Brandon Held - Life Is Crazy - Episode 20

Brandon Howe is discussing his podcast and his need for more episode ideas. He talks about his struggles with memory and studying, and how different learning styles should be accommodated in education. He shares his experiences with marriages and divorces, and his decision to look for a partner from another country. He joins international dating sites in search of a beautiful woman. Welcome back to Brandon Howe's Life is Crazy. This is episode 20. We are reaching the end of my outlined podcast and I will be trying to come up with some other ideas for future episodes. I've currently started my website brandonhowe.com and I was able to start uploading some of my podcasts. I'm going to do it incrementally. I don't want to do it too quickly because, you know, the cadence I want to have is two times a week, ideally. And frankly, I just need more episodes, ideas for episodes to be able to keep up with that cadence. You know, I have, I'm really creative for some weird reason at night laying in bed or when I wake up in the middle of the night and my brain's going wild. But then I don't write stuff down and I forget. I know I've had ideas for future episodes. I know I've had thoughts that have crossed my mind on good topics to discuss or cover. And I've already forgot them. I forget them within minutes because that is one thing that goes with you when you get older. And that is your memory. Not that my memory was ever great because it certainly was never great. I definitely had strong time, strong points. You know, in my 20s, my memory was pretty good. And, you know, I was very good at remembering things that were important to me. But I've never had a really great rote memorization skills, you know, just when I need to get in and test for school. Like, it didn't it didn't behoove me to study, you know, days and weeks in advance, because I just didn't retain that memory. I was someone who always had to crash study, not because I'm a procrastinator. I'm quite the opposite of a procrastinator. I like to get things done and get them over with. And when they're looming over my head, and they need to be done, it's almost like this, you know, anvil that's sitting on my shoulder weighing me down. And so I prefer to get things done right away whenever possible. And I couldn't do that when preparing for tests, I had to do the kind of last minute night before cramming and studying and then the next day, cramming and studying and try to jam all this stuff in my memory. So I could recall it quickly. Because my long term rote memorization skills just sucked. Maybe, you know, maybe I was studying wrong, you know, there's someone who probably knows much more about remembering things than I do, which I have looked into, you know, different ways to remember things, will probably know what I would need to do differently to have a better memory in those regards. That's why I really struggled with, say, you know, Spanish, because you have to memorize the words, you can't, how are you going to speak in Spanish if you can't memorize words? So that was an issue for me. And it was definitely something that I had to do. And I just couldn't, I couldn't remember all the different words in Spanish. So therefore, I couldn't speak Spanish very well. Anyway, went off on a tangent there. But you know, maybe you're someone that has memory issues. And you're someone who doesn't understand or maybe you think you're all alone. You're definitely not. We all have different ways of learning. I'm definitely an audio-visual type of learner. You know, the perfect scenario for me is a video, right? It hits two parts. It hits what I can see and what I can hear. The worst way for me to learn, the absolute worst, is reading. I can't stay focused. I can't concentrate. And, you know, I'll get through three pages and my brain will be somewhere else. My eyes will have read the words and I will be turning the pages. And then I'll realize, oh, man, I just haven't retained anything that I just read. And I'll have to go back and read again. So that's why, a little bit why the way education works bothers me. And it definitely needs to be updated and reformed to match all the different learning styles and learning types. You know, just because not everyone can read a book and learn from that book and turn that knowledge into memory and knowledge and be able to repeat that back on a test doesn't mean they're not completely capable of being intelligent in other ways and being a high contributor to some type of career or society. It's just, you know, Tom Cruise dropped out of high school. So what's Tom Cruise worth? Probably half a billion dollars if I had to guess, maybe more. And he dropped out of high school. I know that's a one in a billion story, but, you know, it's just, it's still a point. There are plenty of people that are not highly, quote, unquote, educated by school who have done well in life. Unfortunately for me, I needed that education to open doors for me. And then I just needed my own work ethic and ability to apply myself to keep those doors open or open new doors along with that experience. So now, moving on, here I am in my new role, my new job as we've established. So I'm back on my feet. My health is getting better. I'm starting to work out again. And now I have unburdened myself, whether by choice or force of this unhealthy, bad relationship that I was in. And I, you know, believe in love. You have to believe in love. If you don't believe in love, you don't get married. And, you know, three times. And now, for me, I was divorced three times. And, and I am married a fourth time, which I will get to at some point. But you don't do that if you don't believe in love. You also, you also just don't do that lightly. At least I didn't, right? When I got divorced the first time, I never said I'm going to get never going to get married again. Because, you know, I knew what that was. For me, it was a situation that just was what it was. And I knew it was never a lifelong situation. But the second time I got divorced after a short marriage that was an ultimatum, I really believed I was never going to get married again. I just thought, you know, marriage isn't for