A (0:02)

Okay, I got the red smoke. Sun run north and south west of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Give it to me. I mean clear, not well. Hello everybody. For those of you who are beyond the audio only experience, you could probably tell things are looking a little bit different in the studio because I'm working on some stuff behind the scenes. This is just a different lighting package. January is going to have some pretty cool updates. Some cool stuff coming for 2026. I don't want to touch on it too early. I like to talk about things after they've already happened and not this overexcitement of things that I'm really looking forward to happening and then they maybe don't. I would rather under promise and over deliver. That's probably a better way to put that. So yeah, man, it's December. Unbelievable. I'm creating this episode right before I go to Costa Rica for a jiu jitsu camp. Uh, if you listen to last Friday's episode my wife Leah was talking about we're going to Hero BJJ in Tamarindo. We're actually, by the time this comes out, I think I'll be home because I'm recording this to come out while we're on the road. Regardless, she's doing a camp in February. Go to last two Fridays ago's episode where we did the full family Friday and you can check out all the camps that they have there. So you want to come hang out with us in February in Tamarindo. Go to town on that front if you want to. I find it to be a very nice break where I live. Shorter days, overcast a little bit, lack of vitamin D for sure. You need to supplement if you live up here in the the northwest. And then that break in February or even this break in December is super nice. You can kind of recharge, spend your time in the sun. It is what it is. And then I owe a 2026 year in review and man, maybe that's a good way to kick off today. I have some questions which I'll get to here in a second, but I've been thinking about just looking online and God, it is an emotion filled battlefield of landmines everywhere. And I'm just thinking about 2025 and I have no data to support that. There's been more emotional things that people have been posting about or less or more conspiratorial things or less. It feels like it's a little bit more and maybe that's just what I'm seeing. And it's so easy to. To blame the algorithm for what it is that you're seeing. And people forget that your algorithm is actually a curation of things that you interact with. And I've started messing with this a little bit specifically on Twitter, man. It can be super aggressive and super negative. But then I realize it's just showing me more things that I engage with. And that's true of all the platforms. So messing around with. I want to see less of this type of content, messing around with muting particular things that are. They're at the edge of invoking a little bit of an emotional reaction. But then the more you think about it, you realize it's not emotional. The person that you're reading something from, they're having an emotional reaction to something that is important to them, which might even be nonsensical or just completely non meaningful in your life. And I don't want to. I don't want to invest any time in that. And that's what got me thinking about, you know, 2025 and all the stuff that's happened on the Internet. And I was thinking about specifically Charlie Kirk. That one's still pretty fresh for me. Mostly because of the interaction I had with my kids on that particular topic, talking about what they saw. I hate the fact that they live in a world where they saw that and they weren't searching for it. All three of them did. And the impact it had, a little bit of development of numbness to that legitimate type of violence and death, which is exactly what that was. So that particular incident, man, you want to talk about conspiracies corking out into every different direction. Was it the bodyguards? Were they hand signaling? Was it multiple shooters? Were they trained by the agency? Was this dude a straw puppet? Is this false flag attack? Is this an inside job? Did Israel do this? Everything? Was he wearing body armor? He wasn't wearing body armor. People making these videos about ricochets and all of this stuff is demonic. Demonstrably, visibly untrue. And people are making so much content about this. And then other people are engaging and arguing back and forth. And I think I understand why. People don't want to feel helpless. They want to. And I had a bunch of people reach out to me like, I'm trying to get justice for Charlie. I get it. You know, you're sleuthing through the Internet and getting emotionally attached to things that are highly conspiratorial in nature. And I'll be the first person to Admit that conspiracies absolutely exist. That doesn't mean that all conspiracy theories are true. But people do conspire to do things. But oftentimes the simplest solution is probably going to be the most likely one. And I. I've come to the realization that people get emotionally attached to it because they don't like feeling helpless. And I don't like feeling helpless either. But I don't know if any of the people that reached out to me saying that they were looking for justice for Charlie by trying to spread at the top of their lungs information that