings I'm not invited to. And there was one particular day.

I had more stuff on my calendar than she did. And she was like, what in the hell? And I'm like, oh, well, you know, this, this, this and this are the meetings of men with you. And then this, this, this, this is this. are reminders to me to do these things that I, like, set these reminders weeks ago. Matter of fact, I clocked and worked this past Monday, and I had a reminder to get to do something. I don't remember putting the reminder on the counter. I don't remember what it was that prompted me to do that.

But at some point in the past, I thought it was really, really important. I checked this one thing on this day at this time. So I didn't question things. I just did. But, like, past me, was looking out for future me. That level of neurotic organization is the only way I overcome an awful freaking memory. And some that's also just tunnel vision because like I get so laser focused on something. I forget everything.

I lose track of time. I ate my breakfast today at like almost lunchtime. Oops. Well, you and I've had this talk. I'm not quite pre-diabetic. I'm hypoglycemic. So like me skipping meals is not really a good idea. and I've been sticking to my diet of like eggs, sausage or baked sausage bacon or pepperoni and a big old fistful of cheese.

That's my breakfast almost every morning. All the fat and protein works to stabilize my blood sugar. Slow release energy. Yep. And I didn't eat until like 1130 because I got into work at 6 o'clock in the morning. I was trying to code a mainframe report. It's not for anybody that's actually done any amount of code. It's not like to the level of complexity of like, you know, building an application or building a whole web page or anything crazy like that, but it is writing out strings of code and logical statements and like at least my process for doing it is I literally will like start a word document write out in plain speech what I want to do and then write all the code and then save that and then I will actually go run it into the mainframe and test it.

and then, like, compare the results and say, okay, I need to move this or I need to move that or this didn't work or the report exploded. It's a process. It takes a couple of hours depending on the level of complexity of the report I'm trying to build. And it can be very difficult to recover where you were if you get up and walk away. Oh, no. Everybody in the office knows that if I have both my, if I have an earbud in listening to podcast and my left ear, which the one facing out of the cubicle is open, everyone knows you can come in. just strike up a conversation with me if both earbuds are in everyone knows no no they all know tap me on the shoulder and be prepared to be told come back later yeah like unless the building is

freaking on fire or you are my literal boss now is not the time because i'm i am focused in on something i'm locked in i do not have the bandwidth to do this and answer your question because if i answer your question all this that i was thinking about just evacuated the building so it's one of the situations where it's like I jumped in I was pushing hard I was trying to get the done before my boss got to work she was a she got to work early and about an hour after she got in I had this report done nice and then I had to present a tour we had to do some reconciliation activities that was the whole reason I built the report in the first place but between that task and just various things that piled up I didn't even think to eat lunch eat breakfast until

1130 in the morning because I was just peddled to the metal yeah I don't like I got so focused on things, and that's part of the reason why I put all those calendar reminders on my calendar with timestamps, with reminders, because I need something to jump up on the screen and say, hey, dummy, you're supposed to do something right now. Because if not, it's not going to happen. It makes a lot of sense. I mean, and that can help you with the burnout, too, I think. is you have that mental load of trying to retain all of that outsourced to an automated system. Yeah. And sometimes I think it honestly makes the burnout worse.

Like, I can see where it might. To be able to offload the task of remembering all this stuff, yes, that does less than low. But the way my brain works is not like, oh, yeah,

I get to run at 90% now. It's like, woohoo, we get 10% more stuff to yeat into the problem. So then it's just, it goes back to like what I said in the first place. And I know I'm not unique in this amongst neurodiversion people, but like

the throttle is either stuck to the floor with the engine bouncing off the red line and your vows tap dancing on the hood or you're in park he's at the ignition and you know everything's stopped. And there's just almost no middle ground. Interesting.

That might be a thing of like high functioning autism. It might be ADHD. I don't know. We need to get Eddie on the show to talk about neurodivergence because I feel like that applied to a not insignificant part of our audience. Probably. But I don't know, man.

