Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
All right, Kyle, the captain Creek. How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me back. Of course. Of course. December 19th, 2022. Last time you were on the show. That feels, I was going to say that feels like a lifetime ago. I feel like I've lived, was that three years almost? I feel like I've lived three lifetimes in three years. Well, I think we'll probably get into some of that, but let's, let's start with regret.
Why is regret such a prominent part of a man's life and what the hell are we supposed to do with it? I mean, I think for me, the problem with regret is, you know, as a man, I hate feeling incapable. I hate feeling like I made mistakes. I hate feeling stupid. I really hate feeling like I've been taken advantage of or put myself in a place to be taken advantage of. And so I
the things that I tend to regret or, you know, the times in my life when I've really beat myself up or when something hits at my ego, essentially makes me feel like I made a mistake. And I know we were chatting before this about, you know, I bought this home in Florida that I recently sold. And when I bought that house, I was ecstatic about it. I thought it was the right move. And I had a couple of things in my career, not go as I planned. And over the coming months, uh,
I could not get over the feeling that I'd made just this massive mistake and this mortgage was just eating me alive. And I allowed just that stress to really erode almost every facet of my life for a while, it felt like. Why do you feel like we personalize the mistakes that we make? Because I think this is such a common thing for guys where
It's almost as though when we screw up, that failure is a reflection of who we foundationally are. It's like a reflection on our identity. I think you nailed it. I mean, for me, it's the biggest thing is feeling stupid. I don't like feeling stupid. Um,
I hate feeling like I could have made a better decision. And I do take, I'll take an individual mistake and I'll allow it to define me for an extended period of time. And I know that's not healthy and even being someone who has written extensively on the topic and, you know, someone that I would consider, I consider myself a pretty, a pretty deep thinker. I kind of have to be to do what I do for a living, but
I'm not immune to the same, you know, mental struggles that most men are. And it's that feeling of, you know, being stupid that is really been something in my life that I've always kind of struggled with. And I do think it probably stems from when I was a teenager and I grew up in a very religious household. And I always just kind of felt like there was this overarching eye on me and I couldn't make mistakes. And so when I did
Even if they were very personal, private mistakes, when you grow up with this idea that God or some other being is always watching you, it's very hard to not internalize that mistake and beat yourself up for it over time. Do you think that men on average, and this is a generalized statement, it might not even matter that much, but maybe I'll just make an observation that it seems as though men are much more harsh on themselves when they have made a mistake
and that we are almost like conditioned to punish ourselves in the face of a mistake.
you know if we regret something there's almost like um an unwritten code or law within male culture that says like thou shall not forgive thyself for fucking up well how else are you supposed to learn if you don't beat yourself up right i mean i kind of think that's our uh that's our mo i mean you know even when you're trying to get in shape the way you talk to yourself as a guy like you know you look in the mirror and you'll be like god i'm such a fat fuck you know and
you beat yourself up to hopefully get in shape. And I do that with everything. And I don't know if it's something inherently male. I think it probably is, but it's just something that,
I started at an early age and there was times in my career where it really benefited me to be hard on myself. I mean, in my early 20s and early 30s when I was on this come up in my advertising career, I was very hard on myself when it came to my creative work. And I feel like that is what made me successful. And so it's been hard for me to not...
speak to myself that way even now when I'm working on different projects. But it's definitely something that I wouldn't want my son to do. And that's something that's kind of helped me just with the way I've talked to myself lately. I just imagine if someone was talking to my son this way, how would I feel about that? If I heard my son say this about himself, how would I feel about that? And it's definitely something that I know I need to work on. And I think
To go on what you said about society and why we do it as men, I think for the most part, we feel most fulfilled as a man when we feel powerful. When we make a mistake or we do something that derails us and we feel that powerlessness for a bit, it's very hard not to beat yourself up for that. It's interesting because I think for a lot of guys, most men have regrets in their life.
And I think for some men, their regrets are almost like everywhere. And I always go back to this. Do you know who Christopher Hitchens was? I know the name. I can't put a face to it in the moment. He's like this. I think he was called one of the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse. So he was like this big atheist who spoke out against religion.
different forms of religion and how constrictive they can be and yada, yada, yada. He was a very interesting character. But one of the things that I liked about what he said was choose your regrets. And it was this notion of we're all going to regret something. There's no getting out of here without some form of regret. And to say, oh, I live with no regrets is almost a kind of
illusion and fantasy that your life hasn't had some type of regret in it. And so I wonder what that looks like for us as men to be able to start to move towards a life where we choose the things that we're going to regret, the having kids, the not having kids, the starting the business, not starting it, traveling to that country, a
How do you approach regret? Is it something that you think about when you're making a decision or is it something that just informs the direction of your life in hindsight? I'm familiar with that concept. I've heard that concept, choose your regret. I just didn't know it came from him. And for the longest time in my life, I did not have many regrets in the sense that
Whenever I did fuck up or make a mistake, I would turn around and go, oh, I'm going to write something really good about this. Like I was able to quickly put purpose to all the mistakes I was making to a point that I started making them kind of intentionally. And this was definitely in my late 20s and early 30s when.