was clearly not accurate, might have been emotionally compelling, but not accurate. I just wonder how it has served people if you were to look back and maybe the Charlie Kirk incident isn't for the listener out there that doesn't speak to you. You've paid almost no attention to that. Cool. Is there anything that you did get hooked by in 2025? And I'm asking myself that question as well, too, because I try not to. I try to be balanced in the amount of time that I spend, because I look at the amount of time that I spend on things like that, and at the end of the year, I asked myself, did it serve me well? Do I wish I could get that time back? Do I wish I could have done something different with that time? More productive, more meaningful, more purposeful? Any of those things. I mean, legitimately, just fill in the blank. And I've come to find that almost everything I do on this device that we all have, and this is a part of our life, and it's. I. I do believe we're gonna figure it out and figure out ways to manage it appropriately as opposed to it managing us. That's the risk versus reward or the pro versus con matrix that I think we should all run consistently maybe once a month. Look at your screen time, actually. What does the screen time come on? The iPhones. It comes once a week. Man, those numbers are startling sometimes. And so I'll look at that number, and I don't want to because it's higher than I want it to be. And I'm working on that. But I look at that number, and then I ask myself, okay, what did I do with that time? Is there legitimate time inside of that large number where I spelt spent doing things that were required for my business? Yes. Was it the majority? No. And you have to be able to honestly answer that for yourself. So for me, there is some business that I'm doing. There's also a lot of business that I'm not doing and doom scrolling or wasting my time, or it's just, it becomes habitual picking that thing up. Almost just laziness. Or we've been programmed by our robot overlords to just constantly go to that anxiety rectangle anytime we feel like we have idle time. You know, don't be by yourself, make sure you're consuming something. And again, that's, that's not, in my opinion, the fault of the people that create these apps. Even though they are designed to monopolize your attention, they are designed to be addictive. Like, I get it and I know that. So at the end of the day, if I spend too much time on them, whose fault is that? And the answer is, is that it's mine. So at the end of the week, I ask myself, what did I do at this time? And then I'll ask myself if I could have that time back. Is there anything else I could have done that would be more productive? And the answer is always yes. It's always yes. And so I just, I look, for whatever reason I've been looking at that, my engagement with things like that online in 2025, that is something I want to change in 2026. So a little bit of an early year end review for me, but I'm curious out there for the listeners and viewers because I feel like I am not in the minority when it comes to consumption time on devices. But objectively, if you were to look back at it in, in chunks of a week or a month or a year and somebody could give you that and just say, hey, you have an opportunity to do this over again, would you want to spend that time differently? Who? For me, that is a hard, hard yes. And I bet a lot of people are like that too. So I need to change that up front because I don't get the opportunity to do that, nor does anybody else. But I can change my future behavior when I inform it from my past behavior. And I actually ask myself hard questions and look myself in the mirror and take control of the things that I have control over, which is only really myself. So for everybody out there, if you got emotionally involved in something you saw online this year, you argue politics or conspiracy theories or everything in between. And I'm not telling you you shouldn't do those things. Live your life the way that you want to. But ask yourself, take, sit down, take a breath, take stock of the time you spent and ask yourself if you were well served from that time spent. Did you change anybody's mind? Did you get justice for anybody or did you just spin out a little bit and get angry and argue with people that you don't actually know? It didn't have impact on their life because they weren't actually listening to what you said. They were more concerned with saying what they wanted to say and then moving on. Tough questions, but important ones. And on that note, maybe we just get in here to question one instead of me just rambling about my personal thoughts. And the thing that monopolizes my thoughts when I'm laying in bed and I can't sleep, staring at the ceiling fan, which is not on. So it's far less entertaining in the winter months because you can't watch it go round and round. You just sit there and you look and you realize, man, I need to get the vacuum out because the front leading edge of that fan is really dusty. Today's episode is brought to you by Spartan Forge. I love talking about this app for a couple reasons. One, I love Bill Thompson. He is one of my favorite people. I've had him on the podcast twice. I highly recommend you go check him