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Captivating an action packed the Blood and Ash series by number one New York Times best selling author Jennifer L. Armentrout is a sexy, addictive series perfect for fans of Agotar and Fourth Wing. Chosen at birth to usher in a new era, Poppy's life is not hers. A maiden in solitary, waiting for the day of her ascension, Poppy would rather be with the gods fighting the evil that took her family. The entire kingdom rests on her shoulders. When Hulk, a God bound to protect, enters her life, he tempts her with the forbidden. A kingdom, Blood and Ash. A thrilling steamy escape. Available in print, ebook and audiobook.

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We are back Friday Programming Last Friday was Negligent Discharge Friday with Young Michael. I think I'm gonna stick with that name. I tell you what, these Friday episodes, even though it's a little bit weird, you're sitting here staring into a camera, you know, like a dead fish eye of a lens. I really enjoy the questions because it forces me to question my own beliefs. Why do I believe what I believe? What do I actually think? How many mistakes have I made in my life that I can hopefully try to round the edges on other people's experience? The answer to that is numerous and far too many. But I enjoy it. I get asked all the time, how do you submit a question? The easiest way to do it is to shoot me an email. It's my name, Andy Stumpf the number 212mail.com that's the easiest way. Now before we get into today's Friday Q and A. Hold on man. Little tickle in the back of the throat. Allow me about a minute. Let me pay the bills. That's how this works. I love bringing this to you for free, but I also have bills as well. So help me pay them so I can hopefully continue to help others and keep spreading the word. Today's episode is brought to you by AG1. A lot of people make fitness related goals around the tail end of the year or the first of every year, and I think the math shows that most people have given up on them by about the last day in January, if not where we're at right now, which is mid February. I have fallen victim to that myself. As I get older, it is one thing that I'm not willing to budge on. So for me, I am working on everything I can to be efficient and effective with my health journey moving forward in my life. And that is exactly where AG1 fits in for me. There's nothing easier than filling up this container that comes with the AG1, shaking it up and helping support my energy, digestive regularity, immune support, and even a healthy mood. At one easy serving size, you put it in the refrigerator. I like it better with cold water than with warm. Taste is very variable. People ask me if it tastes good. I think it tastes great. But I also don't like the taste of tomatoes. So maybe somebody who doesn't like tomatoes. You see where I'm going with this? Nobody really knows. It's very subjective, but it's super easy. One of the things that is key in my health goals is water intake, hydration. I had a surgery in late 2023 and I realized how dehydrated I was walking around. First thing I do in the morning is I make one of these bad boys and I slam the entire thing. So it's allowing me to attack multiple things at once. It's got vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiot greens and superfoods, antioxidants, stress adaptogens and digestive enzymes. And I'm also attacking my hydration as well. If this sounds like something that you Want to try, AG1 is offering new subscribers a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you're gonna get a welcome kit, a bottle of D3K2 and five free travel packs in your first box. So you can take this stuff on the road with you as well. So make sure you check out drinkag1.com ClearedHot to get this offer. That's drinkag1.com Clearedhot to continue. Not to start, but to continue your 20 health and wellness goals. Okay, I got the red smoke. Sun runs 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, it cleared hot. All right, three questions for today. Very different. This first one. I don't know if I've ever been asked a question about this topic, which is why it stuck out to me. Long story short, it's about dreams. The dreams that I had, the dreams this person has had and what do they mean? And I'll tell you off the top of my head, I don't know shit about dreams. I am not an expert on what goes on between people's ears, but this is fascinating. So here's the question, Mr. Stumpf. I've never been much of a dreamer. I always had a difficult time managing my sleep schedule. I worked second shift for three years and through that time, I don't remember having a single dream. A little context. I'm a 24 year old father of three. Goddamn, man. Really getting after it. Okay, I tell you what's gonna be awesome for you though is that by the time you're 48, double your age right now, your kids are gonna be at a totally different phase of their life and you're gonna be able to do awesome, active, amazing things with them throughout that time period. I mean, it's