Alternate Realities with Long & Thick

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the long and thick podcast where we help you navigate

the noise and cut through the bullshit and the health and wellness space, perhaps not

today, but we generally try to service that ambition whenever possible.

Dr. Justin Tronifer, Grant Tories III.

How the hell are you?

In proper repetitive fashion, we're freshly-been to be-

Freshly-bund.

It is still Easter.

Still Easter.

And it's very delicious outside to where there's prime.

Yep.

I'm feeling good.

Feeling, you know, pretty good.

I did share with Daniel have some knee funk going on and I know neither him nor I are allowed

to have any ailments.

Absolutely not.

I can only fix them, but we're failures otherwise.

Yeah.

So I'm just a fucking fraud.

So how are you?

Well, we can hang it up now.

So it's been a good ride.

Yeah.

Well, just like yeah, last time.

Yeah.

I am delightful.

It's again, beautiful weather outside.

I love that we get to do this.

This is going to be something that we're going to call the alternate realities episode.

But what, aside from hip funk, what's new, what's, give me some good.

Something good.

Let's see.

I got a pretty sick card the other day found for a good price when he says that he means

Pokemon card.

He is an avid collector and investor.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I many episodes back talks about this one bird.

Do you know who Lodios is?

It's like a blue.

Pass my time.

I was a, I was a, you were just red.

Red and blue only.

Okay.

So this is, yeah.

I think it is second gen though, meaning the following generation, anyway, I got one

of these cool silver border cards that are hard to find sort of clean for a pretty good

price.

So I'm excited about that and some other goodies.

I am thinking about sending us some stuff away for grading.

Yeah.

There's some interesting PSA scandals that have been going on.

They have been taking cards, grading them a nine and the price disparity between something

that gets a nine versus a 10 can be several thousand dollars if not like 30 to 40 thousand

dollars.

And so sometimes they'll take a card that is a 10 quality, tell the person that sent it

in.

Yeah.

We're calling it a nine.

Do you want to buy it?

Do you want to sell it to us and they'll buy it?

No.

Sell it as a 10 crap.

I mean, no surprise.

Of course.

Today's world, but that's crap.

Yeah.

So there's another company called Tag that uses like an AI software to grade.

As opposed to human graders that a lot of people will say like the joke is, what, what

was the mood of like the greater that you got that day like?

And so I'll probably do that because I also don't want to buy into that same bullshit,

but that's just one of those industry things.

What's new in the thy swirl to just getting back into you working out myself.

I think I have another lift that I'll try to approach this evening.

Nice.

So definitely it was so rough for my first one back.

Can you hit a run?

Hit it.

Yeah.

A little run.

A little run.

A little run.

Tiny, tiny run.

Good.

For me, which is seldom in the course of my life.

But we're trying to get back there in the interest of health longevity, cardio.

I know.

Sorry, folks.

It's a non-negotiable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to be better in my older age.

I'm about to turn 39.

Yep.

And just in just a matter of hours, we're true.

Well, technically, when this airs, it'll be behind us a couple of hours.

Yeah.

When this comes, no.

No.

It'll be a week for thinking about it.

Oh, true.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah.

We don't even know our own release schedule.

But either way, I'm turning old soon.

No.

But yeah.

So everything's great.

I'm excited to get some film scans back from my Patagonia trip.

That's right.

So that's exciting.

Hopefully the camera that I had that froze solid on the mountain was still able to function properly.

Post falling out.

It seemed like it did.

Does it work now?

Yeah.

The only thing that could have been an SU is the lubricants may have gotten too thick

on the shutter, which may have slowed it down.

This particular film camera does have a very fast shutter for what it is.

So even still.

You got to just give it one of those and one of those little things.

Hopefully, it doesn't need to be CLAed, which is like a full reset and maintenance on

it.

Because you just got this now.

You have a career.

Fuck me.

Prior to departure.

No, no.

I've had this camera for a year or two now.

Oh, but I thought that you get a little point in you guy.

I got you.

Yeah.

That's seemingly working well as well.

So you have alternate realities.

Yeah.

Explain.

Explain the fun that is ahead of us here.

