C (4:11)

And.

B (4:11)

And I do. I agree with you. It's great to talk to your neighbors, but they have a hard time balancing and understanding. You know, they think that I'm nice as a person, and. But then when I have to put on my HOA hat and say, hey, I need you to take care of this, this, and this, it's a completely different thing. And it's so frustrating. So to some people, I'm not a neighbor. I'm the hoa. So what do you do then?

A (4:44)

Hoas are funny. I always get a good laugh off of HOAs. I watched some of the HOA posts on TikTok. I don't know if you've seen it, but there's. There's a lot of AI HOA posts, too, that are hilarious. But even the real ones, the real ones are really funny because it's real life. So thank you, D for sharing your story. Another one, Lee W. From Macedonia. Lee is all the way on the other side of the planet. So Lee is a longtime friend of Homemade, and the Facebook request from the past sparked her own story and a little warning here. This story mentioned self harm. So if that's difficult for you right now to listen to, you can stop the episode. But I just wanted to get that warning. And here's Lee.

C (5:38)

I'm in my village called Bardolphsi, and I'm walking my dog, and I'm listening to this bird call. It's probably either a finch or a tit. Oh, it's moving from tree to tree. And what I realized is that I prefer to live in the present moment rather than revisit the past. I recently had to make a Facebook request of somebody from my college days, and it was difficult. I lived my life sort of in a before and after state. And everything that I kind of engaged with before the age of 27

B (6:26)

had

C (6:26)

one specific arc, and everything after, it has a different understanding and a pace. And here's what happened. I learned in December that one of my good university friends had ended his own life. And this was a friend that mattered. This is a friend who would have late night talks with this. This is a friend who, you know, who I really. Who I loved and who was important to my own understanding of who I am. But he was also a friend that I kind of grew out of. When you live life and you are making meaning the. Or searching for meaning and searching for. In my case, I'm searching for the source. When you do that, there are just some things that no longer serve you. And that friendship felt like it had kind of been sucking me dry for a while. And it didn't surprise me that he had chosen to take his own life. You know, Lucy, come here. There's a tractor coming now. You know, I figured it was either heart problems or, you know, suicide. So when I had to reconnect with our group because we kind of had a. We had a group of people all related to our first year dormitory. And when I had to connect them, it. It was different because that connection. The farmer's slowing down now. He's got. He's got a whole thing of dirt that he's carrying and just staring at me talking in my phone. There are some people with whom I can connect because I left things good. It feels safe, it feels nourishing. It feels, you know, supportive. And there are other people with whom I choose to not connect. And so one of those people with a sort of open wound, I had to reach out to, to try to make meaning collectively, because my grief called for this, like, collective honoring of my friend's life. I. I felt the duty as a friend to get our friend group together. And guess what? It didn't happen because nobody else needed that. So I put myself out there and I connected with this person. We never had a phone call. We never actually talked, which is fine with me, because the past is in the past. And when you. When you can leave something like. And I feel today I feel like the circle has closed. You know, I don't need to go back to sources of. Let's say, oh, difficulty. I choose to connect with people who are like, open for connection. And of course I need to carry on with my own life and responsibilities. So the way that I treat the past is kind of like a wall. Sometimes there's a door through that wall, sometimes you can climb over it. But I sure as hell am not going to try to do either of those things if you're not going to meet me halfway.

A (10:22)

Thank you to Lee for sharing her story. That's real. That's real life. We have some lifelong friends and some friends are for a moment in time, like they're for certain moments in life. One thing we always have though is the stories. So thank you, Lee. And here's one from Doyle M. Doyle is a longtime friend, a homemade as well, one of my Patreon supporters. And one of the old episodes like this is before every day is a story. But one of the old episodes sparked a story about his tattoos. And he messaged me and I'm gonna read his story. He say, in my earlier life, I was a fairly heavy drug user. I was able to hold down a job, but I was, and I was fortunate to do that. And in 1993, I put all the drugs down thanks to mandatory drug testing and the fact that I was going to eventually lose my family. And I did really good until 2001 when I started working with a number of people that were users as well. And the more I was around them, the more I was influenced. But I didn't. I didn't. Instead I went and got a tattoo on my chest and it had some significance to my drug days. And I made sure that it was nothing that was too good looking and nothing that I would be proud of. And now, 20 something years later, I look in the mirror in the morning and I see that tattoo. And I remind myself that the choices I make today can affect me for the rest of my life. I'm still clean, but who knows, when I retire, I might smoke a little weed. That's him being real. I like that. I like that. That's, that's Doyle M story. And that's not a bad idea. Doing something like, instead of doing something that'll ruin you forever, go get a tattoo instead. And that stay with you forever too. Whatever. I'm like, I'm like, I have the mindset of like, whatever works. Like, whatever works for you. That's what you do. So thanks to Doyle for sharing his story and for supporting the stories as well. You want to support the stories, go to patreon.com backslash Shannon case definitely need your support. So support the stories. My desire is for every day as a story and homemade to become more and more of a community. So thank everyone for sharing their stories and if you want to share this. But what about you? Did any of my stories bring any of your own stories to mind? Or do you have one that you want to share, like an everyday story that you want to share to inspire someone? Send your stories to me. My email for this project. My email is submit edsmail.com submit eds gmail.com or you can DM me on Instagram or Facebook. I'm at Shannon Casen on Instagram and you can look up my Facebook. Shannon Casein's homemade or something like that. But if you want to stay anonymous, just tell me you'd rather be anonymous and. Or, or I can share your info. I always like to get a choice because some people want to promote some stuff. If you want to share your info in a short bio, you can do that as well. Whatever you like. Send some short everyday stories my way. And what I'm mainly looking for is meaning. It doesn't have to be some fantastical story or some down in the dump story or some wild thing that happened. It can be, you know, if you got them kind of stories, send those. But mostly, does the story have meaning to you? Because if it has meaning to you, it'll touch someone else. Um, so send that and I'll get back to you when I can. I do have a life. I don't respond immediately, but I do respond if. And maybe I'll use it on one of these Friday episodes. On Friday I want to share other people's episodes. You can record it or you can just write it out. Whatever works for you. So that's it for that. I got a lot of stuff to do today and this weekend. I hope you enjoy your weekend and remember that every day is a story. All right, talk to you soon.