me. Yeah, I just spent five years with someone who at the time I thought was the biggest love of my life. I would never love anyone like I loved her. But that just obviously turned out not to be true. And, you know, the third time around, I went with someone that I thought was a more safe, stable option. You know, because she wasn't this beauty queen that my second wife was, but she was someone who was really into me and seemed at the time to be loyal and, you know, just really, really wanted me as a part of her life by the way she treated me by the things she said to me. And we made that work for 12 years. But in the end, it didn't work either. And, you know, I got married in that case thinking it was going to be my future, my life. But, you know, she decided to end it. And that's okay. Life goes on. It was tough. And here I, you know, here I was at this point now three divorces, you know, another girlfriend that I knew I was never going to marry. But I was trying to, you know, I don't know. I don't know what I was doing. I just didn't want to end it yet because I felt like I owed her. Right. And I'm not saying I ever would have ended, you know, for all I know, maybe we would have stayed boyfriend and girlfriend for many years by my logic and reasoning. But, you know, she was super religious and getting married was important to her. And I knew that wasn't something I was going to do. So that was over. And, you know, I had been watching a show called 90 Day Fiance. And while watching that show, I saw a few things that made that appealing to me. One, I saw, you know, women from another country that were just different than American women and different, you know, in some good ways, in my opinion, they still had some more what I consider old fashioned values, you know, where the man should be the head of the household. And, you know, the man should take care of the family while the wife is more of a wife and a mom and, you know, just different things that I thought looked appealing. You know, they cared more about their appearance and upkeep, which is something I've always cared about for myself is my health and my appearance. You know, I'm pretty vain. That's the truth. You don't, you don't try to stay in good shape, just because you want to live to be 100. You also stay in good shape because you feel better about yourself. For what, you know, whatever reason, that works for you. And for me, you know, being fit and, and strong and, and looking in the mirror and being proud of what I look at matters to me. And, and I feel like a lot of that's been lost in this country. And then even when you find it, you know, in the small options that are limited to find, I have found myself not to be compatible with those women for whatever reason. So, you know, that was one reason. Another reason was, I was seeing these, you know, beautiful women with these not so good looking American men. And I was thinking, I'm not a bad looking guy. So, you know, if these guys can get a beautiful woman, I'm sure I could meet a beautiful woman from another country. And also, and finally, thirdly, I thought at that time, well, you know, I've just gotten on the two ugly things. And I could use the type of relationship where, you know, we don't just dive in head first. And, and we're just, you know, like immediately spending all our time together or and or living together, or whatever the case may be. But there were some downsides, I didn't think about getting into something like that. And I'll talk about that as I go along. But I was thinking mostly of the positive. And so watching 90 Day Fiance made me really feel like, you know, the next woman I want to be with, I'm, is going to be from another country. You know, I got some money now, I can travel, I can go see her wherever she's at. And I, I joined two sites, I joined InternationalCupid.com. And I joined BrazilianCupid.com. Because I specifically thought Brazilians were beautiful based off of this one Brazilian on 90 Day Fiance, whose name was Juliana. And she was with a guy named David. He was like 50 something. And she was this young 22 year old model. And she was beautiful. And I thought, well, you know, Brazilian women are beautiful. There's a lot of famous, beautiful Brazilian women. So I specifically wanted to look for a Brazilian, but I also looked across the world. And so initially, I was talking to women from everywhere, literally everywhere. Russia, Ukraine, China, Philippines, Japan, Africa, I wasn't really talking to women in Africa, but a lot of women in Africa were trying to get my attention. But I just, you know, I just never really found anyone that did it for me in Africa. You know, there was even Canada and UK, there was just, it was just all over. There was Colombia. And then of course, on BrazilianCupid.com, you know, there were Brazilians. So I was on the site. And, you know, I was trying to connect with people talking to women specifically, and make a connection. And it was just really hard to do for, you know, one reason or another, maybe, maybe they didn't speak English, and we were using a translator app to try to translate our conversations, which is awkward, because translator apps are not completely accurate. And it's hard to maintain a flow, you know, maybe some of them were catfish spammers, you know, trying to catfish you or scam you out of some money. Which is why if you ever do something like this, don't just send people money. That's a huge mistake, because there are a lot of scammers out there trying to do that. But I have enough common sense to know, if I couldn't get on a video call with someone and talk to them face to face and get a feel for who they really were on a video call, then most likely, they were a scammer or a catfish on the other side. And I did encounter some of those. And so anyway, the first girl that I somewhat connected with was a Colombian girl named Juliana from Colombia. And, you know, we were, we were talking and, you know, she was, she was fun to talk to, and, you know, and she was attractive and fit and all that. And we had video calls. So I knew that she was really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, 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