out. He is the CEO and founder of Spartan Forge. And just if you do go listen to those episodes or you're familiar with them, just imagine taking somebody with that level of military experience in that particular field for that length of time. His network, his knowledge, his know how and turning it into this app. Now, is it based around hunting? Of course. I've said this many times and I'll keep saying it. I use this more for aviation than I do hunting. But it is a fantastic hunting, Fantastic, fantastic hunting tool. So right here in front of us, we're looking at LIDAR and UAV mapping. This stuff changes the game when I'm out there flying. And even if you're looking at terrain, you're doing an analysis or a study, what is underneath the foliage? What's the slope angle? What am I looking at here? Because you can look at imagery all day long, but if you can't see through the foliage, you actually don't know exactly what you're getting yourself into. Contour lines are great. Having the ability with LIDAR to look through that and maybe even find game trails or foot trails is even better. They have deer movement prediction. We're taking intel analysis of human beings and targeting and applying it to wildlife in app live pin sharing. This is very analogous to a blue blue force tracker. But this pin sharing, you can send this out to a group, you could set a group, you could set boundaries, you could track each other sharing information. It is a fantastic tool for communication. Again, I talked about LiDAR. Here's another visual representation of what that looks like. And you know, another thing, I'm on their website right now. Spartanforge AI the technology aspect here. You come over here to cyberscout. This is gonna be in your web app, so not on your phone yet. But this is basically an embedded AI. And here's some examples of things you can ask. What's the best arrow setup for an elk? What's the weather in my location? How much soybean seed do I need for 3.23 acres in Southwest Wisconsin? If you don't have a mentor getting you into the hunting world, this is not a replacement for that. But this is a gradual way to start gathering information while you look for that mentor. Spartanforge AI this is the easiest money I spend every month on my app subscription. Spartanforge AI Back to the show. Question number one. Andy, first and foremost, thank you for being available and opening yourself up to help others answer questions. My pleasure. And I've said many times I really enjoy this. I like the process of questioning my own beliefs. Why do I believe what I believe? Where did that belief come from? What's it founded in? Is it founded in emotion? Is it founded in fact and knowledge, experience, whatever it may be? And I believe in believing things very deeply but not holding onto them too tightly, being open to having my mind changed. So here we go. I've been in my line of work for 11 years. I work for a small agency of 10 people, including the boss. We are currently down two positions, so the workload is increasing as well as the burnout. And there is no sign of this letting up. Nobody wants to be a cop anymore and especially not at the lowest paying agency in the area. I would say those are probably both true statements. I am a new suit supervisor working the overnight shift and I find myself going through the motions. My first 10 years I was motivated and excited to go to work. Lately it's been a chore. I get home and I go immediately to sleep. When I wake up, I am fried. I fight hard some days to stay off the couch and it helps, but I'm miserable. I'm not sure if it's the sleep or lack thereof or an absence of a goal, but I find myself going down the rabbit hole of what am I going to do when I retire. And the thought irritates me slightly because that is another nine years away. Any advice for dealing with burnout for me and the folks that I supervise? Side note, I have an appointment to have my blood work done in the near future. And I'm glad that you actually ended with that because that's where I was going to start. Even if your blood work is perfect, at least you know, and that is a variable that you can take off the plate or the buffet table, if you will. If you don't have that, you don't know, is this issue legitimately burnout or is your endocrine system burned out from stress from your job? Are you not sleeping well? All of those things could be happening in addition to your hormones shifting as they naturally do, and they do it paces for everybody at a different pace, right? They can give you broad ranges of where you might necessarily fall. But that broad range, let's also not forget here, is supposed to encompass every human being. So it's exactly what it is. It's a range. Your numbers might be naturally lower. Your numbers might be naturally higher. I think that's totally okay. But how are you going to know that unless you have a baseline? This is one thing I look back, I wish I had done baseline blood work years and years and years ago. Two years ago now, at this point, or just under two years ago, I finally had my blood work done. My hormonal panel looked at everything. Testosterone was one of the markers and I looked at everything else as well too. And a lot of them were trending in the wrong direction, but