pretty cool to have a 21, I'm talking about myself here. To have a 21 year old son now who's getting into Jiu jitsu, who likes doing stuff outside that you can be super active with and travel and share experiences. It's awesome. I'm glad that I had children when I was younger or that I didn't have any children, that my ex wife and I had children when we were younger. I really do think there's something to be said about being physically active with them as they grow. Having said that, nothing wrong with having children when you're later in life. Know some friends who had children in their late 40s and I think early 50s. As far as people that I know, I know Al Pacino just had a girl, a kid with his girlfriend. Al Pacino I believe is 174 years old. I don't know how old his girlfriend was. I'm not so sure he's going to be around for high school graduation. Maybe not here nor there. The older people I know who have had children later in life, they were in such a different phase in their life, had such a concrete idea of who they were and just an amazing amount of experience, context, patience. So different. I have heard most of them express though concerns about as they age and their children are getting older. So I don't know if one's either right or wrong. Three kids at 24. All right, that's a lot. Strap in, man. I'm happy for you though. I have an amazing wife and we are learning and making a priority of growing together and spending quality time. I work 50 hours a week in a welding facility and I make it home to my bed every night. What guy wouldn't dream of the life I have? I have not always been a consumer of military content on YouTube, etc. As I get older, I see the sacrifice and humanity that comes with military service. My dad was a Marine. I have a cousin who served in Fallujah in 2004. I honestly was not interested in joining the military. Here's my question. Prior to joining the military, did you ever dream of war? I don't have many dreams, but when I do Holy shit. Fuck. Bleep. His words, not mine. Choose your expletive. I have reoccurring dreams of vivid, vivid cqb which would stand for close quarters battle in some country with brick buildings, checking angles, getting hit with mortar rounds, grenades, hand to hand combat. It sounds scary, but I have never seen anything like that. How is it so thrilling waking up soaked in sweat, wondering why, just why am I having vivid wild dreams of war? Obviously I've never been to war and I can't say the dreams are even realistic. It's based on the things I see in our culture, but damn it, it feels real. Thank you again if you choose to read this so I'll get to his description of it. Prior to joining the military, did I ever have dreams of war? One of the most common questions I will get is how did you know what you wanted to do since you were a young man and for those of you who are unfamiliar, I guess, with my origin story. I knew what I wanted to do since I was 11, which is not normal to hear an 11 year old say. And I don't mean I knew broadly what I wanted to do. I didn't say, hey, I want to join the military and I'll figure it out. From there I knew exactly the job inside of the military that I wanted to do. It was at least atypical with my peer group. And I have another data collection point of my own. Three children's and asking children's God the words today. You know what I mean? Sometimes you struggle. The data point of my own three children, you ask each of them what do you want to do? And they can give you a broad brush stroke, which I completely and utterly support. I actually think it's totally fine for people to figure out what they want to do as they age through life. And it's okay if it changes none of my kids. And I've, I've asked, I would say a good amount of their social circle, the same type of question. So I have anecdotal, I don't even want to say evidence, but anecdotal data points of this, not a single one has been able to say this is what I want to do and this is the path that I want to take to get there. I knew what I wanted to do. Not broadly but precisely. I knew I wanted to join the Navy. I knew I wanted to follow the SEAL pipeline, but I didn't have any idea of what I actually thought it was going to be. It consumed my, my thoughts from the age of 11 on. Not in a, in a negative way. But it was always in the back of my mind. I, you know, in high school would junior lifeguards actually. Did I even do junior lifeguards in high school? I think that was before high school. It was more sports in high school, but still always in the back of my mind, I know this is what I want to do. So I'm going to go work out, I'm going to go to the. It was literally a 24 hour fitness that I don't think was open 24 hours a day. It's bullshit marketing. But again, this was the 90s, so who knows, maybe it was open 24 hours a day. I wasn't going at 2:00 in the morning. I, you know, had not adopted the jocko philosophy of getting up at 4:00 either. So who knows, maybe they were open, maybe I was sleeping. I digress. I always had that in the back of my mind. You know, my