The Blue Collar Buddha Podcast

Sunday Stroll 01 | The 99 People Who Didn't Fuck With You

This is the first Sunday Stroll. Less structured than the regular episodes. More rambling. Different intro music depending on how I feel. That's just how this one works.
I'm recording this on Saturday, May 23rd at about 10pm with a Mexican cerveza because Malachi's birthday was three days ago. He would have been 27. He died July 31st, 1999 at two and a half months old. That's not what this episode is about, but it's the weather system everything else is recorded inside of.
The day job is ending soon. Life is shifting. And I started thinking about my father — born 1942, me born 1965 — and how his worldview got installed in me before I had any say in the installation. How he told me white people couldn't be trusted while sending me to an all-white school. How I accepted it anyway because your parents are God when you're a child.
And then I started thinking about the 99 people who didn't fuck with you.
You've met a hundred people. Maybe 99 of them left you alone, treated you decently, or were outright good to you. One person says something sideways — calls you a name, dismisses you, confirms your worst fear about yourself — and that one person becomes the organizing principle of your entire identity. Ninety-nine people get no weight at all.
That's not their power. That's yours. And you can take it back.
Come back next Sunday.

Episode 10 | Some Days Just Hand You Your Ass

It is, uh, it's a Friday. It's about, uh, about 10 45. And, uh, I hadn't even intended on doing a podcast episode of any kind.
I it's, you know, it's, I've got people downstairs. They are, sounds like they're having a party. So you may be able to hear some of their activity.
Um, you might be able to pick it up in the microphone. And if you do, I apologize. But even though I'm not sure if I'm going to post this or not, I wanted to do it rather than, than wait until another time, this is one of those stream of consciousness, little moments that I would more often than not in the past.
No, not more often than not, I would have written and maybe made a blog post. But the funny thing about those blog posts is as genuine as they are, there's still a degree of editing that goes on that you kind of keep to yourself. So this, this episode, this, this moment right here is just me on a Friday night.
Having had a day at work that kind of felt like it handed me my ass. You know, you have days like that, you know, where things just do not go the way you would have liked for them to have gone. So that is it.
And I think I can hear the neighbor's cat. I hear that sound that cats make when I think they want to come inside, you know? Oh, what do I want to talk about? What, what, what do I want to talk about? We talk about mental health and very hushed tone still. I think, I mean, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but we do tend to talk about mental health in these, these hushed tones or very clinical tones with clinical terms and this degree of detachment and professionalism that I think is contrary to the very nature of mental health.
But that's just me. I'm not a pro. I don't get paid to diagnose and heal, as it were.
You have a day where you have been out in the world and it seems like you got, like I said earlier, it's like you got your ass handed to you. You encounter people that are either angry or unhappy or whatever they might be, hell, they might be happy and just want to give you a hard time. And you even tell yourself that you need to have thicker skin, that you need to let it roll off your back, don't let it get to you, don't let it bother you.
But sometimes, at least for today, sometimes it does. Sometimes a person's tone, sometimes a person's facial expressions or their body language or what they say affects you. And sometimes you just feel tired.
And I've never professed to being perfect. My, my rational self says, do not make this episode. Now that I'm into it.
Do not do it. Don't do it. But yet here I am talking into this microphone.
But the truth of the matter is I'm imagining that I am sitting someplace with a fire going and we're just talking. And although I can't hear from you interactively, perhaps it is me talking to me. I don't know.
But sometimes you just feel tired. I'm not talking about hopeless or maybe tired's not even the word. No, you don't want to sit back and say, why, what the fuck? No, you don't want to do that because that, that rational part of you jumps up and says, oh my gosh, are you feeling sorry for yourself? Suck it up, drive on, get over it, move on.
Is it that, that, that I'm thinking about my own mortality? Is it that I am more aware of my nows than I ever have been? I don't think it's a fear of dying or a sense of loss or anything like that. Communication with your significant other, communication with family, communication with people that you trust, that you called friends, and you sometimes wonder if you have been clear, if you have really spoken as authentically and as genuinely as you had imagined you had. And what I'm getting to is when we have these miscommunications, sometimes it can hurt.
Sometimes you just think, wow, wow. What could I have done differently? And you feel vulnerable in that moment and that vulnerability, you feel like, ah, I need to put up my defensive walls. I need to regain my composure.
I need to strengthen the walls. It has been a day. And as I'm even talking to this microphone, as I'm talking to you, I'm thinking to myself, eh, I don't think I'm going to post this because this shit's all over the place.
This is making absolutely no sense. You see, that's just it. Sometimes it just doesn't.
Sometimes, no matter how put together you think you are and how how well you seem to have managed the world around you and internally, you just have those moments where you go, what the fuck just happened? And I think that's a part of our human experience, a part of our human journey is we have got so much stuff inside of us that we are not consciously aware of. And I think it just bubbles up, it comes up and we want to put a name to it and we want to give it some kind of emotional or psychological, mental and rational, objective substance to it. But sometimes it's just there to be felt and observed and experienced without a need to change it or to label it or to give it a name or to do anything with it other than just be in the moment.
Especially as a man, you're not supposed to say sometimes words do wound. Sometimes they do hurt. Sometimes, especially when you're not expecting it, you just find yourself feeling lashed.
You don't want to lash out and hurt the other person. That's not what you want to do. But sometimes, what the fuck am I supposed to do with what I'm feeling right now? Yeah, you just inhabit it.
Just let it be. And I think this is what I want to say. When that happens, you got to be OK with that.
You got to be OK with yourself. You're not perfect. You're not expected.
Well, sometimes we think we're expected to be perfect, but you're not. And you got to be in that moment. You got to let it happen.
If you're going to cry, cry. If you want to sit silently and listen to some music, then do so. But don't do it as a way of distracting yourself from what it is.
Don't do it as a way of trying to run away or to shove it down or to in any way form it into something that you think it should be. Just let it be. And as frightening as that is sometimes, it is a part of our expansion.
It's a part of our growth. It's a part of our awakening. It's a part of our awareness of the awakening.
It's a part of our conscious consciousness, our. Maturation. So I didn't know what this was going to be all about.
I really didn't. There's something else I want to touch on before I end this, because I think I've said what I wanted to say. We. 
We apologize. We diminish and we devalue ourselves in an effort to try not to be criticized or judged or treated unjustly or unrighteously. And that's fear.
And I think sometimes we just need to sit in that fear and recognize it for what it is. And then make a decision and a choice to be who we are anyway. So be you.
And thank you for hanging out with me.