This is also a fucking freshly hatched idea that the second he said this, I was like, yes,

this is going to be good.

So looking at where our timeline may have changed, whether it be half of their lives

very early in our lives, different career paths or imagine imagined outcomes in our life.

What were they?

Where do they not happen?

But furthermore, imagining they did happen, how are we going to talk like we've already

exemplified that reality and describe our experiences as an alternate reality being?

Yeah.

For some of them, we're going to go through three each, yeah.

Yeah.

Do you want to start?

You want me to start?

I will start.

Please.

So my alternate reality, when I was much younger, my end all be always baseball player.

Okay.

How are you going to be talking?

When I first hatched this idea, I mean, I was in Little League.

I had a new T ball, but I was in Little League to like AAA.

Was that like five, six?

No.

Um, like played from like nine through 14.

Okay.

Nice.

So I was like, at that time, you were like, I'm going to do this.

Um, I think it was more like, it would be cool to do this, but at that time in my small

little physical stature, I'm like, the other point was I didn't want it enough at the

time to really go through with it because even then there were kids that were like lifers

with their dads.

Yeah.

And they were like, oh, like they had started at like two.

Correct.

Like, oh, I kind of don't have it like that.

Maybe I don't even want it like that.

But well, let's imagine like you did, I mean, it's great playing Major League Ball right

now.

I will say.

Yeah.

It's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

Okay.

So my head is got twice the size from steroid use in the 90s.

So you've become both a bobble head and a professional athlete.

Yes.

What team are you playing for?

I am playing for the Atlanta briefs.

The Braves.

Interesting.

Okay.

Infielder.

Sure.

Yeah.

Do you keep up with baseball?

I used to in the 90s.

I was actually a Braves fan in the 90s, which was interesting because they could always

get a pennant but never get a World Series in the happen year after year after year.

They just like they would just smoke the National League over and over.

I mean, this is so great.

And then they wouldn't be able to either get to the World Series or if they got to the

World Series, they just fall down.

They won one when I was really paying attention.

Sure.

Okay.

All right.

So you're playing for the Braves.

Yeah.

It's great.

It's your, what's your fucking baseball card show name?

Show name.

Daniel, the something, Columbo, what's, add in the, the random bit.

Oh.

Daniel, the Brick House Columbo.

Obviously.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

I have thighs of steel.

Yep.

I'm sitting at a hot like 240 pounds, walking around, being that big slugger.

Yeah.

You know, 425, you know, batting average.

Damn.

Just crushing it.

Okay.

I'm going for an MVP this year.

Yeah.

It's really great.

Damn.

All right.

So you're still playing now?

It's, yeah.

I mean, I think I got a good two or three years left.

Wow.

All right.

And, and after retirement, what will you do with all of your bazillion dollars?

Well, I have a bit of gambling problem.

So I have my house, the house, and I don't marry.

No.

Neither of that.

Not long.

But the house that I purchased for my parents, it may go into foreclosure because I just

can't curb my batting habits too much.

So I can still hit a home or like the best of them.

So what are we, what are we gambling on?

Horses.

Horses.

Horses.

Horses.

Horses.

And geopolitical trappings.

I bet on wars.

So.

All right.

Tell me the name of the horse that is one you the most money.

And the name of the horse that is fucking almost bankrupt you.

The one that has won me the most money is little sunflower daisy.

The one that has lost me the most money is my own horse that I purchased called Brickhouse.

Brickhouse.

Fuck yeah.

All right.

And that is the alternate reality of baseball.

Nice.

That's fun.

Yeah.

What about you?

The reality number one will pick as a very little kid.

I want it to become a cement truck.

Not the driver.

I want it to be the truck.

I remember vividly blowing out candles.

Make a wish.

All right.

Are you sure?

I can make a wish.

Yeah.

Make a wish.

I wish I become a cement truck.

All right.

So my first question here is.

How would this be personified physically?

In the sense of are you just the truck and you have this like internalized sentient thought

or do you have like a face on the front of your truck like talking to tank engine?

No, I am just like a regular ass looking truck.

But with thoughts.