I was kind of on this come up with social media, you know, whatever you want to call it, quasi fame. And I almost relished the moments that were bad and the mistakes and the stupid decisions because it would feel me creatively. My real struggle with regret probably didn't start until the past few years following the pandemic when I did deal with some real issues.
financial hardship. I was working primarily in hospitality when the pandemic started as a creative director. That was most of my work. Hence, obviously, when travel was shuttered, I watched my income just dissipate. And that was when I really started beating myself up for decisions. And it was largely just because I didn't feel secure anymore. I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel like I had this financial foundation or I didn't feel like
I felt powerlessness. And so that's when I really started struggling with regrets. And I wouldn't say that the past few years I've chosen my regrets. I have simply tried to...
To make decisions that I could easily repair from if something was to go wrong, you know, in the sense that I've been overly cautious. And a lot of that comes from, you know, what happened with this, you know, what we talked about buying this house and then some career mishaps and not having the financial means that I was planning on having. So I've been overly cautious and I don't like myself as a cautious person, to be honest.
I don't think it suits my personality. I don't think it suits me creatively. I don't think it suits me as a person. It just doesn't individual. It's not me. I don't like being a cautious person. And so I have a very hard time these days with any kind of regrets. It just kind of reminds me of who I used to be and who I am now. And so I think most of my regret stems from the fact that I feel like I've just kind of lost myself in a lot of ways. And, um,
That's why I've largely taken a step back from social media and also why I've chosen to focus on, you know, some different creative outlets for the time being just to kind of, you know, rediscover some things that I enjoy working on. Or, you know, I kind of feel like I'm just being forced into a reinvention of myself, you know, if you were. You were talking before about...
Almost like motivating yourself through, I call it shame-based motivation or like dark motivation that we fuel or propel ourselves forward
by punishing ourselves, you know, of like, oh, look how, you know, you look in the mirror, you see your body, like don't like how you look and then you criticize yourself and then, you know, I got to get my, you know, sloppy ass to the gym. And I find that that does work for a period of time, but I find that for most men, it turns into some type of catastrophe or rock bottom.
And that at some point that fuel source inevitably runs out and we have to find a different way of operating. I'm curious if you've seen that as well, or if you've seen guys that can make it through unscathed by leveraging that, that sort of that fuel. Yeah. I mean, I think you nailed it. I think it does work for a time, you know, just like you can kind of walk across hot coals for a period of time, but if you stand on them for too long, you're going to get burned. And so when it does become a habit, I think it,
it has a tendency to leak into all areas of your life. And I think that's the bigger issue there is, you know, if you use it only as motivation for like one very specific element of your life and you're able to kind of compartmentalize, you know, compartmentalize it, which I don't think anybody is, you know, once you start, you know, as you would say, shame-based motivating yourself across all areas of your life, there's absolutely no way that you're going to be able to sustain that. And you're going to feel completely,
incapable and powerless over time in every area. And I think once that's become habitual, that's probably one of the hardest habits to break in my mind. Before we hit record, you were talking to me about this project that you've sort of just been consumed by and immersed by. And I would love for you to just give a little bit of context for what that project has been and how it's been shaping your life because it sounds like it's been really intense. Yeah.
Yeah, this project broke me. I took on a project, ghostwriting, a memoir for an individual that at the time I wasn't open to doing because I'd always done my own writing. You know, I've worked very hard to make a name for myself as, you know, my own writing source and writing my own ideas. And so.
I took on this project to help the Sinjabila tell their story because it felt like a story that needed to be told. And honestly, I just, I really respect him. And are you able to give some, some details on his story or is that, I can give a little bit. So, you know, it's kind of the details of his story. Um,
He came to L.A. as a young boy, got bullied a lot, ended up getting into a street gang in the 80s during the height of the L.A. gang wars. And he did a long amount of time in prison. And he got out and ended up completely turning his life around. And I did so much research on these prison elements of his life just through watching.
his own storytelling, but also interviewing people close to him. And then just my own research on sites like Reddit, where you can kind of really dive deep into a rabbit hole if you so choose. And so I don't know that it's something I would ever do again because...
I'm very obsessive with my work. I'm very obsessive with everything I devote myself to. I'm an all or nothing person in every sense of the definition. Whatever hobby I pick up, I'm obsessed with it for the time I'm obsessed with it until I put it down and move on to another obsession. And so this book required me to inhabit so much of his life and his story that
that, you know, I was having nightmares. I was having nightmares about seeing family members and loved ones in prison. I was having nightmares about my own time in prison and it was really consuming me. And I kind of, not intentionally, I neglected my own life. I became so consumed by this project for this about a six month period of time where it just kind of feels like a total haze. And that's why I say, you know, it feels like I've lived so many different lifetimes, probably because one of those, I felt like I was living his. And so it was during this time period when I just
kind of let my own life slip away that things really just kind of all crumbled down on me. Can you give some insight into what you started to learn or understand about the prison system? Because I think that's a very interesting component of society, but also men's lives. I mean, you know, more men are incarcerated than women. I think one of the things it brings up is like there's, you ever heard of young man syndrome? No, what is that? Young male syndrome. So
Young male syndrome is basically, it's like a pattern of increased risk-taking between the ages of 15 and 35. Usually it's, I mean, usually it's specifically around 15 to like 26.