dad bought me a weight set in the garage and we would actually go work out together. And my cousin would come and my uncle would come as well from time to time. And I would train in the off season. And even when I was playing sports, I had it in the back of my mind. When I was playing water polo in high school for four years, I would think about as I was swimming. When you, especially when you're doing swimming conditioning, for those of you who have never done swimming conditioning or have ever done laps in a pool, there's usually a black line at the bottom. And you watch it and you watch it and you watch it and sometimes you watch it going a different direction and then you hit the wall and you go back and forth. And I would think about, is this, you know, is this getting me ready for what I want to do? I know there's going to be water evolutions. I need to be as good in the water as possible. So this was four years before I even went into the military. But four years after I had decided this is what I wanted to do. It was all consuming. I think I did dream of what I thought the Occupation was going to be. I thought the Occupation was going to be something very similar to a Charlie Sheen, Michael Bain movie that I saw that involved people jumping off the back of jeeps into the river and locking out of submarines and haloing out of C1 30s and wearing telemarketer headsets with your AK47, no ear pro whatsoever, you know, switching from starlight to thermal, getting everything but the onions falling in through skylights and Just wearing Nomex flight suits, shooting MP5s with handlebar mustaches. Not that I can grow a handlebar mustache. That's what I thought it was going to be. And I would daydream about that stuff and I definitely had dreams about that. But this goes to exactly why I think you're having the dreams that you're having. That was, that was the only optic I had because that was the only movie that was titled Navy seals. And I guess you could look at Rambo stuff, you know, where they're shooting, you know, Rambos pulling back and shooting these explosive tipped arrows that are bringing down helicopters. It was all over the top, overly dramatic. A grenade is thrown in a 55 gallon drum somewhere in a Hollywood set full of gasoline is ignited and you think that's what it is. Yes, I absolutely had dreams of that and I could not have been more wrong about what the reality of it was. Grenades don't go off and create a fireball, they go pop. I didn't get to go through any skylights. I did get to wear a Nomex flight suit with an MP5 though, doing room clearing. And it was in the summer and it was so ungodly hot that I never wanted to wear one again. I believe Nomex is slightly fire retardant which is why they allow air crew to wear them or actually probably mandate that air crew wears them. And let me just tell you, in the summer with a bunch of gear strapped on you and a black helmet that is basically like a pot, a cooking pot on your head. It's the worst. What else did I not. I never got to Halo wearing a dragger. I did get to do some sub lock in lockout stuff. I never wore a telemarketer headset. Man, I wish I never switched from starlight to thermal. It would have been cool if we did though. I wish it would have been like that. It would have been cool. The SEAL community was everything I thought it was going to be and so much stuff that I didn't. So yeah, I had some dreams, but they were wrong. Your dreams, you're having these dreams because this is what the your. You know, I believe at least I'm not an expert in psychology or physiology or anything for that matter, but I believe inputs, inform outputs the inputs you're getting around combat. Let me read this sentence again because it's amazing. Vivid dreams of CQB in some country with brick buildings, which is every country in the world pretty much checking angles and getting hit with mortar rounds which by the way mortar rounds are some of the most terrifying things to be on the receiving end of IDF indirect fire. You don't know where it's going to land, you know it's going to mess up as soon as it does land. They are the worst. So if you can choose to avoid mortars, you should. Grenades, hand hand combat. How is it so thrilling waking up soaked in sweat, wondering why? Why am I having these visit dreams of war? Here's a better question. Who cares? I say this, enjoy it. I don't know why we dream the things that we do. And I don't know if anybody else has had the experiences that I have had. Sometimes my dreams make absolutely no sense. And it is if I am watching a fictional TV show from a third person's perspective. And sometimes I will wake up with the solution to a life problem that has either been nagging at me or that I haven't been able to figure out a solution for. And in a dream, even though it's just, you know, your brain is doing whatever your brain is doing, especially while you're in REM sleep sometimes, not always, and not as often as I wish it would happen, I am able to unlock a different way about thinking of something. And maybe because it's. I'm