But I have a soul and yeah, I'm me.

Okay.

In a truck.

Okay.

And are you at the whim of a driver and a construction worker or do you let them think

they're in a control but secretly you're in control?

It's definitely that.

And initially before I when I first started becoming a truck, I had to you know, earn

my keep.

And so I had to prove my worth.

And it was tough.

Yeah.

It was really making foundation.

Really pouring.

I do.

Columns.

Mixing.

Mixing.

Okay.

Sloshing around.

When did you make your first big break?

I made my break in part of this is that I went back in time too.

So I have actually been born as cement truck in like the 80s.

Oh.

So 87.

I made my first break on a project in Manhattan.

Okay.

I left a driveway.

Oh, yeah.

You had to walk off the project.

The first WAMO, WAMO ever fucking scene was a cement truck and it was me.

So the Brooklyn roller I was called, I made it true in Manhattan all the way down to

Brooklyn.

All right.

It's going to try to drive it.

So are we still actively pursuing construction or have you retired from cement pouring and mixing?

Yeah.

It takes its toll.

Okay.

Much like the human side of it, mixing cement and doing all that.

Yeah.

I you get too crusty.

Okay.

Yeah.

They call it you got crusted.

So how do you spend your days nowadays?

Um.

Have you lighten the load?

Do you still have the cylinder on the back?

I've been crushed in a junkyard and put into a tiny cube on can you still move as said

cube?

Nope.

As a shitty tumble.

I'm just I'm just fucking crushed.

Okay.

So if I'm meditative, uh, what have you, what conclusions have you drawn since being completely

stacist and yeah, there's no better life than being a cement truck.

Okay.

So do you love the current situation of being a cube?

Do you wish you could go back to be a cement truck?

No.

Because the toll you pay in crusting is it's such a high that you experience a mixing

cement that nothing can parallel it.

And so it's like, you know, one day you're going to OD and over crust and, you know, I

I stayed on the edge and made it, I made it to cube dumb, which means I've fulfilled

my final.

All right.

This is the Valhalla cement truck.

We've gone to a cement elicium pretty much, dude.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I hope that people don't even start this episode and just flick to the middle of it

and are just so confused and perplexed.

I agree.

Because that's what is happening right now.

This is like a, this is like a fucking acting exercise.

With that being said, so you, as a child coming back to this plane of existence, cement

truck, big, big time imagination.

That's what you wanted.

That was the wish.

I had to mad toys of cement trucks and I fucking love them.

And then this isn't part of my list.

Don't worry listeners.

But there was a time when I was like, you know, be sick to be a vending machine.

I don't know why.

I don't know why.

So did you, were you hoping to somehow shed some of the emotional weight of being a human

probably and just wanted to be a simple fucking task or mixing some matter of being a vending

machine?

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Right on.

So there's that.

Okay.

Psychologists do with that.

What you know.

Yeah.

Show me the inkblots.

Whatever you like.

Maybe a little mangles, metal and plastic cube.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

There's some parallels there.

Yeah.

Your turn.

Okay.

I'll probably put the second one last.

I'll keep it still pretty much on the straight-ish and narrow-ish legitimately.

Another career path that I saw for myself was fighter pilot.

Mm.

Okay.

I didn't really, it got abolished somewhere in my teens.

One because I really didn't go through the channels to figure out how to make that a reasonable

reality.

Sure.

What was the highest likelihood of success there?

But growing up, being an 80s and 90s kid, we had stuff like Iron Eagle, Top Gun, Project

X. There was even a weird indie film called Daryl where this almost AI implanted youth

like learns too much and tries to like break off from his hand, which wound up like stealing

an SR7 and a blackbird.

Oh.

So all of that, yeah, it's just like, man, it just made it feel like fighter paws were

like the coolest shit.

I mean, yeah.

I mean, they are.

Yeah, yeah.

You're like a space ranger.

Right.

Yeah.

And you technically get to do way more cool stuff than just like float around in space.

True.

So that was neat for me.

Okay.

Well, we'll take these in the less hypothetical and more, especially because this sounds

like there was some viability to it.

You said the avenues were not there to really make it happen.