And it's where men exude much more dangerous behaviors, addictive patterns. It's the highest rate of suicide amongst men happens within that period. The highest amount of like accidental death happens in that time, overdoses, addictions. It all happens within this period of life where young men are trying to figure out manhood. And I think that there's this railing against, part of it is like railing against authority
You know, and figuring out how we take risks and all these different pieces about what it means to be a man shows up in this sort of period of our life where we're trying to figure out how to be a man.
And I think for a lot of guys, you know, I know a lot of men that have gone to prison or served time or, you know, been arrested. And I'm very, very curious about what your experience was as you started to research the prison system and like some of your takeaways. I mean, it's interesting you say that because this individual did go to prison when he was 16. He was tried as an adult. He had a couple of years in a youth juvenile facility and then was transferred to an adult facility. And I mean, primarily the thing I've learned is I don't want to go to prison.
Um, that's just, it's not for me. Um, but one of the things that he said to me that always, and I've, I've told people this in multiple conversations is when he was transferred to an adult facility, he was scared shitless. He didn't know what to expect. And he said that doing time, the adult facility in a lot of ways was easier than the juvenile facility. And in a lot of ways was easier than life because there's so many rules, um,
You know, for example, if you step on a man's shoe and you don't apologize, you know, if you bump a guy, you apologize. You know, you have rules where to be where, you know, everyone has their own assigned little area. And he said, once you figure those out,
It made it pretty easy to, you know, keep your nose clean, but also you could find ways to manipulate the system or you could find ways to get what you needed. And so those rules that are basically put in place by the inmates, he said, made life easier. And so when it was time for him to get out, he remembers calling a friend of his and, you know, telling his buddy, I don't want to come out.
You know, I have a good life in here. I've made a name for myself. He was very successful in the prison system and he found ways to barter and trade. And he had a lot of respect and he didn't want to leave. And so then this book, I really wanted to tackle kind of just this, you know, how does someone come from being someone's sweet little loved boy to being, you
you know, an individual that feels so at home in prison, they don't want to leave prison and, you know, kind of all the in between. And I mean, I'll be honest, what happened to him when he was young with the bullying and what he experienced, particularly as an immigrant, if I had had the same course of life that he had, I absolutely would have joined a gang as well. The time that he joined it, the way it happened. And that was kind of what the challenge I really wanted to take with this book is I wanted to dissect the,
how someone becomes, in his words, the best worst that you can possibly be and really have some empathy for the process. And I mean, I grew up almost polar opposite of him. I grew up very religious. I have my own ways of trying to rebel. And I got myself into all kinds of trouble, but not the kind of stuff he was getting into at the same age. And so I've always kind of had this
This odd voyeuristic interest in prison life. And I mean, it's evident that a lot of people in society do. It's the reason why shows like Locked Up Raw or all those gangland shows are so popular is because people are just so intrigued by this. And so selfishly, the project was very interesting to work on. But at the same time, it was very hard to work on because some of the stuff that he told me, some of the stuff these men go through are just how lost they
They can become and how quickly that can happen. It's just, it's a, it's mind boggling in a sense of particularly when you are a father of your, of a young boy and you try and just kind of timeline it out, how that might happen. It was,
I wish that I could talk more about it. I wish the book was done. I wish the book was in a publisher's hands and ready to be released. I'm reworking it right now to get it more ready for that process. And it's easily the best work I've ever done and the most interesting.
proud of what I've done and I think his story needed to be told. And I just, I, I'm not trying to be coy. Well, I am trying to be coy. I just kind of have to be right now because the project's not ready to be talked about. Yeah. Fair enough, man. Well, maybe just, well, I want to touch on two things. One has been your experience, uh,
being so immersed into something because I think that a lot of men in some ways crave that and they idolize that notion of like being so immersed into something. The other thing before we get into that is have you seen the show Adolescence? I have. I watched it last week and I recommend it in my sub stack. It was incredibly well done. What did you think about that when it comes to what we've been talking around recently?
risk-taking regrets you know how young men are being raised today I know there's like social commentary in there but what was your takeaway from that and you know how did you as a father of a boy right you have a son if I'm not mistaken yeah I got a son he's three and a half yeah you know what were some of your thoughts on that show I haven't talked about it yet on on the podcast I think it's every parent's worst nightmare depending on what it you know either side of that and what I like about
about what they did is similarly what I was talking about earlier, how they kind of showed how the pattern happened. And I have a nephew. My brother told me they had to, you know, he's young. I think he's 13 or 14. He started getting into watching a lot of Andrew Tate stuff on TikTok, wherever else he was getting into. And he was developing all these just crazy ideologies at such a young age because he
I think being a teenager is already hard enough. I couldn't imagine being a teenager with social media, honestly. I think, you know, we kind of grew up in the last golden age of being a teenager.
And you're so impressionable at that age. And I remember some of the stuff that I believed or some of the stuff I thought or felt, and it was just so fucking stupid. And to think now that you can have this large collective kind of encouraging that behavior or influencing that behavior and just the reckless nature of social media.