not boundaring bound, I'm not putting a boundary on my thought process. And my mind is free to drift in whatever direction it wants. It provides for me real world solutions to, hey, this is what we're encountering in this subset of problems in business. And I wake up and I'll think, huh, I've never thought about it from that perspective or something in the dream. I'll play out multiple situations in a dream. Not by any level of control because I gave up trying to control my dreams long ago. And one of those pathways will net a solution that I'm looking for in the real world. So I have vast experience in both. You know what's interesting? I very rarely if ever dream about anything that I used to do in the military anymore. So I thought about it and dreamt about it a ton before I joined. Since I've been out, I think about it and dream about it almost never. And I don't know why that is. Maybe I satisfied that level of my curiosity. Maybe that's the way that the brain works. Maybe your brain chooses to access certain things and avoid others while you're sleeping. But even, yeah, just talking out loud, it's interesting that I, you know, before and after are starkly, starkly different. But for you, as long as it's not giving you like night terrors. And as long as you're enjoying the ride, I'd say treat it like a TV show, man. And in the TV show it sounds like you're getting to participate. So I say go wild. Go to town. Throw a bandana on, throw. Throw a little shmog around your neck, get a teleprompter headset, strap an RPG to your back, get an M60 with about 500 round of linked ammo, put it a crisscross on your chest like Rambo. Start shooting arrows at people, start hucking grenades. Go to town. Because as long as it's entertaining for you and as long as you're getting meaningful, useful rest, you might as well take advantage of that time. I wish I could direct my dreams in that way because I can't. I go to sleep and I dream about whatever I dream about. What you're talking about could sound pretty awesome. So as long as it's being positive for you, I'd say enjoy it. If it's not positive for you though, maybe go talk about somebody who understands dreams. And yeah, that's really all I have. Hopefully that answers your question. Dreamt about it a lot before, not really at all after, but for you, get in there. That's what I think you should do. This episode is brought to you by Stopbox. Let's talk about self defense with a firearm here for a second. There seems to be a very binary thought process. You have your weapon on you and you're ready for defense, or it is secured maybe in a wall safe. And the middle ground in between the two is where it can be challenging. You obviously don't want to leave a firearm unsecured, but you also don't want to have it in a storage location that is difficult to access, especially in moments where you need it quickly. Stopbox USA recognized this problem and designed a groundbreaking solution. It is called the Stopbox Pro and I have one here right in front of me. I'm going to demonstrate how this works. There's nothing in this right now, but you can get an idea of size. It's probably as big as an 8 and a half by 11 notepad. It's a little bit thicker for those of you watching. You can see that and it has the factory code in it right now, but I'm using three fingers to push down a little bit of downward pressure and the thing opens up. Obviously big enough to carry a full size firearm in here if you wanted to. A light, a knife, sensitive items, whatever it may be you can close that thing back up and it is secured. You don't need keys or batteries. It's 100% mechanical so it's going to work every time. No power required of any type. With the Stopbox Pro you can handle security and readiness all in one. All StopBox products are made proudly in the USA in their own facility. Not only does this ensure the highest quality craftsmanship on every product sent out, it creates meaningful jobs and opportunities for American workers. For those of you who travel, you can rejoice. The Stopbox Pro is TSA compliant. Now, obviously you can't have a loaded firearm in this, but you can have your firearm and travel with it. You can sort your ammunition issues to whenever you get where you're going and you can travel with ammunition. Just make sure you understand the restrictions and regulations associated with that Checked luggage. Obviously you're not going to carry this on an aircraft. Stopbox also offers a range of other innovative products, including their vehicle safe chamber, lock and other essential gear designed to keep you prepared and protect you wherever you are. This sounds interesting. For a limited time only, listeners are going to get a crazy deal. Not only do you get 10% off your entire order when you use the code cleared hot, which is all one word@stopboxusa.com but they're also going to give you a bogo or a buy one get one free for their Stopbox Pro, which is the same item that I just held up. That's 10% off and a free Stopbox Pro when you use the code cleared hot@stopboxusa.com Discover a better