Maybe not.

I just didn't explore them enough.

There was like kind of just confoundings like how, you know, at the time I wasn't even

thinking like it just starts with an easy military entrance and then you just test into

it.

And if you're physical prowess and mental prowess art up to snuff, right?

So but my mental prowess might have been my physical prowess was not and that probably

is not even probably assurably isn't limiting belief, which stopped a lot of things happening

at that age.

Sure.

Or like how am I going to do any of this?

I'm not physically equipped as a genetic baseline to do any of these things.

So that was shooting myself in the foot before I ever got to shoot any missiles, unfortunately.

Damn.

Is there any desire to like learn how to fly?

Yes.

You still want to like maybe I do that.

That is a an idle interest way in the back of the dome.

Okay.

Maybe just some small format fuselage pilot or like a helicopter pilot, they don't be

cool.

I mean sketchy for sure.

But how these are spooky as fuck.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, but yeah, that does seem interesting.

It's maybe like a late in life side quest that I might explore some private lessons and

maybe getting a, yeah, it's not what's the private lesson or license so yeah, you can

just fly a little.

I personally don't have an interest to be a commercial pilot.

That's not, that's not, not to say that I can't do it.

I have no interest.

For sure.

Yeah.

That's just, especially nowadays too not to get like to grim and talking about the likelihood

of stuff.

But we are in such a weird place between supply and demand where we don't have enough pilots.

They're just getting burnt out wholesale and they should, they do usually have a retirement,

a forced retirement age, but we're kind of getting close to that for many of them because

most of them came from wars and, you know, the Korea, Vietnam, all of that.

And we're losing way more pilots than we're going to be gaining, which is also a scary

proposition because you're like, oh, unmanned flight and it's like, yeah.

So either way.

Okay.

Well, what, what, imagine that you had gone down that path paint the picture of how

different your life in the first ways it comes to mind would have looked like.

You join the military, you test in, you're on the path.

I think the first thing to would have just been better structure earlier in my life because

my life was pretty wayward from teens and early 20s and even beyond with music, which

I don't regret in the slightest, but it is a completely unstructured fluid existence

where I think there's something in me that actually appreciates that level of structure

routine and not just some autonomy, but I had a complete autonomy in which it's a blessing

and a curse in a way.

So that would be the first starting point.

And then just the, it's more so, I think, idolizing as boys, just the heavy equipment,

just being able to control this crazy thing as boys as well, like militarization, and

we play video games and you're just fascinating, y'all, that chick gets impregnated for

sure.

Yeah, like this, this valor, which is very real and beauty and honor to all these things,

but it's also like, wait a second, I have all of us at some point wanted to be the most

violent menacing version of ourself.

It's like, yeah.

Yeah, and that's the thing too, is even then like the difference, there's no difference

actually.

From then to now, there is no difference between, I like the idea of being able to like,

push my body and an airframe to its limits and blow stuff up with the exception is like

stuff, not people.

I never would have wanted that.

I don't find any like pleasure or excitement in that whatsoever, which then is the big

rubber.

I'm glad to do it because I would have been dropping some bombs on some other stuff.

Yeah.

So that's the one thing where I don't have that or at least thankfully I've never had

to find that to your, yeah, to do that.

So alas, no fight or pilot, what about you?

Okay.

Next up on the list, these are polar opposites.

How do I want to go with this?

We'll start with, we'll have a pulse.

It will definitely have a pulse, it's not an animate object.

I wanted very much so to like get involved in crime.

Oh.

Yeah.

A little vagrant, a little hoodlum.

Yeah.

So I always...

How big are we talking?

I had it.

I had a like deep obsession with like the Mafia and this admiration for probably looking

back at it, some of the structural component, the hierarchy and the idea of like moving

up and the more willing you were to succumb to the intensities of the demand like, hey,

kill this person now and then you get bumped up kind of deal and earn that like level of

trust with people in a way that is very damning.

Did you, so just first instinct, did you see yourself as like, obviously no one wants

to be as low as like Aaron Boy, but Hitman, Council Yeary, did you want to be the boss?

