Brandon Held - Life Is Crazy - Episode 18

The speaker is discussing their podcast and the website they are creating to share their life experiences and engage with a community. They mention that the website is mainly designed for men and they have strong opinions on how men should treat women. They express their willingness to discuss various topics based on audience suggestions and mention the possibility of interviewing friends and popular figures. The speaker then talks about bringing their son Ethan to Arizona to rebuild their bond and help him make positive changes in his life. They mention the rules set by their girlfriend about not having women stay overnight, which Ethan breaks and causes tension. Eventually, Ethan is kicked out and the speaker feels helpless due to their own unemployment. Ethan stays with his toxic girlfriend for a while before finding his own place. The speaker is upset with Ethan's decision and feels he lacks life experience. Welcome back to Brandon Held Life is Crazy. This is episode 18. I am, I would say 85% through what I have planned on discussing up front and putting out there for the world to kind of take in and here's my stories of my life. And I just started working on a website to put this on to originally my plan was, you know, to just put this up on regular, you know, podcasting stations, and I still will. But also, I wanted to have a place for people to come to, to communicate with me to create a community. And, you know, just in general, be able to discuss anything in life. And, you know, it's, it's mostly designed for men. That's the idea. Behind that, I mean, this is about my life experience. And I'm a man, obviously. And I've raised or am raising three sons to some degree or another, you know, whether it was by phone and monthly or summerly visits, or, you know, by 5050 custody. And for a while, you know, I had a daily fatherly role. And so it's, it's to bring that experience and help where I can with what I know in life and what I've experienced in life. What I am not clearly is a woman, and I have not raised any daughters. Does that mean I don't have any strong opinions about how a man should treat a woman? Absolutely not. I do. I 100% have strong opinions on those things. And, you know, I'd be happy to share that and other things with people, if they would come to my website and tell me what they would like me to discuss or talk about. I'll be happy to bring that up and do a podcast about it. Eventually, I'd like to interview friends and people I know. And, you know, who knows, who knows where this could go, maybe I could interview people who just become maybe significant or popular as well on the site, and other people want to hear from them. I don't know where this will go. Maybe nowhere, you know, maybe I'm talking into a microphone and five people will ever hear this in their life. You know, I don't know. But that's what I'm working on right now. And this episode, I'm just going to pick up where I left off in the last episode. And that was where I started to date a woman. Her name is Lily. And I was unemployed. And in conjunction with that, I had this brilliant idea to, you know, bring my son Ethan out to Arizona from Ohio and try to make a stronger adult bonded relationship. Because we had an insane bond as, you know, he was a baby, as I told you before, in previous podcasts. And then that got poisoned and lost along the way. And it's sad, it's sad for multiple reasons. One is I have a lot of guidance and advice I can provide to Ethan and my sons. That doesn't mean I haven't. I have. And, you know, Ethan, for whatever reason, still determines he's going to do what he wants to do, which as an adult man, that's ultimately what he should do. You know, you should hear people's advice, and you should decide what you want to take in and make changes and do differently. Or you should decide what you think is a better path for you. However, I also think the person that that advice is coming from is significant, right? If I'm Ethan's male neighbor or some acquaintance or whatever, some guy he runs into in the store and they throw some advice his way or church, you know, Ethan's pretty religious. I don't know what his church attendance is, but I imagine it's pretty high just knowing him. And, you know, that advice is good. But no, it's not as good as what's coming from his father. You know, nobody has his interests at heart better than I do, except his mother. And that goes for all three of my sons. You know, all the advice and guidance I ever give any of my sons, it's because I genuinely want them to live happy, productive lives. And unfortunately, you know, at a young age, they think they know what that looks like for them. And, you know, at 51 years old, I can tell you, and as you've heard along the way on this podcast, they don't know what that looks like. They really have no idea what that looks like because they haven't taken the steps on that journey to live a happy life. They're just doing what is making them happy now. And in some cases, that's not the answer for the future, for the long