the zurkie show - why not let life surprise you

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

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My guilty pleasure used to be thrifting. I loved going into a store and trying to find a piece of clothing that would define my entire identity for a whole week in high school, and then I would throw it out and forget about it. Bad habit, I learned from it. I don't buy stuff to throw it out now anymore. But what I think thrifting taught me was that the way clothes fit matter more than the brand that you get. Sometimes you would walk into a thrift store and see Ralph Lauren and Levi's, and you'd think, oh my goodness, we're cooking tonight, only to try on the,

these Ralph Lorenz that were a size 34 waist, and they were way too big, or they were saggy. I remember one time, I think I stumbled across this North Face jacket that was worth like $300. I tried it on it. It looked like I was literally swimming in the entire jacket. It didn't look good. And part of me still wanted to purchase it because I was like, well, it's a North Face jacket. They're great quality. Oh, it's a Patagonia vest.

I need to buy this. Until I realized, like, what am I doing this for? I'm not reselling this clothing. I'm not, that's not what I'm doing. Why do I want to buy things that are predictable or feel safe? It's because there is a lot with safety that revolves around the human experience. I think we know it now, like you want comfort. That's why it's so easy to get into a relationship that is another continuation of a terrible

pattern that you've gotten into. That's why it's really, really easy to get super comfortable and watch Ted Lassow on the couch. It's so easy to seek comfort. And I think that the more predictable you make your life, the worse you will feel. Tonight, we are going to have one of the coldest nights, I think, in Austin, Texas this entire year. I mean, it's January, right? But it's like, I'm feeling like I'm in the Midwest again a little bit with this weather. And I love it.

Check this out in the background. You can kind of see the steam, the warm air. like lifting up from the lake. I don't know if that's actually what's going on. I'm going to pretend to know what I'm talking about here. But I never thought that I would have to wear a winter coat that I was wearing in Toronto in Austin, Texas. Here we are. The world is not a predictable place. There are patterns that we can observe, but if you think that you can live your entire life predicting what the world will bring you and what other people will do for you, you are mistaken. The world is very much like a thrift store.

And I think the best thing you can do is understand what your options are and try to find the right fit. And it won't look pretty. All right? You might get a cardigan, a yellow one that has some cigarette stains in it, right? Or somebody was a smoker before. It does not mean that you can't wear that thing and bring it your own style. It does not mean that you can't change something by putting your own spin on it. I urge you to do that.

Anything that I've ever tried, anything that I've ever attempted, whether that's been artistic, whether that's been financial, whether that's been like relationship-wise, I've been rewarded when I stepped into the unpredictable element of the unknown. And I didn't judge it. I didn't look at it and be like, well, I don't know. I'm kind of out of place here. I just went with it. Today I went to a yoga class, something that I swore to my teenage self I would never do

because the optics are weird and yoga people are odd and they have man buns and they, you know, love them to Paul and stuff like that. I don't know. Just generalizations that were totally unfounded on anything other than people telling me about yoga and the culture around it. So I decided to challenge myself. Yoga is so difficult. Nobody told me this. It is so difficult. You try to like do a cat stand and then like a reverse dragonfly.

They all have these names and it's all going at you. Like one second per change of motion. It is so difficult. I loved it. It was great. I felt so out of place. I felt so like an outsider in this space. And I knew that the stereotype of like a dude doing yoga, it's kind of been met with some, you know, he probably goes to Irwan for a smoothie later and, you know, whatever and does a meditation on the beach.

I didn't care. I didn't care. I didn't care that the jacket I was going to pick. from the thrift store, didn't have Ralph Lauren on it, didn't have like a, you know, Tommy for your mommy symbol. It just was an old geezer's jacket that was probably in the 80s. I'm going to wear the heck out of it. I'm going to do it in my own style. And I think that when you do things that are not you, bro, you grow so much more than when you listen to what has been predetermined for you. I love England. I love people from the UK. All right. Shout out Scotland.

shout out Ireland, shout out Wales. I'm sorry to do this. I'm going to generalize you because I was having a conversation about Thailand. A friend of mine recently went to Thailand. That has its own stigma around it too. And he was telling me about how he noticed that a lot of British people had the same kind of personality. They didn't differ much.