Like what did you see as like the prime position for you?

Sure.

Yeah.

Less of a, less of a boss, not like my own, you know, militia, but probably somewhere

in the upper management, yeah, trusted, trusted, yeah, to the boss kind of vibe.

Some responsibility about all the responsibility.

Yeah.

Feared, respected.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah.

Give me a day in the life.

A day in the life.

From awake to sleep.

Well.

If you sleep.

Yeah.

Here's the, here's the conundrum is that a lot of these things, especially if it's like

actual true like Italian mob, I'm not Italian like at all.

So that's fucked.

There's not like a Germanic mafia.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Less.

Cool.

You know, I think in terms of the movie side, Yakuza and Italian mob are like, yeah, there's

something bad asked about this.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, for sure, I'm going to roll this one back.

We are for sure talking in modern day sense, not in the 1940s.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean, I think this was not really truly something I was working towards.

I just had, you know, the proclivity to do fucked up shit.

And I started stealing phones, selling phones, like making a lot of money.

Boy, it's hustling on the corner.

Yeah.

And then you start selling drugs and then, you know, you explore these things.

And there's a, there's a, the, the ugly side of my limited experience in this is the

paranoia that I think is someone's watching out to get you or intake your, yeah, something

and or that like, especially nowadays, I don't know how anybody does anything because

allegedly everyone knows everything all the time.

Right.

Allegedly, but it's like how the fuck, you know, you know, fucking go on the door of these

motherfuckers on the list, probably not, but yet you can look at a picture and find like

somebody's like corpse from 10 years ago, if you zoom in and see the follicle, and I'm

like, how the fuck make these things make sense?

Right.

But you can't find me if I hit and run like, yeah, what did you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, where, so where's the resources going?

I think that, you know, there was always that, that dark, sighted appreciation and the,

how do I say this without sounding like completely sociopathic?

I don't know that I can.

So I'm just going to, I'm just going to let it flow.

Okay.

My dad would always say to me, and this is true because he's witnessed this, you have

a willingness to hurt somebody.

Oh.

Like saying that as a blank statement to anybody, are you in particular?

Me in particular.

Like observationally.

Like, you will, you will do something like, you know, many people are like, oh, my

fucking sea red.

No, kill you.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah.

I will probably do the thing.

Okay.

If I kept, if I kept engaging in that type of, you know, cycle, I'm glad I didn't.

I'm very, very, very glad that I stepped for sure farther and farther away from that kind

of stuff because it was sort of heading there.

I would say it wouldn't have been a crime lord, but like it would have been a fucking

you to file it in somewhere.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, um, yeah, I'm glad that that shit did not happen.

Same.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It would be the long and the clink for you.

Yeah.

Fucking in chains through the, uh, the, the visitation wall, um, so, yeah, we still find

a way to podcast from either sides of observation or visitation.

Yeah.

The, the paths would not have crossed, but, um, here we are.

They probably would have.

Just be, I'd be a different human.

True.

I'd be on like cell block C or something.

Mm.

After you got kicked out of the air force.

Yeah.

For stealing the plane.

For sure.

There you go.

Perfect.

There you go.

Riddle solved.

So, my last kind of means more toward your first love to good fantasy, love to good mythology.

If I could be anything else, it would have been a dragon, um, one of the most hardcore,

I mean, probably the most hardcore mythological figures in my opinion, yeah, likens, werewolves,

vampires, they can all suck it and piss off silly, silly little manifestations of creativity.

In my opinion, but a dragon, it's paramount to me.

All right.

So there are many kinds of dragons, yeah, there is the little like slithery mother fuckers

that are almost like small flying lizards like compies from Jurassic Park now.

Yeah.

We're talking about big fire breathing like European lore, big daddy, yeah, the bitches,

not the flying super long serpentine Asian versions albeit cool, yeah, but just big large,

yeah, fire, fire for sure.

Okay.

I've imagined what a different type of breath or beam would be like, but we're going

on classic, traditional fire, yeah, big, scaly, what color, what's our color, Max,

are you, are you monochrome?