run. So anyway, so I brought Ethan to Arizona. And, you know, I told him he had some simple rules, right? Some were my rules and some belong to, you know, my girlfriend because it was her house. She owned the house. You know, it's her rules. I didn't have to agree with them because I didn't, but I had to respect them because it was her house. And so he had to have a job, you know, and he had to be working towards a future, towards changing his life. And so the idea originally was for him to get a job and then hopefully eventually go back to school and further his education or, you know, figure out a path forward. Right. What? Yeah. You know, when he first came out to Arizona, he worked at a call center. Well, that was actually really the only thing he did while he was here is he worked at a call center, you know, taking phone calls for, I don't know, Verizon, I think, or something. And he was the customer service support when you called in. And, you know, he immediately meets this girl there. No, I take that back. He didn't. He met some girl out. And actually, I can't remember what order this went in, but either way, one of Lily's rules was he couldn't have women stay in the house. Overnight. Right. Like they could come, they could visit, but they had to leave. At the end of the day, they had to leave. And she was very hard and fast on that rule. You know, she was pretty religious herself and, you know, old school and didn't believe young people should be shacking up before marriage, which, you know, I'm pretty sure she didn't adhere to that advice. And she didn't live that life. But, you know, it's her right to be as contradictive as she wants to be because it's her house. I think she had other reasons. I think it was really more a jealousy of not girls being there, not wanting them to turn their attention towards me or giving me some type of, you know, attention she didn't want me to have, whatever the case was. That's just me saying that because I know how jealous and insecure she was about everything, not necessarily through my actions, but just through, you know, her history and her past and what she had to deal with in other relationships. So, anyway, Ethan was out here visiting, living, and, you know, at one point he broke the rule. He had someone stay the night and Lily caught him, right? And, you know, she wanted to kick him out immediately. And I, you know, was able to talk her down and say, you know, hey, look, I will talk to him. I'll let him know he can't do that again. That can't happen again. But, you know, I brought him out here to help him and get his life on track. And how am I going to do that if I'm kicking him out? And, you know, he can't make ends meet because, you know, he's struggling to survive when the whole goal here was for him to have a family. It was for him to advance in life. And you can't really advance in life when you're struggling to get by. And so she agreed, but made it also very, very clear that she wouldn't put up with it again. That if he did it again, he was out 100 percent. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Now, I think the problem with Ethan is he's been able to get away with stuff his whole life. You know, he's a good kid. He means well. You know, he's not a malicious person in any way, shape, or form. You know, he just, he has a little bit of a woe is me complex, you know, kind of feel sorry for me complex. And I think he's probably gotten away with things in his life, even when rules were set and supposed to be enforced. I don't think, you know, they were. I think he was used to getting his way. And so, sadly and unfortunately, he didn't take it seriously. Or, I don't know, he thought he would get away with it, whatever the case was. And, you know, he did have a girl, a second different girl, stay the night again. And, you know, he got caught and that was it. You know, she was kicking him out. And I hated it. I literally had no leg to stand on. You know, here I am, unemployed, in some ways struggling to maintain my relationship with her, myself. Because we had arguments and we had fights that, you know, maybe under quote unquote normal circumstances, I might not have stayed. I might not have stuck it out. I might have moved on. But because moving on for me meant being homeless because I was unemployed. I was stuck. I was in a bad situation. And, unfortunately, Ethan had to go and there was nothing I could do about it. And I hated it. It felt terrible. It was awful. And, you know, he had a pretty serious girlfriend at the time he could stay with. And one that he had a really toxic relationship with, you know. And I knew all about that. I've been through those. I explained my second marriage to you. And, you know, it's hard when you're in it. It's really hard when you're in it to break free, right? He had qualities that he admired in his girlfriend that he was seeing here. But he also fought with her a lot. And it got ugly. It got nasty. It got the ugliest and nastiest any relationship has ever been for him, I think, as far as I know. I know his relationship before with a girl