I didn't really know, hey, am I historically a little bit high here? Is this an elevated number or is this kind of where I've always floated because I just didn't have that good blood work? It Even if again, this is a blanket suggestion and I can only speak for men, for women, I would say reach out to my sister. She is specializing in hormonal panels and blood work for women. I think she's focusing a lot on menopause and perimenopause or pre menopause. So there's an aspect of that as well too. But she can answer questions on the female side way better than I can. And I can only actually talk about my experience on the male side. I can't answer a lot of questions other than what I did and why, but get the baseline. So at least you know, because let's say you get a blood draw and your numbers for a dude and your testosterone is low. Well, what if your 18 year old number was low and you felt fine? Then what if your testosterone is a little bit higher than what you were looking at, but you've always been a little bit higher? So the Number isn't equating with how you necessarily feel and hormones. Testosterone specifically. Let me let the cat out of the bag on this one. Spoiler alert. It's not magic. Can you take a superhuman dose, like an ultra high physiological dose, and probably make yourself feel amazing? I would assume so. I don't know because I haven't tried it. But there are certainly people that abuse everything to include testosterone. But it can help. But it's not going to solve all of your other problems if you don't have a good diet, if you don't have good sleep hygiene or a sleep routine, if you're not working out. Taking testosterone isn't going to fix all of those things overnight. It might give you a little bit more motivation to work towards those things. And I think that that would be great. But let's just say it's not like you take the lid off of this thing and a genie pops out and you get all your wishes made. So I'm glad that you have your blood work getting ready to be done in the near future. To the burnout aspect, here's what I can say I have obviously I did no military time. I did some professional aviation time. I worked for a strength and conditioning company. I taught skydiving for a bit. I do public speaking. I own a coffee shop. There is nothing that I have done in my life professionally where I haven't had to deal with a little bit of burnout. So that's my overall answer to this is is you're going to be okay. And I don't know of a job or somebody who has done a job for years, if not decades and more, where they haven't described, at least at times where they were burnt out, even if they really enjoy their job. Here's a perfect example. The podcast I'm doing right now. I love doing this podcast. Are there days where I just feel less like doing it than others? Of course. Is it because I'm burned out? I don't know. That would probably be the laziest description of it. But a lot of the times it has nothing to do with what's going on around the podcast and everything to do with what's going on in my life. Maybe I'm training hard that week and I've been eating like a garbage pail and haven't been sleeping well, haven't been managing my hydration and my rest and my recovery. It can make me feel like I'm burned out. But I'm not actually burned out. I'm just tired. And that expresses itself by a lack of desire of wanting to sit down and do the podcast, even though it's my favorite thing that I do. So it doesn't even necessarily have to be directly in line with your job. I have heard a lot of officers that I know describe burnout in their career. It is repetitive in nature, as many careers are. You're going to deal with a lot of repeat customers. There's the current social optic that has shifted more towards negative than positive. I would say. When I was growing up, I mean, the police, they were viewed differently. It was just a different lens on that occupation and what that occupation meant to people. And I think the pendulum is swinging back in that direction. But it's never going to be static. You're going to have ups and downs with that. So it's easy to lose yourself in this job and in any job. And what I'll say to you is this. Find something outside of your job to spend your time doing that lights a fire under you. And I know you're saying right now you're struggling to get off the couch. Okay, that's, you know, you don't have to get off the couch and do anything Herculean. Find a new hobby, Find a new social circle that has nothing to do with law enforcement and start pouring as much energy as you have left over at the end of the day. And some days, you know, it might be a little eyedropper, and some days it might be a quarter of a cup. But the more you can diversify yourself, I think what you'll find is you can recharge your batteries by finding and doing something new. And again, maybe that's just going out and joining a community group that has nothing to do with law enforcement or finding a new social circle that has nothing to do with law enforcement. You didn't mention anything about marital status or being in a relationship. If you are, we'll just say in a relationship in general, doing something new with your significant other. I have. I have found myself to be re energized