way to balance security and readiness with Stopbox. Let's get back to the show. All right, second question. Drastically changing gears from dreaming about war in the trenches, I need some guidance. If I'm 100% honest, I am really embarrassed that I am faced with this problem. I'm reaching out because at the age of 42 I find myself in a very lonely state and I'm not sure where to go from here. To be clear, I have an awesome wife and a wonderful family, but even though I have that, I am struggling in the department of friends, especially on how to find and make new ones. My current friend group and I just aren't on the same page anymore. A lot of them are still stuck in an immature place in their lives and haven't changed much since their college years. Most are just couch potatoes or have their life still revolving around getting drunk at the bar on the weekend. And at worst they have simply become unreliable friends, failing to Be there for me in times of need. That sucks. That sucks when it happens to you, and it sucks when you fall short of what other people need as well. So I can understand, and I'm not trying to answer these as they come up, recognize how much that sucks for you and use that as motivation not to be that person for somebody else. As somebody who has fallen short of the friend that they want to be at times in their life. And then having had people fall short for me, I know how much it hurts, and I take that hurt and I kind of just try to throw that on the pile of motivation to not repeat that. So just make sure and remember that there's two sides to that coin. There's people being friends to you and you being friends to people as well. It doesn't help that all of my friends don't have kids, and most are lifelong bachelors. While I respect that life choice, it makes it hard to relate to them overall. It feels like we're at different points in life. That is because you are at very different points in life. And anybody who has gone from not having kids to having kids will tell you that there is a shift for most people in just their view of life, in their priorities, on the things that they value. They might even be able to redefine differently what love means to them. Looking down at something, a creation between them and another person that you have so much love for that you can't even describe with your limited vocabulary. Priorities shift when you have kids, when you don't have kids, and even if you're single or the lifelong bachelor, I mean, you can sit there and be as selfish as you want to be. Hopefully it's not selfish to the detriment of other people. But you get to choose to live your life how you want to. Because at the end of the day, the number of people you're responsible to is one. As that number grows, priorities shift. If you took a trajectory in your life where you have kids and you have wife and you have a family, yeah, it might be difficult to connect with at the same level. Your friends who have chosen to remain bachelors, who want to go get drunk at the bar on the weekend, which, you know, everybody has their own desires and relationship with alcohol. But I can tell you, as you get older and you have kids, it hurts a lot more when you wake up the next day and your kids are still there and they don't actually care if you went to the bar and had a good time with your bachelor friends. They still want you to show up as dad. So you have to start making choices again because the number of people that you are responsible for and responsible to is now greater than one. It just is what it is. So I would expect a little bit of a drift in that area because if you're going to use an iceberg analogy, you might have carved off from the same one, but you're just on a different trajectory. And that is the way that it is. It's not good or bad, it's just different life choices that is going to lead you in different directions in your life. Well, I got rid of the question. Here we go. I do have some friends from my time in the National Guard, but we are all slowly losing touch. Our conversations always result revolve around the job and I don't feel like I'm able to connect with them on a deeper level. More than anything, I just want a strong core group of friends who I can trust and rely on and for them to know that they can trust and rely on me. Sounds equitable, the kind of friend you could call at 4am in the morning and you could trust that they turn up for you. I'm feeling guilty bitching about this as I have a great family life. That said, it feels like there's a hole missing in my life that should be filled with good, reliable friends. With that said, I am completely directionless on how to make friends in my 40s while working a remote IT job with no work colleagues to speak of. I'm reaching out to you because I value your perspective. Have you ever experienced this problem when getting out of the Navy and trying to make new friends in middle ages? Age, excuse me, sir. I am not middle aged. I am still young in life, a chipper young man. Middle age is 60 until I get to be 60 and then I'm going to say