The Blue Collar Buddha Podcast

Episode 18 | I Didn't Hit Save. Now What?

I recorded what my wife and I both agreed was probably the best episode I've ever done.
Then I didn't hit save.
Gone. All of it. And I sat there with my head in my hands doing exactly what we all do in that moment — beating myself up, running through every version of if I had just, reminding myself how imperfect I am, calculating everything I lost.
And then I asked myself: what are you going to do about a moment that's already gone?
Absolutely nothing. Because you can't. There is no command Z for what's already been done. The only thing that exists right now is right now.
This episode is about that — not in some inspirational poster kind of way, but in the real, practical, sitting-in-your-chair-with-your-head-in-your-hands kind of way. The moment's gone. The day isn't. A bird just flew into our window view and perched on a tree long enough for Sharon and me to see it and then it was gone too. That's not a shit day. That's just a day.
Cut yourself some slack. Not because you deserve a pass. Because dragging around what you can't fix serves absolutely no purpose.
The next time I talk about what I lost today, it'll probably be better anyway.

Sunday Stroll 03 | When You Look In Your Closet

I got up Sunday morning, watched a YouTube interview with Lee Marvin on the Dick Cavett Show, and immediately felt like a dick for being surprised that he was intelligent.
That's where this one starts.
From there we end up in your closet. Literally. Go open it. Look at what's in there. And ask yourself one question — why did I buy that?
I'll tell you what I found when I asked myself. I spend a shit ton of money on electronics without blinking. New MacBook Pro, SSD, trackball mouse, the whole ecosystem. But clothes? My wife had to make me get new jeans because I had holes in mine that weren't supposed to be there.
Turns out there's a reason for that. Goes all the way back to elementary school, Sears Tough Skins, and my mother taking the hem out of my already high-water pants so they'd last another season. That little white line where the color had washed out. The patch that never matched. Kickball in pants so tight I couldn't move anyway.
You don't know you're poor until you know.
And once you know, you either stop buying things or you buy everything you didn't have — and then wonder why you never wear it.
This is what our closets are actually about. Not fashion. Not status. The conversation we never had with ourselves about why we value what we value and where that came from.
Doc Martens, charity shops, bedazzled jeans, and the English-made versus everything-else debate also make an appearance. It's a Sunday Stroll. That's how this works.

Episode 17 | An Honest Hot Mess Is Still Honest

I got up this morning and genuinely asked myself what in the absolute hell I'm doing with this podcast.
I've got my notebook. I've got my notes. I know how to outline things, stay on point, work through A, B, C with sub-points. I know how to do all of that. So why am I not doing it here?
Because that's what the course is for. And because I realized this morning that the stream of consciousness I've been apologizing for is actually the thing I should have been celebrating.
This episode is me taking the pressure off. Off myself and off you. I'm not here to make you feel inspired on command. I'm here to lay some things out — as disorganized and chaotic as they may be — and let you take from them whatever is actually relevant to your life.
But I do want to leave you with one question before I go get coffee with my wife.
Look around you. The clothes in your closet. The car you drive. The job you have. The place you live. Did you choose those things because that's what you actually wanted? Or did you just get on the expected track and stop questioning it because that's what you were taught to do?
No judgment. Just the question.
This is going to be an honest hot mess. That's the whole point.

Episode 16 | Why Not Date Yourself?

I sat down tonight with my fountain pen and my notebook trying to get organized. Trying to make this thing professional. Trying to make sure the episodes flow in the right order so nobody complains that I meander.
And then I thought — why?
This isn't the course. The course is where the structure lives. This right here is just me telling stories, maybe ranting, maybe saying things that make absolutely no sense. And I'm good with that.
What I'm not good with anymore is stopping being me because I'm worried about what you're going to think. I can't control that anyway. I figured that out a long time ago and it changed everything.
Here's the crystallized point for tonight: if you will go through the process of getting to know another person well enough to decide whether you want to date them, marry them, build a life with them — why in the hell wouldn't you do the same thing for yourself? You are the single most consistent relationship you will ever have. You are always with you.
So why not date yourself? Get to know the person. Cut them some slack. Find out what they actually want.
My wife and I were on the sofa and it got cold and I turned on the heat and then I came in here and said what I needed to say. That's the whole story.

Episode 15 | Your Own Darkness Isn't What You Think It Is

We've collectively decided that darkness — whatever yours happens to be — needs to be buried. Subjugated. Hidden behind better behavior and polite company.
And some of you know exactly what I'm talking about. The thing you don't want anyone to know. The thing you've decided makes you a freak, makes you unacceptable, makes you someone who doesn't belong in whatever the hell we're calling normal society this week.
Here's my question: what exactly is normal?
The pastor having the affair. The person at the job they hate showing up anyway. The want you've been sitting on for years because somebody somewhere decided it wasn't okay. Who told you it wasn't okay? And more importantly — why did you believe them?
This episode is about the darkness we carry not because it's actually dark, but because we've been told it is. And what happens when you stop accepting that definition and start sitting with yourself long enough to find out what's actually true.
I'm not going to define your darkness for you. That's not my job. My job is to tell you that the version of yourself you've been hiding from might be the most interesting person in the room.
Sit down with yourself today. Five minutes. Ten. Whatever you've got. No agenda. No label. Just you, across the table from you — and ask yourself if you'd be kind to that person or tear them apart.
Most of us already know the answer. That's the whole point.