It's scary. I mean, even as adults, you understand if you go down the algorithm for too long or if you allow yourself to stay in one subject for too long, it's going to...
it kind of erodes your view of the world. And there's been a lot of talk of that recently, especially coming out of this pandemic about these little vacuums we find ourselves in online. And everyone's aware of it if you spend enough time online and allow the algorithm just to keep kicking you stuff. And I think what adolescents did, I understand that it's, I think it's based on some true story. I don't know enough about that. I didn't research into that, but I think what they did
As far as illustrating everybody's role in it, you know,
the parents, the school, the friends, and how all these different influences can kind of, you know, completely shift someone's view of the world, I think was very brilliantly done. And then obviously as a creative, just the cinematography and the actors and those one-shot formats were incredible to watch. And I would like to do more research into the story that I believe it's based on. I'm not sure it is, but I think it is based on a story. And I know that's where they're getting some of the flack for it. But...
I think if you can kind of not politicize it and just view it for what it is, I think it's brilliant what it depicted, honestly. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that really stood out to me. And it's been interesting to watch the commentary on the other side of that, that this film has become, especially in the UK, or not film, this TV series has become this sort of
tip of the spear to really push through some conversation about misogyny and try and maybe broaden a perspective or a narrative of how toxic men are. And I think one of the things that when I watched the show, at least, one of the things that I observed was like, this is just a normal kid. And it was like a very normal family.
And, you know, dad had some stuff going on and he and the boy had some stuff going on. And, you know, there's probably missed opportunities for connection and real attachment bonding and attachment building and knowing what was happening in that boy's life. And I think one of the big things that stood out to me is like when there's an absence of a male role model, and I see this everywhere right now, when there's an absence of a male role model, something else will fill that void.
And I think in too many households around the world, but specifically within the West, young men are being raised by online platforms. They're being raised by the internet, you know, and they're not being raised by men in their life. And that is dangerous. Yeah. See, I didn't view it as toxic. And I think if you went into it with the idea of it being a toxic narrative, you could probably find a lot of things to disagree with.
I viewed it so... I had no idea what the show was. I had just left set. I was directing a commercial for a different project, and someone said... A cinematographer said, hey, you have to watch this show because they've done every episode in one shot. And so I approached it with this background, creative background of being like, hey, I want to see how they executed these one-shot formats. I want to see how these actors pulled it off. And I had...
absolutely no idea what it was about. That was rad. That part was super cool. I went into it strictly like, I'm going to observe how they shot this. And so for me, I just thought it was an incredibly detailed account of how the internet can influence someone. Totally.
And whether you're a kid or an adult, I mean, I've seen this happen with best friends of mine. I've seen people that I used to be friends with four or five years ago that are different people now. And I know it's because of what they're consuming on the internet. And anyone that wants to believe they're immune to that, I think is fooling themselves. I think if you allow yourself to fall into an echo chamber for too long, which way too many people do, and you doom scroll too much shit. And then if you also have people in your life that are doing the same thing,
It's a recipe for disaster at any age. And so I'm glad I didn't know about too much controversy of it going into it. I saw a little bit of it on Twitter just because I was kind of Googling it to see what other cinematographers were saying about it, essentially. But I love what you said about just this lack of this, a lack of a father figure. Something else will fill the void because, I mean, it's true. I have friends of mine who grew up without dads, and I've seen the way they attach to things
outside of themselves or the way they almost have viewed me as a father figure at times in their life. I can see just kind of the way they are with the women in their life. And I know a lot of it stems from them not having a role model growing up. And I've talked with some of my friends about this. And it's one of the things that was, we talked about it briefly, but my son's mother and I separated for about 16 months.
And we just reconciled just recently and are working things out. But during that time we were separated, you know, living separately. One of the things that ate away at me the most that I struggled with the most was this idea of not being there enough for my son. And I came, sorry, if you can hear my dogs in the back, I came to the conclusion that I just didn't want to be a stepdad. I didn't want to be a stepdad. And I also, I didn't want to have kids that,
that weren't like directly his siblings. Like I still wanted to have like this family. And I was like, you know, I came to this idea that if I was going to have more kids, I wanted them to be like directly his,
you know, connected to him. So the same mother, same father kind of thing. And so it was something that just really, really bothered me. Just feeling like I wasn't there. Yeah. I think we, like we've, we often underestimate how impactful primary attachments are and then the role that those parents can have in just setting up a kid in life in general. I think one of the other things I'll just touch on this and we'll, we'll keep going, but in the show, um,
There was two things that stood out about the dad, and this isn't to put everything on the dad. I think I just want to make that clear. But there's two things that stood out. One was this lack of physical touch.
Like he never really touched his son until one specific moment. He never touched his daughter in the show. He only gave his wife physical contact, which I thought was interesting. And then the other one was his anger in how it was expressed at the end, which is almost, I kind of debated around this because I was like, you know, if my son was in jail for stabbing somebody to death,
How regulated would I feel? Probably not very fucking grounded. But it's just, you know, I think we as men have such an impact on the people around us depending on where we're at emotionally. And we can have such an intense charge to be around, you know, that's hard sometimes for people. We don't recognize it.