many, many times in my life when I take a step out of what I'm currently doing and I try to teach myself or find something new that challenges me. Sure, you can end up burning up a little bit more energy in that new thing, but you're excited again. It's a spark that you think that had been extinguished. And it's not maybe just the one thing that you're spending the lion's share of your time doing. It's the groove that has had, you know, the most friction in it. So it is just repetitive in nature. It's not providing for you what it used to. And that's totally okay because you're never going to find a job where 20 years later, every single day is going to be as exciting as the first day that you had on the job, or the excitement, or not being able to sleep the night before, or, you know, putting all of your energy and effort and time into making sure your uniform look looks good or whatever it is. Those things that you do when you first start a career and you're so concerned, living up to the standard and being the person. And then 10 years down the road, you realize, like, I'm not going to do those things anymore. Not because they don't matter to me anymore, but because I have. I just. I'm in my groove. And you still do the things that matter. But you're not losing sleep at night before going to your first shift ever, because you're a little bit less excited. You're just more used to it. Find that spark. Find that somewhere else. I'm telling you, it will reinvigorate your life with the blood work you're getting ready to do. Because I do suspect, not a doctor by any stretch, that what you're describing may have a little bit to do with some hormonal imbalance as a guy, as you are navigating your way through life. And probably the biggest thing that it makes me feel that it might be, that is when you wake up, you feel exhausted. That was probably one of the key things for me as well. And then I went down this path of wearing an aura ring. I wanted, what's my heart rate variability? What's my resting heart rate? Am I snoring? All of this stuff to getting an eight sleep and controlling temperature and getting feedback on how much I'm rolling around and how much REM I'm getting in deep sleep. And all of this stuff, you know, all those metrics are great. I actually found, though, sometimes you can almost become, like, addicted to the number you're seeing in the morning. And sometimes the number doesn't match how you feel, and then you're in this really weird space, like, I feel like shit, but this number says I should feel amazing, and I don't. So how accurate is this thing? And I think the answer to that is it's a blend. These numbers are great. They're great guidelines. They don't have to be rules so you can get super nerdy and all that stuff. And I did, and I was still feeling exhausted. So. And that's when I went and got my blood and hormones checked. And it's been helpful, but it's not magic. I still have my days. If I do too much, if I focus too much, if I let other areas slide, I can go right back into feeling like how I used to, which would be burned out a little bit. And then you got to take a holistic look back at like, what am I doing? How do I fix this? Sleep is a huge one. The lack of sleep. I almost don't even know what you can do if you are not sleeping well, if you're not recovering, just go on Google and just look at the consequences of poor sleep habits and sleep deprivation. You don't need me to tell you, just go spend as much time as you want to. There. The absence of a goal. I mean, again, I think I already covered that. Light a spark for yourself. But please try to do it outside of the profession of law enforcement. I think the key to staying young, to staying engaged, to staying energetic, is constantly trying to learn new things. And it doesn't have to be physical in nature. You don't have to go climb Mount Everest. You might get yourself. You might nerd out on chess or checkers or my dad Sudoku, which I still don't understand, but he buys these sudoku books or crossword puzzles or going for walks or getting into jiu jitsu or getting into target shooting or hunting. I mean like fill in the blank. Competitive crochet, whatever you might be into, get into it. I'm telling you, that spark is there. And I have found if you can light a fire somewhere else, sometimes it hops over and your cup is more full, even though you're spending more time. And that time you might have used to spent sitting on the couch, like, how is this possible? I'm doing more but feeling better. It's because you're more engaged. So that's what I would suggest. And then also reach back out when you get your blood work done and let me know. I can at least talk you through my experience. I can do that offline via email and give you some suggestions or pointers based off of that. So that's all I got for question one. Question number two. Touches on law enforcement here a little bit, but it's definitely a different question. Hey, Andy, Love the show and I've watched it for many years. My name is redacted. Their name isn't actually redacted. I said that. I reminded myself to say that because their name is right here and I want people to be able to send things in anonymously and know that I'm not going to dox them for lack of a better term. 