it's 80. Any advice you can give on where I could start would be appreciated. I do have some advice on this one and I'm not going to say I've ever been somebody who's had a large friend circle or social circle. But I do care very deeply about the friends that are in my life and okay, let me think here for a second. I geographically moved from where I served in the military, so I understand what you're saying. It's not like I have a remote IT job with no work colleagues, so to speak of. But where I moved to, there are no people that I used to work with, so that was accurate. I'm trying to think of the people who are in my Life now, my social circle now I maintain contact remotely with some people that I did work with. Not probably as many as people listening to this or watching may think. And that's not a bad thing. I just. I'm not hugely socially driven. But for everybody else in my life, the relationships are a product of where I live now. So how did I do that? I did not carry a sign down the street saying I was looking for friends. Even though there are some crazy people where I live who do carry signs down the street. And I was just bummed to hear that one of them is probably going to be in jail for the next five years because he actually was determined to be crazy because his signs were fantastic. We're talking seven foot signs, three feet wide, completely full. I was interested and he would never hold it in place long enough for me to read both sides. It pissed me off because I was just trying to get an understanding of how 5G was controlling my mind. And he would flip it to the other side and then the light would switch and I was let down. He is in crazy town now for a couple years, but I'll miss him. He'll be remembered. My social circle now exists from people who participate in the activities that I participate in. I knew one person who was doing Jiu Jitsu. Nelson is the one person who got me into Jiu Jitsu here in Kalispell. I met him randomly at the top of Big Mountain and we went snowboarding for a day. So he and I actually met each other and connected over snowboarding. He introduced me to Jiu Jitsu and through Jiu Jitsu, that is where the vast majority of my local social community and contacts comes from. Now, not everybody's interested in Jiu Jitsu and I totally get that. The cool thing about Jiu Jitsu is there's a pretty high level of trust. You are training in a compromising environment where you can get hurt. You have to be a good training partner and you have to be cognizant of other people because you can hurt them if you go too hard and they can hurt you if you go too hard or are unwilling to tap or submit. So there's a level of trust inside of that. And through that I met a bunch of members of the law enforcement community. I met my wife Leah. I've been able to travel internationally now at this point doing Jiu Jitsu related activities. I've been continuing to meet other people. Not all of them are incredibly tight in my social circle, but for most of the people that are close to me in my life now, thinking about it, the pin in the ground that connects a lot of us is actually Jiu Jitsu. And we'll spend an hour or two a day when we're together doing that, and then we're off doing other stuff, whether it's in Costa Rica, hanging out, talking about life, talking about business, business, talking about every aspect of humanity, traveling the world, doing again, an hour or two of Jiu Jitsu a day, and then going out and seeing the rest of the world. My biggest suggestion for you is instead of lamenting about the place that your relationship is at with your old social circle or the people that you were growing in life with and then have had this difference in trajectory, I would say go find physical activities. It's gonna be helpful for you. At the age of 42 anyway. Mentally and physiologically, doesn't have to be jujitsu. If you want to go do that, cool. But hey, or do juju or do Muay Thai or go do boxing, whatever, go to do whatever you want to do. Climbing, Go find an indoor climbing gym. I guarantee you you're going to meet some people there that will have overlay. Outside of that, find a sport that potentially that you would want to play. Be careful. At the age of 42, you're a little bit more brittle in the glass, man, than you used to be. Maybe it's golf, maybe it's fuck pickleball. I don't know and I don't have to know. But my advice is seek physical outlets that will be rewarding to you regardless of whether or not you develop a social circle. And just keep looking around for things that you're interested in. And I'm telling you right now, what will happen is you're going to meet cool people that share an interest in that one thing, which will probably lead to conversations about other things in their life where you might find shared interest and connection, and you will be able to rebuild your social circle. I wouldn't base it off of numbers. At this point in my life, I don't care how many friends I have, I care how high quality my friendships are. I'm not looking to push people away from me, but I