So I was curious about your thoughts on when a man is super stressed, how do you deal with that? Because I find that a lot of men are trying to shield their kids and shield their family. And in doing so, sometimes they don't bring the real depth of what they're dealing with to anybody in their life. And so how do you navigate your own anger, your own stress when you're overwhelmed? I mean, like with this project for just like I've been
immersed in it for six months and it's like when is this going to end potentially so I'm curious about that I'm glad you brought up just to backtrack real quickly the lack of physical touch in that show because I didn't know if it was intentional or not but there was the scene where
they were interrogating him early on in the first episode and the dad was sitting next to him and the kid was crying and I said to my son's mother I was like damn it touch your kid like why isn't he touching his kid like there's absolutely no way I could sit there and watch my son cry and not touch him like why isn't he touching his kid and so I just thought maybe it was it was bad acting I was like I was
I was like, that's not realistic. That's not what a dad would do. And so I, you know, hearing from your end of it, I think it was probably very intentional. I think they were trying to illustrate that. So I'm glad you said that because it was actually a scene that I remember, you know, commenting on because it did bother me.
When it comes to managing my anger, I'm not the best at it. I mean, I'm pretty good at managing my anger. I tend to just kind of go on a walk or kind of go work out or get it out. But my stress is definitely something that I know I need to get better at managing because I don't know if it's just my line of work. I like to kind of probably give myself too much credit and think, oh, I'm just a writer, so I can't be understood. But I think all writers do that to an extent. I think all artists do. And I think it's just some stupid habit we have.
But like when I'm not working on a project, I'm still thinking about it constantly. And so I'll be in the middle of a conversation or be in the middle of something else and I
I'm stressed out because I haven't stopped thinking about what I should be doing instead, which is I should be writing. I should be working on this. I should be getting more pages done. That's why this particular project, it's two and a half years at this point, it really kind of changed who I was as a person in a lot of ways because it just filled me with so much stress that
I hadn't really experienced before because when I'm working on my own things, when I'm immersed deeply in my own stuff, I find it very, very gratifying. You know, I get like this big release when I feel like I spent four or five hours working on a project and I haven't really had that with this one. I think a lot of it comes from I almost feel
I feel like I owe other people something. Like I feel like I'm behind. I feel like I need to get this done more quickly. And so I've carried my stress in ways that I typically never would. And the only way that I know how to how to manage my stress is is to get up early and get something done.
Um, I have to feel like I'm actively working a problem. I have to feel like I'm actively handling something. And so the days when I do get up early and I work on something or I get up early and I have some time for myself or I, I get up before, you know, the house wakes up or my dogs start barking that you heard earlier. Um, when I get up and have that quiet time to just, just handle things, it's monumentally made a difference in my life.
And, you know, I used to have this idea that a lot of people did where I get to a point in my career where I wouldn't feel the need to work as much or I wouldn't want to work as much. And I've come to the realization that I'd probably just be far more miserable because it's in me.
you know, that work or just having those couple hours to force myself to get something done that it's, it benefits me in ways that I could never let go of. And I think if I stopped doing it, I think my stress would just be through the roof for the most part, because I would just feel like
I would feel purposeless. I would feel very, um, yeah, I would just feel like I would just feel like I'm wasting away. And I think that would just affect everyone in my life much more. I'm just a happier person when I'm, when I'm doing things, when I'm tackling things, when I'm, you know, actively pursuing a large, deeply, you know, immersed project.
One of the things that I wanted to ask you was, how many books have you written now? Like half a dozen? I mean, I have like 10. I think that I've written a couple of those with children's books and then including like what I've ghost written, I'm at like 11 or 12. So what's it been like for you to, because maybe I'll preface this question with a little bit of context. I think that a lot of men are working a job
or have a project that's going on and they want to build something on the side, right? Like they want to build a side business. They want to have a creative outlet on the side and there's not going to be income coming in for that. And
They want to start, but they want to start something. And I think the interesting thing about what you've been doing is you've been working, but then all of a sudden you took on this two and a half year project. I'm sure in the beginning you didn't know it was going to be two and a half years. I was planning on doing it in six to eight months. Yeah, there you go. That's what I timeline for. So you took on this project, but there was no upfront income on that project. Yeah.
And I'm curious about what that's been like and what's continued to drive you to do that. Because I think for a lot of men, especially the guys, like I remember when I was working at nine to five and I was like, I want out of this, I want to go build something for myself. I found it really hard sometimes to find the motivation to go and do that because there wasn't the...
There wasn't the sort of immediate security, financial income that was coming in. So how have you approached that? It was a mistake. No, to be honest, it was. I probably should have approached it differently. I'm a man of my word, though. And I think anyone who knows me knows that. I'm loyal to a fault. And...
I told them I would do it. I told them I would finish it. I told my literary agent I had this project for her to start shopping around. And because I told people in my life that I would do it, I'm going to do it. And so I'm motivated more by keeping my word than probably anything at this point. But also, I truly believe in what I'm doing. And I believe in the story that's being told. And I believe in the work that I'm putting into it. I do believe it's my best work. And that's
helped me stay motivated. Because when I do go back and read pages that I've written six months ago, sometimes I'm like, oh shit, I wrote that? That's fucking good. And so I really do believe in the project. But more so what you're saying about building something on the side, I just had this conversation with somebody yesterday. I wish I'd never left my nine to five some days, honestly. Because I felt that
I still feel this way that some of my best writing came when I had a stable job. I was willing to take more risks and I was willing to, I had more fun with it, honestly, when I was just writing at night and on the weekends. And I mean, I had written, I had, I think four or five books out when I did leave my full-time job. And, you know,
I was making good money on the side and I did the math and I was like, hey, I can totally support myself as a writer. And I have. I mean, I've been writing full time for almost seven years now. And it's been my primary outlet. And there are still a lot of days that I wish I would have kept it as a side gig.