I mean, like, to your point, being able to offload some tests to automations, to calendars, to automated reminders, that can certainly help. What I find is probably my greatest hedge against burnout and fatigue. I mean, as corny as sounds, it's just family time. Like, being

with my wife and daughter unwinds me like nothing else does. Going to the gun range is fun, but it's not, you know, it's still, I'm going for a task, I'm going to train, I'm going for this, like, I'm not purposeful training, it's not recreation. Yeah, and even if it's something like, probably the only thing I do that is true, like, I don't want to say just fun, but like precision rifle shooting, 100 yards, smallest group, you know, sitting on a bipod, locked in, you know, locked into him behind a scope, that kind of, that kind of, that kind of. of exercise is very therapeutic for me because it's very like it forced you to slow down it forced you to quiet your mind it force you to focus on your breathing it forces me to do everything my brain doesn't normally do do you have a buddy that shoots precision rifles nearby you no okay you need to find one so that you guys can play darts with your rifles it's phenomenally fun it is very

relaxing and it's pretty good training that doesn't feel like training i mean that was a me and a coworker of mine used to do that sometimes on fridays we'd get together and we'd we'd drive up to the shooting range and we'd play darts at 300 yards with like just a dartboard normal dartboard size target at 300 yards with our with our rifles i mean ragel is probably the closest person i can think of to me he's good he's only a couple hours away from me yeah you just bring a pick a dart game doesn't matter what dark game it is

good because I don't know how to play any of it's well you can print off rules for him it's pretty easy I mean it's still a ballistic sport either way but you know then you get to shoot a 300 win mag and maybe you're calling twos

it's a little bit I found it was better for training precision than just shooting at a bull's eye because you're not focused on the same point every time. It was a lot of fun. So is there anything else we can think of for mitigation? Because like I'm not going to lie. Oh, that is a good one.

Exercise. If your brain is fatigued because of all of the things you're doing and your body is not, man, does that not feel good? I mean, in the name of, like, being only half-joking and being kind of fairly serious, no, I was going to say chemical substances, but that has a weird connotation for some people. Well, I would say that if you're on the spectrum, coffee, and just caffeine in general, does kind of have that effect of temporarily, like, slowing you down. It sounds counterintuitive, but it's the same reason why, like, Adderall is basically amphetamines. Yeah, it really just improves your focus instead of giving you more energy. Yeah.

Like for me, a big dose of coffee, it just, it just takes it. It's like being in a room full of people talking and putting on noise canceling headphones. It just, it quiets everything down. It can be very useful. I find exercise is helpful. Getting outside is helpful. This year, we had Canadian wildfire smoke and I have asthma. So I didn't get to enjoy much.

of the outside without having breathing issues, which sucks. I will do much about that. I will say just going outside touching grass. I'm going to be real honest with you. Part of the reason why I love camping and hiking is just to be outside. Now, part of that could also be because, you know, my day job involves sitting from a computer under fluorescent life for like nine and a half hours a day. So when I get time off, I desperately just want to be outside. I just want to be outside.

I don't want to breathe fresh air. I want sunshine on my face. It is the lamest sounding stuff on earth. But, like, truly, I just want to be outside, which is the exact opposite of when I worked outside, when all I wanted to do on a day off was just sit in the house and the air conditioning. But, you know, I guess all things in balance.

Exactly. It's all about adding a little bit of balance to your life. So then what about recovery? I got some shit for this. Because for that, for me, for that personality, that doesn't do mitigation very well, I have to focus on recovery for a lot of us that are like first responders, military, law enforcement, like in the moment where the stress gets the worst, you don't have the option to take the knee. You have to stand up and perform. So recovery

becomes your only avenue out because you can't mitigate it in the moment. You can't take a step back. You have to deal with the problem in hand. So I find that in those situations like, you know, for me, like, I'll be the first to admit that when things get to a certain level, counseling is a beautiful thing. And it, I have, I will say that before I went to counseling for the first time, I thought it was the most hippie, like, the most hippie nonsense on earth. I put no stock in it. I thought it was for, you know, weaklings and everything else.