pay a lot of attention to how people act, how people speak, how people treat me, and I hope that they are doing the same to me as well. Anything that I just said, I put myself into that same level of scrutiny. I would hope that other people are viewing me in that manner, and if I'm not the right fit for them, I would hope that they distance themselves from me. You don't have to be an asshole about it. You can just choose how you spend your time and who you spend your time with. So this one, I think, will be simple but not easy, because I don't know how extroverted you are, but that's where I would start. Physical activities. Join a gym. I mean, you can even go as simple as that. The gym that I work out here locally, I mean, I don't think I've ever been in there where there's not a hundred people. There's always somebody in there doing relatively the same thing that I am doing. Or maybe you need a piece of equipment or you're sharing space, whatever it may be. Always opportunity to strike up a conversation, especially if you're doing something cool together. Because if I look back at some of my closest friends, I mean, what is Jiu Jitsu? It's an activity. Most of my closest friends come from that world. Now, if I didn't have that, I don't know what I would be doing, but I know that my social circle would be comprised of the people that I share those activities with. Simple, not easy. But it may enrich you more than you think it could potentially do, because you are at a different phase in your life, and that's okay. You'll probably find people who are doing the exact same thing as you are, about your age, about your same life situation. Maybe they're out looking for an outlet for themselves as well, but also a different social circle. I'll tell you right now, that's going to snap together like two Lego pieces. So there you go. Last question for today. Slightly dark, darker topic. Here we go. It all started about five or six years ago when I was on top of the world. I was about 4 years old or 4 years old. I was about 4 years out of the Marine Corps, and I was killing it at work. In a matter of a couple years, I was getting promoted to areas that were filled by people twice my age. That's awesome. I had a good marriage, a family that I loved. I was stable financially and woke up every day trying to make the most of my life. I was working the. I'm gonna leave that part out shift, which sucks big ones. And I was working a lot. It really messed up my immune system, and I started getting really bad staph infections. Over the course of two years, I probably got 100 different infections. And I was basically on antibiotics for about a year and a half straight, which, for people who don't know that, is gnarly. That kills the good stuff, that kills the bad stuff. That might mess up your biome for the rest of your life. That is a gnarly sentence right there. There. I'm not sure of exactly what happened, but this ruined me. I turned into a zombie of a human being and couldn't handle anything in my life. My marriage started falling apart and I became very absent in my duties as a father and husband. I felt like I was running on empty and just shut down into emergency life support mode. I basically resigned my responsibilities and demoted myself a few rungs down the ladder and have been trying to get back on my feet ever since. I would say that I am in a good place in my career again, but as a human, I am still a zombie. I have absolutely zero zest or joy for life. Everything is just going through the motions like I'm a machine. It's led to some success, but it's getting to the point where I just don't know what a life without emotions looks like for much longer. I'm not talking about doing anything stupid, thankfully. I'm glad to hear that. But I generally don't know what else to do and how to get my soul back. Excuse me. I feel like in a way I kind of just went through too much too fast and just shut down emotionally because I found out that emotions just made things harder to deal with. But I don't know how to turn that back on. I've tried everything I can think of and I'm still just a meat suit. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Holy. Okay, one thing stuck out to me here, a couple did, but this small sentence. I have absolutely zero zest or joy for life. That's how I feel sometimes too. And I feel like that's probably how most people feel at times in their life. So you're not alone feeling that way and you've identified that you're not going to do anything stupid, right? Because if you had ideations of, you know, suicidal tendencies or taking your life, then this would probably be a little bit of a different conversation. I think it's normal for most people to not wake up every day filled with this zest for life. Life is hard, right? It's full of challenges. I struggle with more things in my life than I find things in my life to be easy. And people may not believe that because they don't get to see it. I. I am aware that I put content out on the Internet, but I choose when I hit record, I choose what I'm going to say