I think that in a lot of ways, when I have safety in my life, whether it's a relationship or a job or financial stability, I'm willing to take more risks in my writing. Not just in like what I say, but also in just like the concepts I'm willing to approach or the projects I'm willing to take on. And, you know, for anyone who thinks, you know, I'd love to leave my full-time job to pursue something
something creative full-time i understand the enticement of it and maybe i'm just in this weird growth phase where i'm kind of like writing between where i feel like i'm gonna be where i want to be but i'm not quite there yet and so i kind of have this weird um
this weird romance about the past like a lot of us kind of fall into and I kind of tend to look back and go oh life was better when life was better you know during this and so you know for those people that that do want to pursue something creative full-time I think there's a lot of benefit in doing it part-time I think and I know a lot of people tell you not to make don't make your passion your paycheck because it does change the way you view it and I honestly I honestly believe it does but
But also, I think that it's because I'm in this weird little in-between phase where I'm pursuing, like, I'm completely changing the kind of books I'm writing. I mean, I went from writing a lot of primarily self-help or primarily, like, short storytelling snippets told in, like, humorous ways. I mean, my most popular book is that fucking history book.
Um, that were also working and turn into like an adult animated series. And, you know, that style of writing versus what I'm doing now or what I want to do with my career couldn't be farther apart. And so I'm just kind of in this, like I said, I'm in this weird little caterpillar phase where I'm just like this gross, disgusting cocoon of a creature right now. And hopefully in six months from now, I come out with some wings because, because right now I feel like a pile of fucking goo.
That's like where I'm at creatively. And so I think my read on the creative process is probably a little different than most. So what would you have done differently with this project? How would you have approached it differently? I would have done differently. I mean, it's hard to think that way because I do think the book that has been birthed in this two and a half years is incredible. I would have definitely found a way to secure myself more money.
um, along the way. And I would have, I would have held off writing longer. I think, I think I would have spent more time researching before I started writing. Cause I ended up having to rewrite a lot of what I did. Cause I was just so gung ho to get started on it. And I definitely would have spent more time in the interview process and just kind of trying to figure out the overall big picture before diving in. I think that was one of my mistakes is I jumped into it too quick. Cause I was just
I was so just intrigued by the story. And the other thing I would have done differently, looking back, there's probably three things in my life, when we talk about regrets, to bring this back to where we were. There's three things in my life that I regret more than anything. And I probably still regret them and I still allow them to beat myself up. And one is I left my job too early.
I had a pretty good job and I left for a combination of personal reasons, but also because I wanted to pursue writing full time. And looking back, I think it was more of an egotistical decision than it was a well thought out decision. I think I was a little more frustrated with what was going on politically, you know, like office politics kind of stuff. And I allowed that to kind of make me, you know,
I made a decision too soon. And so that regret, I still sometimes beat myself up over. And then the two major regrets I beat myself up over is I invested a substantial amount of money in a company that ended up losing. And prior to that, I had this rule. I told all my friends, like I would tell my friends like, hey, I don't invest in anything I don't have skin in.
Like I don't invest in companies that aren't mine. I don't invest in things that aren't my ideas. I don't pursue things that aren't my creative endeavors. Like I don't invest in things that I don't have control over because I don't want the, I don't want to have my money tied up in someone else's decisions. And I broke that rule and I invested in a company that I'd heard, you know, had all this promise and I lost my ass on it. And it was a lot of money. And I beat myself up over that someday still, because I'd had this rule, uh,
Don't invest in things that you're not involved in. Don't just give your money to someone and think they're going to do it right. And I broke it and it bit me in the fucking ass. So that, I still beat myself up. And then buying that house because I counted my chickens before they were hatched, as they say. And so that's why I'm overly cautious now with projects too, though, is even with everything I've done, all those mistakes, I can look at them now and I am a much more curious
keen negotiator with things I'm working on now and just with my business model and what I'm getting involved in. And so I can, obviously I've learned from, but those are probably the regrets that, you know, if anyone was to ask me for advice, I'd be like, hey, these are the three biggest mistakes I've made in my life. Don't fucking do this. Don't make an egotistical decision when it involves your income. That's going to bite you in the ass. Don't invest in things you're not truly going to be invested in. If you don't have like skin in the game or if you don't realize
really believe in what they're doing, don't invest in it because the stress is not worth the potential upside. And then the third would be the old adage, do not count your chickens before they're hatched. You need to make decisions based on the reality of where you are at the time
And I made a decision to, I overbought, to be honest, I overbought. I bought a house that was too big and too expensive for me with the anticipation of this different contract coming through that didn't happen. And I think if you could avoid doing those three things in your life, you'd probably make a lot of really smart decisions. Yeah.