And after getting diagnosed with post-matic stress disorder and after nine months of counseling, I came with a completely different perspective on what counseling really was because it wasn't sitting on a couch and crying my eyes at about stuff. It was literally having a conversation with a counselor and talking through things I was experiencing and how I felt. And a lot of times that that in and of itself was a revelation because it was difficult for me to like look back and reflect on those things and think, how did that make me feel? Because in the moment, I just ramrodded it down and kept doing the job well yeah there's very little

time in a combat environment to deal with that the or to even acknowledge it only survival mechanism is to not deal with it yeah well I mean even deal with it just acknowledge it

like there there are moments in time where like to even admit oh that really upset me or oh that really scared me that's that's like that's like giving your fear a name like i cannot even acknowledge that that bother me right now because if i do this whole thing i'm operating under where it's like pedal to the floor get the mission done that will fall apart sure i can't make sense it it it sounds like the most it sounds like like macho he man you know bull crap to say that but like for the

people that have been in those situations. I think you understand where I'm going with this. It's like in this moment, I don't have a choice. I have to hold it together because if I don't, someone else has to pay the cost, pay the price for me falling apart. So I'll deal with it later. And then later might be 12 to 16 months from now. And after that amount of time, what did I know in the moment I didn't feel good, but what was it I was feeling. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of what I dealt with in counseling was also just like, Things were happening in my life that were just daily things. Person will cut me off the interstay and slam on their brakes and break check me. Happens to probably 50 million people a day in this country. But to me, I reacted with like my first impulse was, foot on the gas, ram them, knock them off the road. Because that was the way I was trained. And that was the thing that kept you alive. So, yeah, your brain's going to default to stay alive.

Yep. But it was it was trying to talk through those emotions and talk through those, talk through that to realize that like, okay, there's a disconnect here between the stimulus and how I felt about it. Like this didn't necessarily merit this, even though this would have been really, really, really good, you know, feeling good for a moment to ram somebody off the road that was breakchecking me, probably not socially acceptable or appropriate in today's day and age. Yeah, they probably weren't instigating an amb. on i 30 yet just saying they probably were not yet yeah but yeah i mean i say if you get to that you have to you need you need counseling then don't be shy about going and in the meantime like if you if you're not at the point of wanting to go talk to a professional i'm going to tell you that i have never i've never had a friend like a close personal friend come to me and want to talk and me

turn them around, turn them away and say, I just shut up, quit crying, you'd be all right. Mm-hmm. You know, like, and we've had that in our group of friends where somebody said, hey, I'm having a rough time right now. Every one of us has been one to let that person bent, let it out, encourage them, try to get them back on track. And it's never been quick crying and just get over it.

It's always been, hey, let's, let's acknowledge the, the emotions. Let's acknowledge that you feel downtrodden, but let's refocus your effort to something that can make the situation better so you don't just wallow in it or at the very least not make the situation worse agree yeah yeah if not improve it definitely don't make it worse yeah it's it's believe it or not you can almost always make things worse it's it's pretty hard to find a situation that can't be made worse by your own actions taken in say in haste or in uh without thinking things through mm-hmm jeff counterpoint maybe it would fix their driving manners i mean it's possible the state frowns upon us forcibly adjusting the

attitudes of other drivers but i kind of can't disagree with jeff it it's worth you know tolerance and being polite has not obviously worked so maybe choosing violence every now and it would solve the problem we've all thought about buying that thousand dollar shitbox pickup just because the next guy that brake checks me i can lose this truck i used to drive that thousand dollar shit box i think all of us had that thousand dollar shit box truck and tell me you didn't drive like you were driving an armored personnel carrier when you had it because you were always just like hey if you like your car less than i like mine yeah definitely if you really want to cut me off

my brakes are shit anyway it's a it's an s 10 and my front brakes don't work my that's a pretty little car I bet a game with a really nice collision inhibition policy oh yeah except in your neck of the woods sometimes it doesn't well you'd be so Illinois's weird if you're a citizen you're required to have insurance I'm just going to leave that there

Yeah Yep, Jeff's on it I can afford this can you Right But yeah We all had that buddy in high school That had the shitbox suburban With a big welded on bumper from shop glass

That guy didn't hit the brakes all that often When he got caught off Raggle's saying Invest in our thousand into a well-built bumper and you can do it more than once. Accurate. My grandfather used to have these 57 stepside pickups. Phil, are you familiar with a Chevy 57 stepside?