They were loud. They were obnoxious. These are generalizations also if you have, you know, if you've been anywhere around Europe, you hear a lot. It made me question why. that is. And I'm sure you can think of the same thing, even if you're in the States, if you're in Canada, of people that gravitate towards a group or act a certain way, make something their entire personality. It's because there's comfort in being with people that share your values,

that share your identity. But I do think it's dangerous. I do think it's dangerous because that identity might not fit you. Yeah, you know, you might have everything that that, that looks correct for a visco girl. You might have everything that that suits your, you know, jock soccer persona, all right? You got the messy, the Neymar headband, white headband, right? You have, you're taping your arm as well like Yamal, but something is off. It's because the jacket doesn't fit. And you know the jacket doesn't fit because you don't feel secure in this identity. There's a good chance. there was an archetype of person that went to my college.

Love sports. Love going out. They would run through a brick wall for the football team. I thought football was cool. I didn't really care much. Right? I knew I didn't fit the archetype. I never tried too hard when I got rejected from the archetype to be that thing.

It's because the jacket didn't fit. In the same context of a relationship you might have, everything might line up perfectly. They might be. the same, they had the same value system as you. They got the same humor. They laugh at the same ironic memes from 2012. I don't know.

You know, but it just doesn't fit. It just doesn't fit. There are some things that are lingering that make you question, are they going to be loyal to me? Am I going to feel secure in this? Don't take the jacket. Don't take the jacket. You can try on jackets. I hated thrift stores that wouldn't let you try things on.

like they didn't have a, you know, a place to, what is it called, a dressing room. That was the worst, but I won't lie. I also tried on way too many things. And that can sometimes also give you fatigue, right? I'm sure you've gotten shopping. You find a bunch of bangers at the thrift store. You're like, oh my goodness. Ed Hardy jeans.

Oh, my goodness. Yo, this is so sick. This is like an old school Ralph Lauren jacket. Oh, yo, no way. I got like a Y2K zip up. All right. you go and you have like 20 items in your cart. Same thing with online shopping, bro.

Another thing you see a lot in college is people just online shop all the time. I won't knock it. All right. I did my online shopping too, respectfully. But like, if you do too much, you won't settle on something that can make you learn. It's actually a distraction. It's a big distraction. If you try every single flavor, you might get full.

and lose your appetite for a full scoop. And now the question is, okay, well, Zerk, I want to try everything. This is a common thing that I think, you know, we all experience at least once. We think we are competent enough to give everything a shot and give everybody a chance. But I want you to know that you learn more from dedicating your time to one thing than you will ever learn from just kind of giving something a half chance or not really committing to it. I think what's good,

if you're, for example, going down a fitness journey right now, right? I'm doing that openly. It's good to give things chances, but don't just like commit with your toe in the water a little bit. Go all in.

For a little bit of time. Go all in. Okay? And see how you feel. If it feels good, if it feels like you're supposed to be doing it, stick with it. But if it doesn't,

then it's okay. okay, you can drop it. I used to feel like very shameful about things not working out. I mean, that's what kept me from trying, like yoga, kept me from traveling, because I was like, well, you know, what if I don't like it? But you won't know until you try. It's like just how it goes. And the more that you convince yourself, you're not worthy enough to try,

the less you're going to know what you actually like. You got to wear your mistakes on your sleeve. It's the same thing as like. in a jacket and deciding, you know what, I want to put some Air Force patches on it. I got a patch I got from Germany, from Berlin. I want to put that on there. I used to have these suspenders. I used to wear a lot. And they had patches from all around like Europe when I traveled, you know, Europe. You have to acknowledge that your mistakes will carve pieces out of you. You will lose yourself in relationships. You will lose yourself

trying to pursue goals that were meaningless the whole time. And that is okay. That's entirely okay. And you might regret it. You might look at it and be like, what was I doing? I was young. I was naive. But there are too many people in this world that get hung up on other people's advice,

which is ironic, right? Hearing that from me, it's ironic. It's true, though. No prime minister, Trudeau. It's true, though, right? like, well, ex-foreign, wait, hold on, no longer Prime Minister Trudeau, sorry. But I know they're dating, he's dating Katie Perry. This is the stuff that comes up on my feed, okay?