Yeah, I get that, man. I get what you're saying about don't make your passion your paycheck. I think I tried to do that with singing and then photography. I still love doing photography all the time, but I don't want to make money off of it because that shit feels very stressful. It'll ruin it for you. But man, I have a very deep level of purpose in what I do. And I do have a passion for what I do now, but there's something different I've found for me within the creative space.
around writing or photography or music that when I've tried to have those be careers,
I do think that it takes almost like a certain type of personality where you almost have to have like, take like a very myopic approach to it of like, I cannot see myself literally doing anything else in the entire world. And I'm just going to do this one thing. And I don't necessarily have that. You know, it's like, it's why I have the podcast and my business and I read a book and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, I love kind of dabbling in a few different areas, but
I appreciate you sharing those regrets. I'm going to take a hard right turn and ask you why therapy made you worse. Maybe give the audience some context for why I'm asking that question. So in 2019, when I left,
my advertising job, which was the one major regret I just talked about. I moved to LA. I was living in New York City. I moved to LA with the idea that I was quickly going to find another job and everyone was going to want to hire me because I had this great portfolio and I'd done a lot of work and I didn't find work. And I was beating myself up. I felt like I'd made this huge mistake and I was like, God damn it. Why did I do that?
And, you know, at the same time, I got a large publishing contract.
And so I had, you know, this big book deal. But I was just so upset with myself for making this foolish decision that I just kind of eroded. I just eroded my own self-confidence. And so that was probably my first real bout with, you know, what I would consider depression. I think a lot of people confuse depression with like just general like sadness or just feeling down, which we all do. That was my first real bout with actual depression. And it was because I would just beat myself up over and over again.
And that's when I started going to therapy. And first few times I went, I felt great. And looking back, it was just because I dumped. And I hadn't emotionally dumped on someone before. It just felt good to get it out. I'm like, oh, this is fucking working. But really, I just was spilling my guts. And so I just felt lighter. Like someone I could bitch to that wasn't going to judge me kind of thing. And then I stopped going for a bit. And then...
Over the past couple of years, I started approaching the idea again. When my relationship started going sour, I started trying to seek therapy again to see if it would help me out while I was dealing with some of these issues in my life.
And I found that what therapy did for me, and I've talked to a lot of my other male friends about this, is it filled me with doubts that I never had before in the sense that I'd be talking about an issue and they'd be like, oh, but what about this? But what about this? But what about this? And
Rather than empowering me and making me feel like I was coming to a solution, I was like, oh shit, now I got all these other things to worry about. Now when I have this one thought, it could be connected to these six other thoughts. Then I started doubting things that previously were just never something I was ever concerned about. That's when I was like, whoa, this is actually not helping me at all. This is making me feel more fucking...
fucked up. Like it's making me feel like I have more problems than I did. And I've found more therapy, let's say I've found more therapy and I have found more peace in just a long walk by myself than I ever have in like a therapy session. And I think that I think a lot of that is because, you know, what I needed or what I need is
And I think with the therapy model, and maybe this is my experience. I mean, I can't speak for all of it. And I know you do some of this yourself. But I didn't need to be coddled or I didn't need to be told that I was okay. I didn't need to be told that this was normal. What I needed to feel was I needed to feel like I had the means of fixing it. I needed to feel powerful. I needed to feel like I was capable. And rather than feeling capable, I would just continually be felt
I was made to feel just more broken in a way. Like, hey, guess what? That's okay that you feel this way because this happened to you and this happened to you. So it's okay to feel that way. And really, I just needed tools to fix it. And I found those tools on my own, just walking by myself and allowing myself to think. And then also...
I had this road trip last October with a buddy of mine when I moved from Florida to LA. It was me and this friend that I've had for about 15 years and my two great Danes in the back of a truck. And we drove from West Palm, Florida to LA. And we did this over eight days. And that eight-day road trip was worth eight years of therapy to me.
Like just having time with a good friend. And you know, when you're driving, you can't be on your phone. You can't be distracted with all this dumb shit and just talking and like dreaming about the future and talking about business ideas and just like,
Thinking of things we could build together and do together like that right there did more for me. And like I got off that road trip and I felt like a completely new person that did more for me than any amount of therapy I've ever done. And I there was a time period where I was I mean, I went to therapy a lot for a while there because I had a nice HSA and I was like, oh, cool, I can afford it. So I was like, I was like I was like totally unhinged with it. I was like, hey, I got the money in this HSA. Let's fucking blow it.
I'm going to fix my mental health. And I've talked to countless, countless men, good friends of mine. And I've just, you know, friends that were going through divorces or relationship trouble or, you know, business trouble. And I've heard they're doing therapy and I'll just say, Hey, let me ask you something. I just, I just want to know if this was your experience too. And I kind of tell them what I experienced. And every single one of them said, exactly. It's exactly what it did to me. It made me feel worse. And yeah,
I just don't think that the modern structure or the way that therapy is approached in an office setting, unless you have a very unique
I don't think that it's built from in. I just, I truly, I'm not anti-therapy. I wouldn't say I'm anti-therapy, but I'm definitely don't do therapy unless you tried everything else first kind of mindset. I was going to say your book is called Speech Therapy. It's kind of a joke. You can't be that anti-therapy. Yeah, exactly. That's like me joking or riffing on it though. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I mean, a big part of, it's why our slogan is it's not therapy, it's training.