I have a mental image right now, yes. It's a solid quarter range of steel pretty much everywhere on that pickup, okay? Yeah, I don't know necessarily about armor plating, but if you get smacked with one of those, you're definitely going to remember the experience. You can take a baseball bat to those and not dent them. He put a big old, big old, uh, was it six by four box channel bumper on the front and rear. Spicy. With some nasty toe hooks sticking out underneath them.

We were sitting at a stoplight one time. And this little, I want to say it was like a Pontiac Sunfire. It was one of those little scoop nose cars. Oh, so it was plastic fantastic. Awesome. Oh, yeah. He hit it so hard, that car wedged underneath that bumper. Pick the rear wheels up off the ground.

Well, when they went to pull the car out from under there, those toe hooks dug in through the, that little air scoop. Yeah. Pulled off the hood, pulled off the radiator, ripped every hose and wire off the top of that car, and took the bumper as well. Excellent. Scratch the paint on that 57 step side.

they don't build like that anymore unfortunately no they do not largely because well when you got into a serious accident everybody turned into like jello paint inside the vehicle because the vehicle didn't move so you were gonna I mean you know they should have allowed five point harnesses

and vehicles years ago mm-hmm all right so what else what else can we throw into recovery i mean i i i think i would i would say everybody has to find their own their own ways like what works for them to recover because like what works for me it's probably not going to work for everybody i love playing around with my little lays one thing i will that's work to a lot of people one thing i will say is ubiquitous cross board though so support system i'm going to tell you that if you're if you're out

there in listener land and like you don't have some close family members spouse close friend brother sister best friend since high school like if you don't have someone this is the best way I've ever heard put it and this is a perfect analogy Nick do you have a two do you know what an 8 p.m. friend is yes that's a person you call it 8 p.m. and they will answer their phone how many 2 a.m. friends do you have one so you have one person in your life that if you and I'm assuming it other than your wife yeah yeah other than my spouse yeah but you but you have that one person that at two o'clock in the morning if you call and you say bubba I need help they're coming to you with a gun and a shovel no questions asked like just ready for war absolutely I would say outside of our group of friends that are a little too distributed across the country to be totally useful. I probably only have one, one, two a.m. friend. Like, I know that if I call him day or night, tell him, I'm screwed, he's coming to me

with a, with a, as a one man army. Everyone needs that 2 a.m. friend in their life. And if you know, everybody should be that 2 a.m. friend for somebody. Yep. And if you don't have that person, go find them. Because a strong support system, a group, people who will they'll prop you up when you're down they'll they'll they'll sing your praises when you're up they'll support you they'll they'll bully you they'll browbeat you they'll berate you they'll call you names but they will be there like if someone picks on you they're ready to go

to war over it but they'll call you everything but late for dinner that group of people is so freaking important to fighting against burnout and recovering from it and dealing with it because they will be your cheerleaders when you're down. And they will also be the person who when you're up and you're high on life, they will call you a fat sack of crap and tell you to, you know, oh, you ain't shit. You need to go to the gym. Bring your right back to reality.

Yes, they will be your reality check. They will be there to bring you back to center no matter what. And if you're off the path, if you're screwing up, if you're being a douche canoe, if you're letting down your family and your obligations, they will be there to tell you like, dude, you need to tighten up a little bit. Find those people in your life.

Find your tribe. And I promise you that'll do you more good fighting against burnout than anything else in the world. No amount of no amount of booze, no amount of coffee, no amount of doom spending. No amount of any coping mechanism out there will be as helpful to you

as a safety net, a support system. Yep. I agree. So all this to say, that I have been burned out for a while and I'm not the only one we've got a good friend of ours who's works for the same bunch of psychopaths I do and is dealing with exactly the same problems in some ways worse um honestly at a lot of ways he's got a worse than I do most days which is exactly what I was talking about earlier like I almost feel ashamed to say like oh wow

you know we lost a quarter of our workforce we're really struggling because it's like he's he's He's been living that for years now. And it's just getting worse. And unfortunately, once you start, once a company or a government department starts down that spiral, it gets harder to hire for it because there's such a high demand. Yeah. And then when it's, it gets really tricky to bring people in. And it's like, it's like trying to hire people when the building's on fire.