Episode 14 | You Don't Actually Know What You Want From Them

Get something to write with. Not your phone. Not your laptop. An actual pen and an actual piece of paper. I'll wait.
This episode is about the specific person — the one you're convinced you have to have, the one you're trying to manifest, the one you keep going back to. And I'm going to tell you something about that pursuit that most people in the manifestation world are not going to want to hear.
But first, the exercise.
Draw a line down the middle of that paper. At the top write: What I'd like to have in a relationship. Left side write Me.Right side write Them.
Then leave the left side alone. For now.
On the right side — the them side — write down everything. Height. Weight. Eye color. Personality. What you'd do together. How it would feel. Your specific person if you've got one. All of it. Let it flow all day as things come to you. Don't edit it. Don't judge it. Don't share it with a single living soul — not your best friend, nobody.
The left side is what the next episode is about.
I've been in what I will straight-facedly call the best relationship on the planet for coming up on nine years. I wasn't supposed to have it. Didn't think I was worth it. Here's part of how I got here.
Do the work on the paper. Come back for the next one.

Episode 13 | You Must Define For Yourself What Love Is

I jumped out of bed to record this one. That's how I knew it needed to be said.
I spent most of my life letting everyone else define love for me. My parents. The church. The culture. Shakespeare. The self-help books. Esther Hicks. Wayne Dyer. The list goes on. And I took all of it in and I tried to live inside somebody else's definition of a thing I desperately wanted and couldn't seem to hold onto.
Four marriages. Four divorces. Multiple DUIs. A drinking problem I was using as a slow suicide. A man who thought of himself in the third person because he felt so separate from who he actually was — so broken, so unlovable, that it was only a matter of time before anyone who got close enough figured it out and left.
That man needed someone to say: you're not broken. Your thinking is maybe a little jacked up, but you're not broken.
This episode is about what I had to do before any methodology or process or tool could work. Before Abraham. Before Neville Goddard. Before any of it. I had to decide for myself what love was supposed to feel like for me. Not what anyone told me. Me.
Until you do that, you're going to spin. I promise you that.
I said all of that and then went back to bed with my wife and ate cookies. That's the dream come true nobody tells you about.

Episode 12 | What If It Was You Holding Your Own Hand?

I didn't plan this one. I almost didn't record it.
This morning during my little ritual before I got behind the microphone, something hit me that I've never let myself think before. I was beat with an extension cord as a child. And in that moment, I dissociated — stood across the room watching it happen, holding the hand of what I thought was an angel by the window.
This morning I wondered for the first time: what if that was me? What if it was my 57-year-old self holding that little boy's hand, squeezing it gently, saying it's going to be okay?
I've got tears going down my face recording this. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
This episode isn't about the how. It's not a method or a process. It's a confession and it's a truth — that you are an extraordinary person in a world that has spent a lot of time making you feel like you aren't. And at some point you're going to have to get a little selfish. You're going to have to turn toward yourself with the same compassion you've probably spent your whole life giving everyone else.
Maybe it's time to kneel down, hold your younger self's face, and say it'll be okay.

Episode 11 | The Only Person Who Can Make You Feel Small Is You

I had a day at work today. The kind where you're face to face with people's attitudes — verbal, sometimes physical — and you have to just take it because that's the job. And it got me thinking about something I've said before and will keep saying until it lands.
Nobody can make you feel small except you.
I know. I know how that sounds. Stay with me.
This episode is about the inner conversation — the one you're not paying nearly enough attention to. Because here's the thing: if you talked to yourself the way you actually deserve to be talked to, what other people hurl at you wouldn't land the way it does. The N-word. The insults. The dismissiveness. You're the one deciding what those things mean and how much weight they carry. That's not victim-blaming. That's the most empowering thing I know how to say.
You can't control what people think about you. You can't control what they say. But you get to define the meaning. Every time.
Pay attention to what you say to yourself. That's the conversation that's actually running your life.

Sunday Stroll 02 | The Heart Will Always Know

* If you are sensitive to frank discussions about the death of infants and children, then you need to skip this episode. - Chase
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I almost didn't post this one.
I recorded it the same night as Sunday Stroll 01, still Saturday May 23rd, now 11:25pm. 
Still Malachi's birthday three days gone.
Shit...
Fuck...
There are moments that....
I gave myself permission to feel what I was feeling instead of suppressing it. So that's what this episode is — me feeling it out loud with nowhere particular to go.
I talk about my grandmother's biscuits and gravy and fried green tomatoes and how I can recall every detail of being with her and how for every one of those moments there are 15 to 50 of the other kind. I talk about finding Malachi. About mouth to mouth. About what I still remember 27 years later that doesn't go away and probably won't.
And then I play you a song.
I wrote it years after he died. I composed it myself — I'm a classically trained flautist, been writing my own music for years, never produced it publicly until now. The lyrics came straight out of my soul. No AI. No editing. No machine touched it.
I played it tonight because it's what the moment needed.
By 11:25pm I was okay. Not performed okay. Actually okay. That's the difference between where I was and where I am. The tools work. Not because the grief goes away. Because you learn to sit with it without drowning in it.
Maybe I'm talking to the me that needed to hear this. Maybe I'm talking to you.