Checking Out, But Not Really

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Run it did the do.

[00:00:03]All right, sounds good.

[00:00:05]Happy Monday.

[00:00:07]Hope everyone made it through.

[00:00:09]If you didn't make it through, comment and say what happened cuz I'd be curious to know.

[00:00:14]Do this.

[00:00:16]Does anyone else just not give a [ __ ] anymore? I'm just tapped out.

[00:00:19]>> Hey, did you hear? Someone tried to off the president.

[00:00:21]>> I don't care. No, but the the war in Iran.

[00:00:24]>> Yeah, I don't care. I really don't give a But the the but the Strait of Hormuz, the >> Yeah, why do I know what that is? Aren't you mad that you know what that is? We shouldn't know what that is.

[00:00:33]>> I googled how long it takes to hard boil an egg this morning. I'm not going to stand here and pretend I know about global shipping choke points with you.

[00:00:40]>> Strait of Hormuz, what is that a yoga pose?

[00:00:42]>> You want to discuss the geopolitical and economical repercussions of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Didn't you like not graduate high school, bud?

[00:00:48]>> That's hilarious. Yeah, I've I've encountered that.

[00:00:50]>> AI is going to take everyone's jobs.

[00:00:52]>> Good. No one works anymore anyway. You send an email no one gives a [ __ ] about, you drink at lunch and leave early.

[00:00:57]That's work now. You know what? Hey, I'll go first. You can have mine. I'll train it. Here's how you send an email no one gives a [ __ ] about, robot.

[00:01:03]>> I'll see you in World War III. But global warming.

[00:01:05]>> Dude, it's May and it's freezing out right now. It's cold until June now. And I'm pretty sure there's some shady spots on this island where there's still ice left from last winter. Last winter almost killed us. But don't you think it's important to stay informed?

[00:01:16]>> No. No, I don't. Because informed now means just knowing about 57 different horrible things that are going on that you can't do a thing about at all times.

[00:01:24]>> Well, what if something big happens? How big can it be if I can't see it? If it's big enough for me to give a [ __ ] about, I'll be able to see it. And when I see it, I'll run away. Okay?

[00:01:33]>> But you used to care about this stuff. I did. I really did. I had my opinions, I read articles, I stayed up on things.

[00:01:39]But now, man, honestly, I'm just trying to find out why the remote is in the refrigerator. I don't know. I'm at I'm at my limit with things I can keep up on. It's too much.

[00:01:50]It's just too much. I want to stay informed. I want to know what's going on. I want to be educated. I want to sound smart. I want to sound like I know what I'm talking about, but it's a full-time job trying to keep up with anything. All right, I'm not built for this. You're not built for this. We we cannot actually care about all of this.

[00:02:07]It's not possible. So, what do you care about now?

[00:02:09]>> The immediate well-being of my wife and kids. There it is.

[00:02:12]>> it's supposed to be. Your immediate circle of influence and sphere of control. I mean, literally you can't do anything else. We have no control and no power over anything outside of our reach. And that's unfortunate. So, I saw this article going around about how millennials are dying of rectal cancer at a very alarming rate. And my initial response to this was, of course. Of course we are, because what better way to just bring this whole screw this generation home than to kill us off of butt cancer? And the only way to prevent this butt cancer is to go get colonoscopies in your 30s.

[00:02:46]Colonoscopies, you know those things that are notoriously so not fun that we used to make fun of old people for needing to get them? Yeah, why don't you get it now when you're 32? And on top of that, it's not going to be covered under insurance until you're 40. So, Yeah, my dad had prostate cancer way back in the day. So, I can relate to this. Doing un-fun things in your 30s.

[00:03:08]It was funny, too, cuz my folks they they talked to a financial advisor about, you know, hey, what are we what are we going to do? And the financial advisor was like, spend your money. Spend it all. He doesn't have long to live. It's stage four prostate cancer. Just blow it. Well, he had surgery and he lived for another like 15 years. Thanks, financial advisors. Oh, you're going to have to pay for your own butt cancer screening. So, this is what I mean. People go, oh, all you millennials do is complain. We're dying of butt cancer.

[00:03:38]Butt cancer. And a lot of that is because we've been fed poison slop our entire childhood. And here we are in adulthood not being able to afford the dreams that we were told is what should be our dreams. And now we're also dying of things that old people traditionally die of. So yeah, let us just let us whine a little bit, okay? And no, this is not an ad. I'm not This is not an ad for big butt pharma or whatever. Big butt pharma.

[00:04:01]>> This is just a raise to raise awareness.

[00:04:04]Because I guess get your colonoscopies.

[00:04:07]I guess we got to do that now. There is nobody more stressed out than people in their 30s and 40s comparing themselves to the version of them that they imagined that like 16. Because if you were in high school or college between 2005 and 2015, the world basically changed every single year.