people walk in the front door look around and say uh deuces exactly we're not finishing our 90 days yeah but they're not invested so why would they stick around and at the same time like

you know for in this is not just like my workplace this is a lot of workplace right now like if you're in that boat where you know the work's piling up the staff all left and the building's on fire like I will only in tone to you what my boss not my boss my boss's boss's boss the head of the agency said to me he was very frank about the fact that we're going to face hard times in the near future there's way too much work way too few people

hiring freeze everything that can go against us is going against us right now but he was also very frank about the fact that we are in the process and not just you know like him giving lip service but like we are all at the ground floor in the process of building the thing that's going to come out of this. We are ripping apart old processes from the 1990s and replacing them with either nothing because they don't need to be done or automation or a better way to do it. We are innovating every day. We're building the new normal in real time. And what we build coming out of this is going to outlive us. We're going to build.

We're going to build the workplace that. that carries forward in the future. We get to do it. Not just maintain, not just like, this is the way it's been done for 20 years. I'm just clogging the machine. Like,

I get to rebuild the machine as I go. So that's happening. That's something positive to look forward to. But it is hard to complain about it, knowing people in the same boat are worse, people that are having health problems right now that we know. It's just, it's really hard to, like, put your hand,

say, yeah, I've been struggling a little bit. Things have been hard. Yeah, it definitely can be. Yeah. That's why your support system is important. Yeah, including this bunch of nutcases that comes and listens every week, because believe me, when I tell y'all, there have been times where this has also been one of the things where I've been burnout on, and I've had to be like, I really still want to do this. And then usually it's like you or Andrew or one of the patrons or somebody else,

like you ain't quitting yet get your fat ass back behind the microphone and here we are yeah exactly you know and and you know what the folks in the patron chat are a good support network they really are they're they're great people and if you got if you got something you need to talk to people about it's not a bad place to do it you know yeah we might be a little nutty but might be a little nutty All right Well as we go to wrap this up We got a couple of back in ad bit things

To deal with Like we said The 2026 matter of fact Summer Camp patrons If you go to Patreon You will find the information If you have no idea what I'm talking about Reach out and I'll school you up

But We'll get you Yeah most of the patrons Are in that signal chat on Patreon Or they're in the signal chat we've already a bunch of people have already made the reservations and i expect just as much tom foolery and horse around as usual but i will just say that like for the for the people that are relatively new patrons it is a family friendly event it is a total like no schedules

no classes no friggin serious prepping nonsense it's not yeah if we pick something to do we decide it usually the night before over some drinks and a cigar yeah and And the whole point of that camping trip has always been like, hey, I set out, because like the first time we did the matter of fact summer camp, I'd gone to prepper camp several years. And I never managed to convince my wife or daughter to come. It was the prepper thing. It was the guy's trip, even though there were girls that came to. And I set out to make matter of fact summer camp the thing you bring your spouses and your kids to, the thing that you come out to. And it's like, hey, we're just vacation with a big group of friends at.

And when it always, it's an interesting conversation when somebody says, how do you know each other? Because things go off the rails a little bit. But it is that thing that is low, no expectations, no pressure, just come out and hang out and get to know people that are probably, you probably have some common ground with as far as interest, mindset, and everything else. But it's been, it's been the coolest experience to me to watch every year, a few more people come out and a few more people manage to convince her wives and their kids to come with them. Or they're husbands and kids. That's fun, too. Yeah. And, you know, bring your dog.

Yeah. A lot of us do. Bring dogs, if you have them. As many dogs as possible. Oh. I will pet all of the dogs. I have it on good faith that one of our campers who missed, we missed last year, but she'd come the previous two years. She's coming, and I'm hoping she's bringing both were beagles.

Yes. Oh, they're freaking adorable. They're loud as hell, but they're adorable. Yeah, they're beagles. They're be as I was saying, they're beagles. They're part hound. They're just going to do the thing. All right.