named Bella was pretty toxic at times because she was bipolar. But, you know, this time with Carly, I feel like it reached new levels of toxicity. And so he went to stay with her and live with her for a while. And then, you know, obviously that wasn't working out because, you know, it was her and her brother. You add that dynamic to the dynamics of what their relationship already was. And so he just kind of randomly on his own went and found a place. And he signed a lease and he moved into a place. And, you know, he was all proud of himself. And when he reached out to me and let me know about it, you know, I wasn't happy about it. I frankly was mad at him because, you know, he just didn't have life experience yet. Right. And he found a place that he thought was a really great deal for a really great price. And, you know, he had his head held high and he thought he should be proud. But that place was in one of the worst locations you can live here. You know, there's prostitution, there's drug dealing, there's, you know, gangs and shootings in that area. And he didn't know any of that because in his young mind he didn't think about anything like that. That stuff didn't cross his mind. Right. And so I was really not happy with him and neither was his mother from far away. And instead of taking it on the chin and realizing, you know, he probably screwed up, he more or less got mad at us, you know, as kids do. You know, I keep calling him a kid, but he was in his early 20s at that point. And, you know, he just didn't want to be wrong. He wanted to be right. And he didn't want to hear it. And unfortunately, but fortunately, one night when he was staying in his new place, which was, I believe, like an old motel turned into apartments, you know, so it had a gate and a fence around it, you know, which didn't matter. You know, any car driving through, you could immediately follow right in or walk right in. You know, it didn't matter. And he went out in the middle of the night one night to take his garbage out to the dumpster, which just goes to show you how he just had no understanding of where he was at or what he was doing. You know, even if you listen to me and I tell you you're in a bad neighborhood, this was not a good place to, you know, sign a lease and live. Listen to me. I'm your father. I'm not here to shit on you. I'm here to help you. And so anyway, ignoring everything said by me and his mother, and he went outside to take his garbage to the dumpster one night. I believe he said it was around midnight and he got jumped. He said that someone jumped him and put a machete to his throat and tried to rob him or whatever, but he didn't have anything on him. He was just walking out to the trash with nothing on him. And so somehow he was able to convince them he didn't have anything because there were two of them. And they let him go. They didn't hurt him. But he was machete to his throat away from death. And, you know, that scared him, that woke him up a little bit. And, you know, I think he wanted to make some changes after that. But unfortunately, he was still young and out of control with his emotions and his thought process. And so where I'm going with that is after three years and 10 months of being unemployed, not gainfully employed, you know, I was trying to do some consulting work. I worked on my own on the side and got some business, but not a lot, not enough to sustain any type of living, especially because this was, you know, COVID had hit and obviously everyone was feeling that pain. So after that, I finally got employed, got a job. But I'm skipping a lot of steps here. But the point of this is, you know, I was not on my feet for a long time, for a long time. Three years and 10 months of unemployment, three years and 10 months of, you know, not struggling the whole time because I had, I was able to survive for a little over a year with the severance pay that I had gotten from DSI when I left DSI. But nothing was just working out. I had tried working as a part-time furniture salesman, you know, and I was doing that pretty well. And, you know, that just didn't work out after several months because it just wasn't a good place to work. And, you know, I was struggling with my health at that time. I, you know, was really dealing with some swollen joints and back pain issues that I had only assumed were from being in the military and from playing sports and being an athlete and lifting weights my whole life. But, you know, dealing with my health and being unemployed and all those things and, you know, struggling in a relationship with a girlfriend that I can't quite understand and, you know, struggling in a relationship with my oldest son that I was really trying to create a bond with and create a relationship with. I was questioning everything. I didn't know what to do. And so my girlfriend at that time, her faith was really high. And, you know, I joined in that with her for a little while and I went to a local mega church here in Tucson with her because that's where she goes. And, you know, it did give me some relief. It did give me