Um, I mean, I would say like a little brownish greenish, okay, with sunlight, huh, in the

right light.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then probably like some red in the wings and like the actual skin of the wings as well.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

Okay.

You're up, um, or we're in some fantasy countryside, if you will, these two, yeah, something

like Europe or, yeah, but the occasional terrorizing of towns, you know, respect as it earns

not given.

So yeah, you got to burn some statues, cottages in there, scoop some fuckers up.

Yeah.

You know, it's better to scare the gold out of them than have to go forge it myself.

True.

So I found, you know, a couple of burned bodies here and there is plenty of gold to sleep

on.

Okay.

Where was your first, uh, dragon exposure from, uh, ooh, so some, some like just fantasy

books as a kid, but also to the big one was magic to gathering.

Okay.

So much like you were talking about collecting snorlaxes, I used to collect dragons of every

print in Ilk throughout all the sets.

Is there like multiple dragons or is there like a character?

There are in magic, there are some actual like named character, like legends that are

dragons, but a lot of it is just like that's a, this dragon, that's a that dragon.

Okay.

And it's just non-descript, short school, burn stuff or conversely several of them have

different types of attacks and breath and beams and such.

Like the late like, uh, not lasers, fucking like acid or like, yes, ice, correct.

So yeah, I just thought it'd be really, really cool and it's a powerful vision of an entity.

Yeah.

You know, arguably, yeah, like you said, the, the most insane, safe for like Godzilla,

like a gogera.

I mean, same vibe.

Same vibe.

Just fucking walking.

Yeah.

Um, it's funny because mine is also not a dragon.

Imagine I was like, well, I didn't drag it.

Oh.

And thank you for being here.

This is now we can just actually stop on our own religion and then apologize and say,

we'll never be doing this again.

Yeah.

Actually, no, what's really funny is that your dragon version is, uh, the one you

described, the European, more classic quintessential, right, dragon.

And I grew up with a lot of Japanese rugs that had dragons on them that are much more

serpentine.

Um, so I've always loved the like serpent dragon, like how to larger affinity for that

kind.

Yeah.

And I also, to clarify, I like the dragon anatomy to where like there are four arms and

hind legs and wings, right, not the dragon that's just like mouth breath.

It's arms are wings, which is like similar to a Drake, sure, and then just back legs.

I think that's a little, but the arms can't be like T Rex arms.

No, no, they're like fully featured.

Yeah.

They can grab.

Yep.

You can smile for all you can do stuff.

Yeah.

You ever see, yeah, you ever see a dragon's dragon deadlift an entire aqueduct, me, only

yeah, me, only in trek and when you've done it.

So yeah, me.

There you go.

All right.

What's yours?

Last one.

Last one is, uh, crazy, um, there was a timeline where I was going to be a pastor of

a church.

Oh.

Yeah.

Are you recall some of these like this was directly to that effect, but all of your

missionary work and things like that.

Uh-huh.

Like this was happening.

Like I was, I had applied to seminary.

Okay.

And, um, part of that process was going to be to go through that and then pastor a church

in the city in New York.

Okay.

Um, yeah.

That's, it's, these are from fucking cement truck to crime lord to pastor.

Yes.

So did your observed propensity for potentially harming people?

Did that, was that before pastor after pastor?

That was before.

So this was, yeah, I was like kind of the over correction to be like, I should never hurt

someone.

I should go actually save the world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, fire, though, man.

Come on.

Yeah.

Right.

Um, so, yeah, I mean, really that path began probably, I had gone to church as a, a

young, a young buck with my family, um, to a Lutheran church.

So for anyone who's zero percent exposed to religion, especially within Christian sex,

Lutheran and Catholic and Protestant and Baptist and all these things are like their

own, you know, denominations, what they're called, um, so started in that denomination

and then, like I said, smoked weed on my confirmation day.

I thought it was, I was on Easter, but I remember that it wasn't.

And eventually got way, way, way more involved in the church and did a ton of missionary

work had done stuff in Africa, spent months in Brazil, was going to move to Brazil, um,

and do anti-human trafficking work over there, uh, alongside some churches and things.