26 years old I'm married and I'm gay and I'm currently stuck and have wanted to join the military my whole life. Due to me being 26, I'm on the older end of the typical recruitment age at work. There are three individuals in total who know that I am gay and are people I feel I can trust. This is by design because being gay is not my entire identity. I'm also pretty masculine and people who are told are often shocked. I'm in a leadership position currently and I don't want that to be an obstacle because of perception or stereotype that people may have and question my leadership abilities or my strengths as a person and a leader. As a police officer, I guess I have several fears such as my age, sexuality and current career. Due to these fears, it has put me in a place in my life where I've allowed myself to get complacent or make excuses which have prevented me from doing many things. This being the one regret, the one I regret the most and think about often I think that you're talking about joining the military. I don't want to be a police officer forever. I have been for five years now. But I also can't shake the feeling of regret not even having tried at this particular dream. I got lost in a cycle of work and sleep routine which we just talked about that on the previous question. I try not to compare myself to others, but I grew up in a family who have served in the military and many of who wrote me out of their life or treated me drastically differently after coming out. The feeling of longing for unfinished business that is joining the military. I'm curious if this was something you have experienced dealing with and being an instructor, if at all. If so, what should I expect and if being older as a new recruit is wise choice. Once again, I appreciate the time and wish you nothing but success. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Where should we enter into this one? Let's talk about your age. 26. Is that a little bit old for somebody to join the military? Yes, and each branch is going to have their own maximum age. I don't even have a clue what it is, even though I think we've looked it up on episodes before. 26, I think you're still within the wheelhouse for all of the military branches and there are some pros and cons for sure. We'll use boot camp as an example. Is your experience in boot camp, regardless of the service that you choose, going to be different than a 17 or 18 year old kid? Oh yeah. Are you gonna think a lot of the things that you do there are laughable? Yes. Are you gonna feel like you are babysitting children a lot of the time? Oh yes, you are. And that's okay. You're actually gonna fall naturally into a leadership role in any branch you go into specifically in boot camp because of your experience in life. So what's gonna seem hard to a 17 or 18 year old is gonna seem laughable to you. What's going to seem critical to a 17 or 18 year old, you're going to have a better context on that. The drill instructors will probably treat you a little bit differently. Maybe not directly in front of everybody else in that mixed company, but you can imagine or I would suspect, and this goes back to my time as being a BUDS instructor. When you want to influence the class, there's a couple ways you can do it. You could yell at the entire class, you could bring the whole class in, you could punish them, you could remediate, you could try to teach them, or you could sit back and identify the people in the class who are influential amongst their own peer group and then dedicate some time to working directly with them and allow them to use that influence that they have already developed amongst their peers to influence the entire class. There are no right or wrong answers in how you do that. But just like every tool, some or are more well suited for the end state, some can get you there faster. So as an instructor I was always interested in trying to figure out who inside of each one of the classes had the influence. And sometimes it was the senior leaders, but not always. Sometimes it was the older person. If you're just wanting to join the military and have the military experience, I don't think going in at 26 years old is going to negatively impact you. I think it will very positively impact you actually because of the life experience that you bring with you. If you wanted to go into a special operation pipeline at some age, the math is going to slowly start to trend against you just because of the physiology required and the physical nature of those selection process processes. Process I whatever the correct word would be. But statistics are just that, you know, they are accurate often. But just because you are a little bit older in the stats say you have a slightly less statistical likelihood of being successful doesn't mean that you necessarily will be because they're accurate sometimes and not accurate others. They're a broad representation of everybody that tries. I wouldn't wait too long if you want to go down a special operations pipeline. Only because the jobs are very physically taxing in nature and physically demanding even after you get through the selection course. So make sure you have some in the tank. But I actually think your odds of graduating a difficult course like those guys.