And it's really about how do you as a man develop competence and a broader capacity in the areas of life that you feel like you suck at? Because that's what we really are desiring. We want competence. We want to feel capable. And a lot of times, I just spoke at one of the largest psychology conferences ever.
in America and taught therapists and psychologists a workshop on how to work with men. And it was one of the things that I talked about is that the model of therapy now today is so much about just emoting and talking about your problems and explaining why those problems exist
without actually showing here's how you solve those problems. Here are some solutions. Here are ways for you to develop competency within yourself and in these areas of your life
So that you actually feel better. And I think that's a lot of men's experiences, you know, when they go to therapy. I think that's very, very true. So I appreciate you sharing that. I appreciate you actually not making me feel crazy and telling me that I'm wrong. Yeah. I've told other people that primarily women and like they all just, they just agree, they couldn't disagree more.
And I just think it's a fundamental difference between the way men and women work, honestly. Totally. And the model, I call it the therapeutic industrial complex, has created, has a ton of power within our modern society. I mean, therapy speak is fucking everywhere. And it's largely female dominated. You know, like the therapy industry is very female dominated now. And I
I think the way that most therapists approach working with clients is very female-oriented, and it does work for a lot of women. But when a lot of men go into those spaces and they're met with a modality that's geared towards women, which again isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can serve a purpose sometimes, they walk out of there not feeling like they got what they really needed.
And so anyway, that's just a sidebar. Tell me about speech therapy because you've got this new book coming out. Talk to me about it. Yes. I mean, so speech therapy is, it's an idea I had for a long time with a book and I recently got it with a new publisher and so it's going to come out with HarperCollins in a couple of weeks. So really what it is, is
I found in my own life, we'll have these little moments, you know, like you'll lose your keys or you'll get caught in traffic or you'll be late for a meeting. And if you don't quickly kind of get on top of that and not allow that to happen,
you know, the stress to continue. I mean, you can ruin your day or a week or a month over stupid little shit. And so the book really is meant to be something that's picked up and put down when you're in one of these moments, like you're beating yourself up over a financial mistake, you're feeling regret for some decision you made, you know, you lost your keys or you're having a beef with one of your best friends, like they're quick little two to three page moments
And so I call it speech therapy because I intentionally wrote it very casual. I wrote it as if I was sitting down with a friend at a bar over a beer and they said, Hey, this is what happened to me today. What would you, what advice would you have me? And so, you know, the title itself is kind of a joke on the idea that like, you know, these are quick little pick me up speeches that almost operate the way, you know, you would like therapy to operate. Like it kind of acknowledges what's going on. Almost all of it is taken from my own life. Um,
Pretty much all of it. A lot of the chapters I talk about my own experience with this and what helped me get out of it. And providing some tools or ideas or thought processes that helped me in just these quick, super quick formats. And I cover a couple of heavy topics in there. Like when my first dog died.
That was like my, you know, I'd lived a pretty luxurious life in the sense that I hadn't really experienced death with anything close to me until I was in my 20s and my dog died. And it was like a very hard thing for me to process. You know, I'd never really had a grandparent die. I never really had a close friend die. I was very fortunate in that sense. And so when my dog died in my 20s, I was like, holy fuck, this is hard.
And so I included quick chapters in there about dealing with the loss of a pet and kind of what helped me deal with it. And so it's a mixture of really lighthearted stuff, but also some heavier material. And like I said, it's meant to be picked up and put down. It's not meant to be a book that you sit down and digest all at once. It's when you need it, how you need it, real casual, just life advice. Yeah.
Love that. And what I will say is I really love your writing. Just genuinely, I really love your writing. Like reading your books have been great. And after you came on the last show, got to dive in to speech therapy, the OG. And it does, when I've read your work, it does feel like two friends having a conversation over coffee or at the bar. And I love this sort of like natural style. And it's a breath of fresh air in a sort of like very
almost like calculated and scripted form of giving personal development or however we want to couch that. So I definitely recommend that people go and check it out. When's the latest version coming out? April 22nd, it'll be available, but it can be pre-ordered now at speechtherapybook.com or people can just search on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. But I appreciate you saying that because one of the things I've always tried to do as a writer is
is I don't like speaking down to people. I don't like pretending that I have all the answers because I don't. I mean, just as we started this podcast is basically me admitting all the fucking mistakes I've made in my life. And it's odd when you get to this, you get to a stage in your life where people start to recognize you or I'll do a book signing and people will come to me and tell me how much I've helped them. And
I have just this weird, I still have this weird, weird feeling about it because I don't see myself as an expert in anything. I just think that I'm willing to talk about things in ways that perhaps other people aren't. So,
So that's really, really what I've tried to do with my work in every form is just relate to people by just almost being myself in a sense. Awesome, man. I love that. I love that. Well, where can people follow along with your work and your journey? I mean, I have Instagram. If you use church like Kyle Creek, the captain, I'm not as active on there as I used to be. And I probably need to fix that.
but I do still use it. I used to use it. I mean, daily now it's kind of like a once a week kind of thing, but Instagram is probably the primary place. And then from there, there's like links to my sub stack and other ways to, to get ahold of me. Beauty. We'll have the links to all that in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me again, my friend, and great to see you. And for everybody that's out there, if you know somebody that needs to hear this episode, man it forward, share it with them, check out Kyle's work. We'll have the link to his latest book in the show notes and
And until next time, Conor Beaton signing off.