And, uh, let's see, I think it was post somewhere in the mix of coming back from Brazil and

then feeling odd about how much time I spent in a community, a community that was not

truly where I lived.

I was living on Long Island working from Long Island, but most of my work and stuff was

in the city in Manhattan and my main church was in Manhattan.

And, um, I moved up the, the ranks in the church, right, it was leading teams and overseeing

people and whatever.

And it was, it's fascinating looking back at that stuff and thinking about how those same

kind of hierarchy itches gets scratched instead of me shooting people in the back of the

head, throwing them in a dumpster, you know, I was leading a prayer teams, but, um, yeah,

eventually stepped back from that a bit, uh, because of the community sort of rift.

And was just working through things that, I guess I'd always been there in terms of

my own, um, reluctances and confusions and frustrations with organized religion and, uh, yeah,

eventually stepped back enough that now I am very deconstructed in my faith and that's,

that is an impossible outcome, but it's fascinating to think there was a time when I was going to

like, that was my whole MO and it would have looked like moving into the city, going to seminary,

going to all that stuff, becoming a pastor, running a church or starting a new plant somewhere in

Manhattan, probably starting a family very soon after or alongside it and, you know, fulfilling the

mission of spreading the word and making spawns of myself. So yeah, also very glad that did not

happen because it's, yeah, it was just, uh, unsincere version of myself or insincere version of

myself. So yeah, what have been a, what have been a wild ride? Sure. How many of you have made the

best of it, either way? Yeah, I mean, it's, uh, it's crazy to think about. I sat down with

somebody recently who, um, also has a history of having been heavily involved in church and all

of the things that intertwine that. And now, um, her and her husband, I don't, I mean, I don't

know the last time they went 2019, 2016, something like that. Um, but Nashville is particularly

interesting in this kind of environment because it is so church forward, right? Culturally, um, and

there are many people that I run into that have gone through that extreme tick up and then

been like, wait a second, something's, I don't know about this, um, and stepped away. Um, so,

yeah, right? Oh, interesting. Interesting. Interesting times from dragons to pastors to

climb lords and cement rocks. We need a fucking t-shirt with all of those characters. Yes.

And war fighters, right? And the pilot, we can't forget the pilot.

Um, anything left, what, what are other contenders? Um, I think as a boy too, again, just in the equipment

thing, it would just be like firefighter or, uh, that was pretty much it. Um, were there any other

career paths that you thought about like going down like for me, I was gonna, um, go to the

police academy or be a nurse like I was a nursing school for a minute. I was registered to take

the police test in the city. It like had a lot of those kinds of things. So it's interesting.

Some people don't. Some people have like none. They're like, I don't know, I just got this job

and I'm never gonna change it ever. Yeah. My first attempt at a career path before getting swayed by

the romance of music was computer programming. So did that for a couple of years, but at the time,

working in it or learning it or learning it as you go to school for it, you got to associate's

in it. Um, thought I wanted to take it, but just got, I wasn't really locked in focused enough

just with music being the way it was. Yeah. So that was in contention at some point.

Hmm. It was the only other thing other than music, rest on the administration and fitness

and coaching that I've really ever pursued. Okay. Okay. And there's maybe a little uh,

flame in there to fly a plane at some point. At some point. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be like a rancher or

something. Hmm. Okay. I don't necessarily want to be, I don't want to have all the

responsibilities of running a ranch, but it is just being out in the mountains and actually being

on a ranch in Patagonia. Oh, yeah. Oh, this is very sick. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think like walk,

I mean, that's, there's the disparity, right? I don't think walking out onto like a portrait

deck and being in that view would ever get old. True. But I mean, I've done a little bit of

ranch work in my day and like waking up at four in the morning and not getting done until like

the evening just to make sure I think straight through. Yeah. I don't know if I want to do that.

Yeah. But yeah. It's very fucking hard. Damn. So last off, yeah. Alternate realities. Yep.

Hatched and I mean, they're probably alive and well in the multiverse somewhere. A version of

ourself is probably doing it since that had drawn collider. Yeah. It's a real thing. Go look

into that. You fuckers. I'll catch you next time. That's a whole long history. Bye.