Episode 9 | What The Hell About Me?

I had an ache for most of my life that I couldn't name. Couldn't describe it. Couldn't explain it. Just knew it was there, and knew that staying drunk was the most reliable way to keep it quiet for a few hours.
This episode is about what happened when I finally stopped drinking long enough to sit down with that ache and actually look at it. Not with a therapist. Not with a twelve-step program. Not with a self-help book. Just me, pen, paper, and the uncomfortable reality that the person sitting there sober wasn't someone I particularly liked.
And then what happened after that.
I also talk about what it means to be selfish. Not the kind people weaponize against you when you stop making yourself smaller for their comfort. The real kind. The necessary kind. The kind where you finally ask — who am I supposed to think about if not myself? I'm the one who's with me all the damn time.
Who are you right now? And if who you are right now isn't pleasing to you — not to anyone else, just to you — what then?
That's the whole episode.

Episode 8 | Who Asked You To Save Me?

Imagine that someone came here, to this little podcast of mine, just to convert me, correct me, or tell me what I should be doing with my life. I mean, seriously, just let yourself imagine what that might look like.
 
Seriously, between you and I, I would gently (I would), tell that “you're in the wrong place.”And I mean that in the most direct, non-hostile, loving way possible.
 
This episode is about what happens when you stop letting the world define happiness for you. 
 
The books didn't do it. 
 
The relationships didn't do it. 
 
The alcohol damn sure as shit didn't do it. 
 
Not enough of any of it existed to shut up the voice inside asking what happiness actually means to me. For me. Not for you, not for my parents, not for whatever the American Dream is selling this week.
 
I had to define it myself. And once I did, my cup started running the fuck over.
 
I also talk about all caps messages, unsolicited religious conversions, and why I can have a Guinness Extra Stout and walk away from it — which I genuinely didn't think was ever going to be possible.

Episode 7 | You Weren’t Really Looking For Jesus in The Nightclub

I used to have a whole ritual. Liquor store first. Shower with a drink in hand. Right cologne. Right outfit. Music to get myself pumped up. Then drive to whatever bar I thought was going to have the most attractive people that night.
 
I told myself I was just going out to have a good time.
 
I told myself that I might find the love of my lifetime “tonight.”
 
I was lying to myself.
 
This episode is about what was actually driving that ritual — and every relationship that came out of it. Four marriages. Four divorces. A Holiday Inn in Fayetteville, North Carolina that seemed to have been the stop of the emotional bullshit and the start of a life that maybe I finally deserved. 
 
A Mormon baptism. 
 
An infant son I'll get to in another episode.
 
None of it was random. 
 
All of it made perfect sense once I finally stopped bullshitting myself long enough to look at it honestly.
 
What you believe, you behave. Period. You can fake it for a while. 
 
You can't fake it forever.
 
I didn't know who I was. 
 
That's the whole story. 
 
Everything else was just the evidence.

Episode 6 | The Shame We Know And Keep Silent

Fair warning — this one is raw. I said so at the top and I meant it.
 
This episode is about the shame we know intimately and never say out loud. Not the concept. Not that pretty shit that gets wrapped all nicely by the time the credits roll. But this is about the living, breathing, suffocating reality of it. The kind of shame that starts before you're old enough to understand what the fuck is even happening to you. The kind that follows you into every relationship, every bottle of alcohol you try to silence it with, every version of yourself you tried to burn down in another relationship that didn’t work out, and all of this just to stop feeling it.
 
I talk about November 2nd, 1994. I talk about what it felt like to wake up after that and think I couldn't even get that shit right. I talk about carrying it for decades without a single honest conversation with myself about what it actually was.
 