So that's one thing. A week from today will be the 18th. That will probably be our last show for the year. I cannot envision us doing anything on Christmas Day because I'll wind up. dead. I have a Christmas party, Christmas Eve, two Christmas day and one the Friday after Christmas day after I go to work. Yeah, we'll probably skip the week of Christmas. Whether whether or not we do something will be totally contingent upon like, you know, I guess up to what we feel, but certainly not a formalized show. Maybe some, maybe some quick little blast or some

social media stuff here or there. I mean, we've got to get pictures of the two of us LARPing Rebel Raider stuff because it should be here by Christmas. We do. My app says it shipped. I don't have the tracking number yet, but that tells me that they have at least printed the label. Excellent.

Which means I have to do fitness things in his kit to prove it out. Yeah, I just need to get my wife to take a picture of me. I'm sitting in front of the Christmas tree wearing a plate carrier with nods. that sounds like a fantastic idea doesn't it though waiting for santa so like said the the week of christmas will probably skip the thursday after that is actually new year's day and i will be off work that day so i'm off work that day i don't know but i'll be available on my normal scheduled time we'll we'll figure something out whether we bump the time or whatever but we'll figure something out.

But I just want to kind of front load that there by the week of Christmas, I just don't anticipate us doing a show unless we get really bored because we have spouses, and I don't think they're going to tolerate that very well. Yeah, spouses and family obligations do come first as we tell people in the Patreon chat all the time. All right. One last peruse with the comments. Jeff asked, are we doing Preper Camp?

I don't anticipate doing Preper Camp. I was not planning to. because of limited vacation time. Yeah. For me, honestly, it's just having done PreparCamp for several years, the last year we went, we went more than anything else just to visit with everybody. And I do more of that in more of a format than I want to at the matter of fact, summer camp. True.

And I see most of the same people at the matter of fact, summer camp. So I don't know Going to prepper camp Honestly is just I got a lot more avid the first couple years I went But I also feel like once I got to a certain point Like most of the information being provided Was kind of aim more beginners and

I don't know One of those things makes sense But anyway Nick said you were off work that day So am I or not Nick I am off work that day I am Nick Morgan says maybe a book review

Perhaps I'll give it a read Yeah Jeff Jaggs saying Just gonna do summer camp from now on I mean I will just say that for anybody That has not done summer camp That is among the patrons

It's I have never heard anybody come away saying Oh that was a waste of time It's always a lot of fun and we try to go see cool places like last year we were in um raggle fraggo saying you got a little bit of mic pick a little bit of feedback in your mic yeah it's my my boiler kicked on it it does weird things to my mic i try to catch it but i missed it this time yeah it happens all right i guess we'll go ahead and punt this one out the door i get burnout nick gets burnout everybody gets burned out got to deal with it got to got to get rid of it got to frigging and push through

it because we all got way too many people depending on us and way too much stuff we're responsible for to let it eat us alive or hold us down for too long but it is worth pointing out that as much as it pains me to admit it you know ram rotting and down perpetually forever to the end of time just doesn't work yeah probably not No, it doesn't. I tried real hard to make it work. It doesn't work forever. Sooner or later, you got to deal with it.

But did you try a bigger hammer? Yes. Damn. Percussive maintenance does not work on stress. Unfortunate. Well, long term, it does not work on stress. Yeah, that's probably true. One of these days, we're going to have to get our resident mental health professional

back on the show to talk through. all the things I'm not qualified to talk about unless it's unhealthy and coping mechanisms and dark humor. I can talk about that. I mean, growing up everybody developed some of those. I mean,

at least the fun people did. The fun people definitely do. You can always tell who hasn't almost died a few times by how they react to anything. We might have to add that to the topic list. all right matter of fact's going out the door have fun take care of yourselves we'll see you all in another week and probably not for the week of christmas and that's okay because you can hang out with the other fat guy with the beard instead of me and we will pick you up after the new year's yep good night everybody night

I'm going to be able to be. You know, I'm going to be. You know, I'm sorry We're going to be able to be. We're going to be able to be. You know what I'm going to be.