[00:04:23]Because we're the generation that crashed the family computer downloading LimeWire, then paid 99 cents for iTunes, then you know, Pandora came around, then Spotify. We had Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Yik Yak, and you know, social media before they were flooded with bots, AI, paywalls, and just madness. We watched ride sharing go from like $5 rides where we could cram eight people into a Honda Civic to $100 pickups minimum from like any airport across the US. And we went from carrying cash to Venmo or Cash App to carrying credit cards to Apple Pay. We Right, we used to literally carry a flip phone, an iPod Touch, and maybe like a digital camera, but now all three of those literally live in your pocket. So, inherently, we grew up thinking that by now we would have had it made.

[00:05:04]I really thought there was something something about flying cars. We're supposed to have flying cars by now. Or am I remembering it wrong? Sometimes I remember things wrong.

[00:05:12]Right. Maybe it's I don't know, like a five-bedroom house, a pool in the backyard, dream job, nice car, vacations whenever we wanted it. All because we probably hit a six-figure salary. And you know, here's the part that just nobody told us. The definition of made it just kept moving.

[00:05:27]Costs moved, transportations moved, expectations moved, and that 16-year-old version of us never accounted for that.

[00:05:34]So, if you're in your 30s and 40s and you just feel behind for lack of a better words, like you're not failing.

[00:05:39]You're just living in a world that changed faster than anyone could have predicted.

[00:05:43]And that makes me think to my own kids.

[00:05:47]What's it going to be like when they're my age?

[00:05:50]I I can't even I I can't wrap my brain around that. This is my visual representation of what it feels like to have a millennial midlife awakening.

[00:05:57]Okay? And no, it's not a midlife crisis because we have a crisis every day.

[00:06:01]Fact.

[00:06:02]>> Okay, so over here on our x-axis we have age and then over here on our y-axis we have your ability to work harder. And so we start over here, you're born this pure purpose. You are a innocent little soul and then you grow up and your parents and society are like, "Here's all the things you need to do to achieve success and happiness." And then you reach this point maybe somewhere over here, let's say about 20, mid-20s or something like that and you're like, "Oh, wait a second. I feel like I should be a little bit further along than this right now. But all I got to do is work harder." So you do. You work a little bit harder and then you get to this point maybe like in your 30s, I would say mid to late 30s, where you can no longer work hard anymore. Like your your nervous system is tapped out and you are like, you wait and you look around and you hit this brick wall and you're like, "Hmm, maybe this isn't all that it's all cracked up to be. And quite frankly, I have nothing left in me to give and I can't keep going like this for the next 30 years." And that, my friends, right there, that is where the awakening happens because you say, "Um, I actually don't want all of these things anyways."

[00:07:07]And so what happens from this point is instead of going up further along, we say, "Let me go and return back to my inner child." And let me tell you, this is where you don't find the house, you don't find all the things that society tells you should have by this point in time. You know what you find there?

[00:07:26]Peace. And then you spend the next like 5 to 10 years from there completely deconstructing your entire life and starting from scratch. So, yeah. One of the reasons it sucks being a millennial is that I feel like we're stuck in like this worst of both worlds kind of in between. You know It really does feel like that.

[00:07:44]We have all this great technology, all this convenience, but yet nothing's quite right.

[00:07:51]Everything's still falling apart.

[00:07:55]You know what I mean? Because if we look at the generations on either side, like Gen Z and Gen Alpha, I feel like have hope. Like they're going to figure something out where they can create a good generation of people for themselves. They'll probably start developing like Gen Z Alpha communes where they all get together, live on the beach in some kind of affordable housing, wear oversized jeans, too many rings, and weird makeup. You know, like they'll find their peace.

[00:08:21]Gen X on the other hand are just going to die. Like they're they're just at peace with what this is and that they're just kind of like, "Let's just ride this bad boy out."

[00:08:31]And [laughter] just ride it off into the sunset. And that works for them. And I'm jealous for that because millennials are stuck in that in between where we feel like there's got to be more here.

[00:08:41]And we're just going to spend our entire existences trying to obtain it and then we never will and we'll just die frustrated. And that is the worst of both. Maybe the issue isn't that we stopped caring or that we're {quote} {unquote} quitting.

[00:08:57]Maybe the issue is that we're finally paying attention to what it's costing us. Yeah. And maybe the most millennial plot twist of all of this, what if some of the things we've been chasing were never even what we truly wanted?

[00:09:13]The whole thing with societal norms, who decides that?

[00:09:17]Should that be the society that decides its own norms? That's something we can change.

[00:09:22]That's something we can tweak and mold and make what we want of it.

[00:09:27]And we should probably start doing that.

[00:09:28]So then when somebody comes around and says, "Set bigger goals." I think a lot of us millennials are like, "I'm sorry.