All right, don't judge me. And if you're going to, whatever. You have to fail and be okay with it. And failure will not sometimes be grand. It might be like, oh, that was lackluster. I wasn't really convinced of this date. I wasn't really convinced of this trip that was supposed to change my life with the boys.

That's fine. A lot of people will make these assumptions about what a certain thing will do for them. They'll try to predict. I'm going to go to school. I'm going to change my identity. I'm going to become a much more studious person. I am going to figure out who I am.

They do it and nothing changes. maybe it's because they're holding on way too tightly to who they think they need to be or they're not actually allowing the growth to happen because they don't acknowledge when it does maybe that move where you thought you were going to become i don't know super outgoing and super like oh man i'm going up to everybody i'm making the moves i'm the playmaker of this school maybe you were actually supposed to learn that you're You're a lot more introverted. You actually need alone time to recharge. And you can't just be go all the time because it drains you. And mentally, you start to feel slow and you start to feel sluggish. The jacket is there to wear it. There's more to life than finding the perfect car.

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Self-improvement comes from doing. And even that term itself has been kind of, it's been kind of like, I guess, guess monetized. Beware of that. There's no amount of mouth tape, the nose breathing stuff, right, that like expands your nose. It probably works great, but there's no amount of that that will fix your confidence. You know it will fix your confidence doing things that make you confident, not doing things that make other people confident. And that confidence could be embarrassing yourself. It could be going on hikes. It could be talking to your mom more.

It could be feeling like you can hold a conversation with good eye contact, small things. It could be any of that. But again, you have to choose the jacket. You have to go to the thrift store. You have to put in the work. It won't come from ruminating and thinking about it. Oh, man, if only. Oh, yeah, maybe if I do go up to people more.

Like, throw yourself in there. I've never had anything good happen when I've tried to predict my life. and where it would go. Never. The best things have always been the surprises. Good and bad. The good ones have made me learn. The bad ones have made me learn and adjust. And those ones actually, I'm more grateful for sometimes than the good surprises. Because listen, it's nice when you go to a donut shop and they have an extra dozen for you and they give them to you. And you're like, heck yeah, that was a great surprise. It's cool when, you know, you're hanging out at a theater and they, you know, somebody forgets to take their popcorn so you take it wait no don't do that wait you don't know

i mean someone's grubby hands could have been in there what i'm trying to say is that too much planning is bad in my eyes and i've i've tried to to plan everything out i've tried to build these elaborate routines you know actually i used to make itineraries my my roommates would laugh at me because i'd make itineraries of my day on like on chat gbt i did it for like a week and it was it just never it never worked it never worked build routines that is good right having some kind of time for yourself knowing like you're recognizing dude i'm i'm i'm like drained i cannot be around people right now find something that will make you be alone maybe that's like playing darts maybe that's chilling on the switch for, you know, some smash bros. Cool. Like, you have to find the thing

that when you have like that emotion, you can kind of ease into to take your mind off stuff or to just like have a moment to really reflect. Also recognize when you're being lazy. That's, that's a big one. That's a huge one. Because only you will know that. Only you will know when really like you could push yourself. You know, people talk about you need to recover. You need to give yourself time to process. Yeah, you do. But you also need to get to work when it's time to get to work.

You don't get to enjoy, you know, just the limbo all your life. You got it. You got to get to it. And it might take you a little bit of time to figure out what that looks like and what is that trigger. For me, it's like, it's my morning. It's done in the first hour. If I have a good productive morning, the rest of the day is smooth sailing. If I kind of linger, I let my mind drift into random Reddit holes, right?