and I choose to let people in on the hardships of my life and other ones that I would rather work through privately. It is not regardless of the person that you see or maybe measuring your life against a fair and equitable value scale because you don't actually know what is going on in that person's life, regardless of how happy they may present themselves to be. We're all going through shit at any given time in our life. I think most people would be lucky to 50% of the time be able to hop out of bed and be full of just like passion and zest for life. If you're at a higher percentage than that, that is awesome. Do you. If you're at a lower percentage than that, it's okay. Life is about challenge and struggle. I think it might be more painful than it is pleasurable, but I think it's that painfulness that allows you to take that pleasure and have it be so impactful. When I say the term pleasure, take from that whatever you want to. I know there's some people out there who are high and right and off into left field, whatever. That's not what I'm talking about. So the other thing that stuck out here, which I mentioned before, the amount of time that you are on antibiotics, that can change. And I'm not a doctor by the way. I got my MD by watch in house years ago. But that level of antibiotic exposure can 100% change the makeup of your body, your gut biome. And if you do start doing some research into this, which I have been doing, because I'm trying to dial in my own gut biome and have a better understanding of, again, input versus output, the foods that I eat, how it's responding to my body, anti inflammatory, all of this stuff. It's an interesting journey into how much your gut biome actually can regulate almost everything else, your health, the meat suit that you mentioned, I would if I were you, dive in very deeply with an MD or a nutritionist or the combination of the two and figure out where you're at from a gut biome perspective right now, from a general health perspective, because if you are suffering and you put yourself into the basement because of that exposure to antibiotics, which it sounds like you had almost no choice in doing, you're going to have to solve that issue before the mentality aspect of this is going to improve as well. If your body is in survival mode, it would make absolute sense to me that you're not going to wake up with a zest for life because you just are Drained. You're. You're fighting to survive. And long before people are able to thrive, they have to be able to survive first. That might be where your body is stuck. So I would absolutely go headfirst into that. From a medical perspective, what else would I do? I'm gonna be a broken record again. You need to find somebody who is a professional at understanding, counseling and, or therapy, whatever term that you would want to use, somebody that you can talk to about your feeling of lack of emotionality, your feeling of being a meat suit, your feeling of not being able to derive any pleasure from things in life. I don't know. I mean, I think if you're a sociopath or a psychopath, you probably can turn off your emotions or maybe you're just wired to not have them to begin with. Somebody choosing to turn off their emotions because they're going through a really difficult time, I think you could choose to turn them back on. Now. You might have the ability to turn them off by yourself, but maybe we don't have the internal wiring or understanding to be able to turn them back on without help. And that's where this person can come in. There are people out there who have dedicated their life to working with and improving the situation of people like yourself, both on the medical side and the psychological side. Find them and you might say, well, that might take a lot of time. That might cost a lot of money. Okay, how much is the zest for life worth for you? How much is the relationship with your wife, with your family worth to you? I hope your answer to that would be everything. And if that's the case, it's going to be a matter of you putting in work in moments where you feel like you don't want to, at times where you feel like it's not making a difference, and you're going to need to take a really low trajectory towards a distant horizon and set a timeline for this. That might seem unacceptable at this point in time in your life. It's not going to be overnight, it's not going to be instantaneous, but I guarantee you, you can do it. In the end of that, you might actually find from time to time some zest in your life. I think right now, I bet you if you could wake up for a day and find it, it would have a huge impact and at least you would know it's possible there's people out there that can help you do that. I wish I could be one of those people for you, but I'm not an expert in any of those things. You went through a fucked course of antibiotics for two years. That has impact psychologically and physiologically. Go attack both of those and I think your life will be better for it. That's the advice I have. See everybody on Monday. Have a good weekend.