[00:09:35]I'm currently setting the goal of not crying in the Target parking lot.

[00:09:39]So, yes. Having goals probably feels hard right now.

[00:09:44]And there are valid reasons for that.

[00:09:47]Not just related to our shared experience, but also how our brains got wired from those shared experiences.

[00:09:54]So, let's dive into that. The The understanding part of this. First thing to understand here is that goals feel irrelevant when we're constantly adapting to chaos.

[00:10:05]Okay, because goal setting requires the part of your brain that does future planning and executive function.

[00:10:12]And the side effects of chronic stress is that it pushes your brain towards survival mode.

[00:10:18]Can we plan?

[00:10:21]Can we Can we make goals?

[00:10:24]That What am I trying to say?

[00:10:27]Is it possible to make goals that avoid the chaos or deal with the chaos?

[00:10:35]I mean, it may not be the greatest of goals, but it's something.

[00:10:38]I don't think I said that right, but you you Hopefully, you understand what I'm trying to say. My words aren't aren't working for me today.

[00:10:46]And survival mode don't care about your 5-year plan.

[00:10:50]It cares about threat detection.

[00:10:53]As a millennial, the most disturbing thing to me on a daily basis is the blinding speed of societal decay. Like, we knew 10 or 15 years ago that the school systems were being intentionally dumbed down so that they would create people who couldn't critically think so that they could be more easily controlled. We knew that was happening.

[00:11:09]I could conceptualize that. I could go, "Oh, that's horrible that they're doing that. That's going to be a huge problem someday." I for some reason didn't ever think that was going to be happening when I was 35.

[00:11:23]Man, I'm so guilty of this.

[00:11:27]You see something happening, whatever it is.

[00:11:30]And you you never think you're going to be affected by it, until then you are.

[00:11:33]And then then I'm surprised I'm affected by the thing I was expecting to be affected by.

[00:11:39]I did not think that the schools would be churning out people who cannot read when I was in my mid-30s. I didn't think that the people who could not read were going to be the only people that companies could hire to deal with me when I needed to get things done. Do you understand? I didn't get that part. And maybe that's my maybe that's me being stupid. I should have saw it coming faster. Like I knew that tech companies were going to become resource hounds. I knew that they were going to buy up all the technology and it would become hard for us to have our own computers and our own technology in the way that we had it before. Every We knew that, right? I didn't know that a stick of RAM was going to cost $650 when I was 35. Man, maybe I should start selling RAM and computer parts on eBay.

[00:12:24]Didn't realize it was that expensive.

[00:12:26]I thought it was going to be when I was 60. I was going to be looking around as as an advanced age old man and thinking, "Wow, it's really terrible that it got here." I didn't quite realize that it was going to be right now.

[00:12:41]That's the repeatedly is I look out and I go, "Oh, I didn't know it was going to happen this fast." Imagine 10 years from now.

[00:12:51]20 years from now? I sound like a broken record, but I honestly, I genuinely cannot wrap my head around that.

[00:12:58]And maybe I don't want to.

[00:13:00]Oh, you want a midlife crisis? That's cool. Um I'm a millennial. I didn't get one of those. Cuz I have never once experienced a period of stability long enough to interrupt. I watched the Twin Towers fall on a TV that my elementary school teacher wheeled into our classroom. And then that kicked off a 20-year war with the Middle East. And I graduated into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, the 2008 financial crisis caused by boomers that spent the '80s and '90s deregulating the banking industry. Then veered directly into the wreckage with a degree that we were told we had to get and student loan debt into a job market that actively was not hiring. And then when the economy did finally start to stabilize, we got hit with a global pandemic, which exposed every crack in the system from health care and housing to employment and mental health. All of it broke at once. And on the other side of that, the housing market became completely unaffordable. And it's not because we were buying avocado toaster iced coffee. It's because the average home price has outpaced wage growth by 300% since the boomers were buying. So they bought homes for like 60 grand and then watched them appreciate to over half a million. Now they're sitting on half the country's wealth while telling us we just need to work harder. And now, war with Iran and $5 gas. Social Security projected to run out before most of us retire. Assistant by the way that boomers have been drawing from for years and that we've been paying into our whole careers, but will likely never see a dime of. The audacity to look at us and say, "Your generation just doesn't want to work." We have been working our whole lives. We've been working hard to survive in the economy you built. We've been in crisis the whole time. So, a sports car sounds cool though. Draw whatever you want in 7 seconds and I'll buy it for you. No cap? No cap. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

[00:14:41]Did you just draw 1,000 g of cocaine? I sure did.

[00:14:45]Well, we ended on a high note. Haha.

[00:14:48]I guess I should go uh list more stuff on eBay so I can buy a couple cups of gas and not afford health insurance.

[00:14:58]Like comment if you want or not. I'm good either way.

[00:15:02]I'll see you.