Reddit holes, rabbit holes on Reddit, then it's just more, it's harder. I'm groggy. I just, eh. So build good habits. That's something worth investing in. And then. let go of this expectation i can't wait to the go i'm going to go to the thrift store i'm going to find bro i want to find what we're like huge the thrift back in the day man if you found yeasies at the

thrift that was like whoa which you never did they were always fake but if you did it was kind of funny to like take photos and there were always like the my dog ate my homework shirts those are those were awesome okay if you had a my dog ate my homework or like um homework optional any of those kind of of like graphic teas back in the day. You're goat. You're goat. It's just default status. You are in the same tier as MJ, Kobe, whoever, right, Massey, Ronaldo.

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You don't know what you're going to get. You don't know. Stop expecting to know. You won't. Just find the jacket. and search and look. And if something doesn't fit, put it back on the rack

because it's for somebody else. It's not for you. Why would you spend time on it? Why would you think, oh, I could crop it? This is another thing. I'm sure you've gone to a thrift store and been like, oh, I can crop this and I can make it into a tee.

No, you're not. You're never doing that. I'm sorry. Unless you're really about it or you can crop it yourself. Yeah, right. Or maybe I'm projecting. Maybe you have.

and that's like major respect because I've I've had plenty of projects I wanted to do with thrifting and I'm more of a buy it and wear it than in there kind of guy it's good not to plan too much and I don't plan too much I have wants I have things that I go after I have goals that's that's good Zerkeeshire that's good stuff but to chain yourself to an idea of who you think you need to be,

it will make you sink. It's like a, like a cinder block. It's going to pull you down. And the freedom you get from just being like, I'm going to the, you know, thrift store on some McLemore, like, what, what, what, and just see what's up, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

It doesn't mean it's, it's still going to be. be, you know, it's not going to be challenging. No, no, it will. It's going to be actually more uncertain. But if there's one thing you can learn from the state of the world, your parents' life, your life so far, your friends, your family, me, is that nothing is guaranteed ever and nothing can be predicted. People have patterns. Things repeat. That is true. But like individual, well, yo, this is going to happen at this time. I'm going to get this, you know, college acceptance letter. I'm going to go to this place.

I'm going to do all this. You don't know. And stop acting like you know if you think you do because you don't. You have no clue. None of us do. And the more that you become okay with that, the more you have energy and time to look at things that are actually worth that energy in time.

And I'm not perfect. I still fall into bad patterns and bad habits. And I know that that's just part of who I am. And there's no shame in that either. But I think if you've been going really hard on yourself, maybe you have been a little bit slow to start the year. You had like certain, I don't know, you were like, I'm going to run every day.

You haven't been doing that. Okay. You've been on the couch brain rotting a little bit. Cool. you should be doing this for yourself and that's all that matters and if it's like you and somebody else

I don't know who are you trying to impress should be yourself so get on it don't make excuses for yourself but stop trying to find like grails at the thrift store let it surprise you

find a fire fit get some old wrangler jeans go thrifting do not buy stuff at thrift stores It's like $50, $100. What are people doing, man? It's crazy. Find some stuff that, like, will fit you.

That's fire. That you like and that you can rock with some swag, man. And remember, it's never the clothes that make a person. It's the person that makes the clothes. That's fire. I heard that, you know, a while ago. And I really, I really like that. I really like that quote.

Because I think it's such a good representation that, like, the things in life they you can let them define you or you can define yourself on your terms and these are just things that have happened and that are a part of your story doesn't have to define who exactly you are you get to do that zirky show today's episode of the zirky show was filmed in Austin Texas on Mount Benel wonderful to be back in Austin

it's cold but you know what it's nice did you know the Zirky show is everywhere you go. That is correct. You can watch it. You can scroll. You can stream it. The choice is yours. If you want to tap in, there are ways to tap in everywhere. It is the Zerki show. Same name. Everywhere you go, you'll find this community, all of us and me as well. Do the things that bring you joy and enjoy the cold. Safely, of course. This is going to be a crazy storm supposedly. But enjoy it. Get a little bowl of soup, man. It's a tomato bisque. Some chicken noodle, all right? Some rosu. Barsterval. If you want to get fancy with it. I cannot wait to sip on some soup as my hands defrost. If you're trying something new,

just know that I believe in you. And as always, Zirky Show, I'm sending you lots of love and peace.