And I talk about what's on the other side. 
 
Not because it's pretty or wrapped up clean. 
 
Because I'm living it. 
 
Coming up on 12 years (8 years at the time of making this episode) of something I genuinely never truly believed was possible for someone like me.
 
The broken and the fucked-up, like me, don’t get happy-ass endings.
 
If you're still here, it did not destroy you. 
 
That matters a shit-ton than you know right now.

Episode 5 | Still Don't Believe in "god". But Was Still Pissed At “him” Though.

I'm picking up right where I left off — still on God, still on my personal journey, and still not trying to convince you of anything.
 
This sure as shit isn’t about “converting” you.
 
If my last episode stirred something in you about religion, faith, or the lack of either, this one is going to add some layers to that conversation.
 
Years after the death of my infant son, Malachi, in a retail environment where I was working as a manager, something happened at work that I wasn't expecting. 
 
And that shit stirred something in me that I really and truly didn’t know was still there.
 
A woman I didn't know put her hands on me aggressively to get my attention. What followed was one of the most real-time examples I've had in a long time of what it actually looks like to have an honest conversation with yourself in the middle of a moment that could have gone sideways fast.
 
This episode is about accountability. 
 
Not the shit that certain people preach about. But the kind that happens in the sixty seconds between stimulus and response when everything in you wants to react and something else in you says — wait.
 
— Chase Murphy, Jr.

Episode 04 | Pissed At A God You Don’t Even Believe In (Part One)

You don't have to believe in God to be pissed at him.Sounds like I’ve lost my mind, yeah?
 
See, on July 31st, 1999, I found my son Malachi. 
 
Dead.
 
He was 2.5 months old. 
 
An infant.
 
In those moments, however long it actually was, I still, to this day, don’t know how long it was, I made every bargain I could think of that morning with this “god” that I had been raised to “believe” in.
 
None of them worked.
 
Not a single fucking one.
 
This episode is about what informs this podcast, this work, and this life. It's about the voice I heard in a Christian rehab in Houston that I had no business being in. It's about anger, grief, faith, and what happens when something you don't believe in answers you anyway.
 
This one isn't easy. 
 
Neither was writing it.
 
— Chase

Episode 03 | I Am Not Your Problem. (And Nobody Else Is, Either.)

People ask why my courses aren't free. “They ought to be free,” they say with a great deal of passion and righteousness.
They tell me I'm too confrontational. “Your language is off-putting and I just think that you don’t need to swear so much,” I am told by those that believe that genteel language is akin to truth and comfort.
They say they'd listen if I were more gentle. “Oh my gosh, you sound so angry; just be nicer and I would be your biggest supporter.”
Here are my answers: 
One, the world is already full of free information and bullshit that you likely aren't fully using. But if “free” is what you need, well, seek it out.
Two, I’m not here to blow smoke up your ass, tell you what you think you want to hear or adapt my voice and who I am to suit your comfort. 
And third, I’m here to share with you the one thing nobody wants to hear—you are the only constant variable in every experience you've ever had. 
Not your ex. 
Not your boss. 
Not your childhood “bestie”. 
You.
If that sounds like victim-blaming, it's not. It's the truth that finally set me free, and it's the truth I'm sharing with you. 
I ended with four things: learning to actually like myself, how my relationship with my wife is the fruit of that work, why your external world mirrors your self-concept, and why the bullshit belief that “you're a victim” has to die.
If this hits, I've got a free workbook on my site. No email. No catch. If it doesn't, close it and move on.
Click here for the site.

Episode 02 | The Death of the Script: You Don't Have to Be Polished to Be Worthwhile

My wife is in the background talking to her sister in Zambia, she just kissed me on the head, and I'm drinking my coffee. If you find that distracting, or if you think a podcast needs to be recorded in a sterile studio to be "professional," then I'll save you some time: I am not for you.
Nah, baby—this is that "real everyday life" kinda bid'ness!
I lived under the banner of "professionalism" for a long time, and I'm calling bullshit on it for me. This episode is about the Real Empowered Self—which means getting to know who you actually are when the masks come off and we get real with ourselves. We're talking about the habits of "keeping your head down" to avoid getting hurt and why that limitation is killing your expansion.
Surgical Truths in This Episode:
The Death of the Script: Why I trust my intuition over a teleprompter. Life isn't linear (1, 2, 3... A, B, C), so why should our growth be?
The "Professional" Lie: Why I refuse to invest in a studio when the real work happens in the middle of a messy, beautiful life.
Herd Mentality vs. Self-Awareness: Are you keeping your head down because it works, or because you're afraid to be seen?
The Note-Taker's Edge: Why you need to write down your moments of inspiration. Don't trust your memory; trust the physical act of recording your growth.
I'm Chase Murphy. You are worth being loved exactly as you are, right the f*** now. Not when you're "fixed," not when you're "professional"—right now.
If that landed, I've got a free workbook on my site. No email. No catch. If it doesn't, close it and move on.
Click here for the site.