a sense of somewhere to turn and somewhere to help me. And that's what, you know, that's what faith and religion relies on, right? They rely on you having that need, you filling that void. And that's where I was and I needed it and it was great for me at the time. And, you know, it's really hard for me to get on board with some things religion teaches. And so ultimately, you know, I do believe in God. I do believe there's a higher power, but I'm just not a man of organized religion. I'm just not. I tried it again in my life. I grew up with it. I didn't tell you that. My great grandma used to take me to church weekly, sometimes twice while I was growing up. And my mom made me go. So, you know, it put the fear of God in me as a small kid and a young man. And I stepped away from it for a while because I thought it was a bunch of BS because as I got older and I got wiser, you know, Bible stories just didn't make sense to me. They were just exactly that, Bible stories, right? Like, you know, how can the whole world start from two people, Adam and Eve? And then, you know, the rest of us exist, you know, different races, different, you know, it's just that doesn't make any sense to me. You know, Noah's Ark, you know, there's just lots of stories in the Bible and the Bible contradicts itself all the time. And so anyway, I realized at the end of the day, I was a believer of God, but not a believer of religion necessarily. And that's my personal walk, my personal journey. And I don't look at anyone differently that feels any other type of way, whether you are not a believer, whether you believe every word of the Bible is true. You know, whatever your faith and beliefs are, that's your journey and life and, you know, all the power to you. I hold nothing against you for it. And nor should you hold anything against someone who feels differently than you do. My son, Ethan, he's very religious. He grew up with it. You know, his mom's from the South. She's from Tennessee. And, you know, it got ingrained into him and he has it. He has the strong faith and he, you know, he loves organized religion. So that's for him. And that's great. I have never, ever tried to make him feel any other type of way about it. And so anyway, I was dealing with all this and I turned to faith to help me through these times. And, you know, one day I randomly watched a movie, a documentary on Netflix called The Game Changers. And it talked about, you know, if you've ever seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't seen it, you know, I suggest you go watch it. I don't think it's on Netflix anymore. I think they took it off for some reason. I'm not sure. But if you can find it somewhere, it's called The Game Changers. And I was lost and I, you know, and the way you look at things when you have faith is you look at, you know, you can look at things like, oh, I got on Netflix. I was looking for something to watch. I found The Game Changers. Or you can look at it like, you know, God pointed me in the direction of this documentary and I watched it. And, you know, it's whatever perspective you want to take. But the point is, is it was all about what meat does to our body. And it was some very scientific evidence and proof to what meat was doing to people's bodies. And how, you know, the strongest, most athletic, most, you know, most marathon, cardiovascular type people were turning to football athletes, NFL football athletes. They were turning to plant-based diets and veganism. And so after I watched the documentary twice, I decided, well, you know, what do I have to lose? I've been praying about my health. And, you know, it wasn't changing on its own. No miracle was happening. But I was sent towards this documentary, The Game Changers, and I decided to go vegan. And I did. And I cut meat out of my life. I cut eggs out of my life. I had cut dairy out of my life. Like I went pure, hardcore vegan. And it changed everything for me. I went from being someone who could barely stand up and walk to the refrigerator or stand up in the church or whatever without being in some type of pain, to being someone who could move freely and painlessly and eventually get back into the gym and exercise and lift weights again, which was something. I had lost and I couldn't do. And that was like step one. You know, step two was I was finally getting interviewed for what I would call real jobs, you know, career type jobs, not fillers, where I could get back to the life I was used to living with the salary that I could have. I was used to having, I should say. And, you know, everything was turning around for me. My health was getting better. I did get a job and I accepted a job. I had three job offers at one time. And I took essentially the most risky job because A, it paid the most upfront, but also B, I took a risk and a belief in myself and God that it was going to take me to the right direction, that it was going to help me out and point me in the right direction and get my life going again. So I accepted this role and I'm going to pick up from there on the next episode. So thanks for joining.