Whats going on? Pod cast 1

The What's Going On podcast aims to discuss various topics at the local, state, and national levels, including hunting seasons, fishing, local businesses, religion, and culture. The host wants to create an environment of open dialogue and plans to interview guests with different perspectives. He also shares personal updates about his daughter, deer hunting, and upcoming birthday celebrations. He encourages kindness towards retail employees during the stressful Christmas season and suggests focusing on spending time with loved ones rather than buying extravagant gifts. The host concludes by announcing his plans to start a weekly podcast in January and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas. Hello and welcome to the trial run of the What's Going On podcast. Going forward, the purpose of this podcast is going to be to discuss what's going on, and not just locally. Sometimes it'll be at a state level or a national level, but I'm not only talking about politics. I'm talking about, hey, what hunting season is it? What fish are biting? What lake should you go to? What local businesses are opening? You know, we'll even get into some religion and some thoughts about the culture of today, once again, nationally, statewide, and locally, and how that's affecting anything from the housing market to the job market and just everything that's going on in our area. My goal with this is going to be to have fun and just be, have an open, honest discourse with people from around our area and just talk about what's going on, what's happened, why is the world the way it is, and where do we think? You know, just kind of be like some good old boys sitting around a coffee shop talking about it. Every now and then we'll interview some folks and see what they think about things. If you have a thought or an opinion, you can feel free to, most of you probably text me, but you can write an email, come on, we'll have you on and we'll discuss varying views. This isn't, no one's going to be correct on this, and so I just look forward to having fun and creating an environment of open dialogue that I feel like is missing in our culture. With all of that said, let me get into what's going on with me. We've had the arrival of my daughter's up on the shelf, Grace, this week, and I know it's not quite December yet, but she wanted to show up early, so she did. Grace is not yet too mischievous, but this morning was found in a stocking above the fireplace, to what I thought would be much delight. However, my daughter wasn't ready to wake up yet, and so she goes, uh, Grace is in my stocking, why would she do that? So, there's a strike on that. We'll have to let Grace know she better get a little more clever, because that wasn't enough to make a seven-year-old girl happy. And on top of that, I've got a deer season going. I haven't pulled the trigger yet, but I've seen quite a few, and my daughter's been in the stand with me quite a few times. I think that has stopped me from pulling the trigger so much as just letting her enjoy watching wildlife. It's been an amazing thing watching her just watch nature. She helped me throughout the fall in setting up feeders and filling feeders and, you know, riding side by side and really enjoying that. So, just watching her watch nature come alive and watching her discover what it's like to be outside when you can't hear anything but the wildlife, man, it's been amazing this year. And I'm really glad she's enjoying that, because I think I'm enjoying that more than any of the deer I've killed. It's just watching her learn about the world. It's been great. She really seems to like going to deer camp and hanging out in the camper. And I don't think it has anything to do with being in the deer stand so much as playing with the kids there in deer camp, wondering what's going on, just discovering new things. So, that's a fun thing. I enjoy being outside, and I'm glad she enjoys being outside. When we're home, she's always on her bike or in the yard or doing something anyway. So, to discover new friends and new places out. And, you know, and then of course, you know, we heard a crazy bird sound. And she was pretty much convinced that that was a monkey. So, if there are any monkeys in southwest Arkansas sighted, I need you to send me a picture so I can verify that for her, I guess. I haven't ever seen a monkey, but, you know, I've got time to go if there are some in the woods. Moving from hunting, let's talk Christmas lights. We went to see the Christmas lights last night in Longview. They have a big drive-thru set up. Man, it was well worth the drive. If any of you have a chance to go before Christmas, I certainly suggest you do that. It was amazing. It was long. Although, one guy did have something to say about the running lights on the truck not going down. But, you know, after being bright lighted, so he understood that they were off. It all handled itself there. You know, would hate to get and mess up that guy's good time. But, you know, look forward, sir. It's already bright out here. We don't need your opinion on if these running lights are too bright for you. I've got a birthday coming up on Saturday. I haven't been excited about it up until about the last week. I'll be 37. But looking forward, man, I'm getting more and more excited, not just about the day itself, but man, I'm excited about going future. God has blessed me in so many ways. My last year's been an interesting year, and we'll get into that over time as this podcast goes and develops. But yeah, I'm just so blessed to be here and be alive that, man, I'm really excited about 37 and what the Lord's bringing me going into the next year. And, you know, it's just always refreshing to, you feel like it's a fresh start. So, you know, I'm getting really excited about that. And I'm just going to have a few people over, grill some chicken wings, light a fire in the fire pit, and hope my dog doesn't attack anybody. She's a six-month-old German Shepherd named Layla, so she's just a handful and fun to have around. So it'll be an interesting night, and I'm just excited about that and ready to move forward. Talking about birthdays and celebrations, we've got Christmas on the horizon. And, you know, Christmas prep, we've got lights up on our house already and two small inflatable blow-ups that have to be turned on if Dad doesn't want to get in trouble. But, you know, I was thinking about this and Christmas prep and the Christmas, you know, you call it the Christmas cheer if you've ever worked retail because no customer has it, it seems. Having been a victim of working retail for many years, I know that people are just not nice to employees during the Christmas season. So if you're a customer, be nice to those retail employees because, man, they deserve it. It's a beating working the Christmas season. And if you say, well, you're getting paid for that, I promise you, yeah, they may be, but that doesn't make it worth the tongue-lashings they take from people that think that. But I digress. That wasn't where I was trying to go with that. I was going to talk about Christmas prep, you know, and the Christmas season as a whole, you know, it's used to be a celebration and all that. But, man, I feel like it causes people a lot of stress. So much stress is put on people's lives. Do I have to do this for my family? Do I have to do this for 87 little cousins and little nieces and nephews? And I feel like a lot of the just getting together and loving on each other is lost through trying to buy and trying to please. And, you know, I don't know I don't know what's right or what's wrong on all that. But, man, you know, let's just all use it to take a breath. Love who we've got here with us. Give everybody a hug. Just have a good day and enjoy each other's company. Yeah, you if you're a million miles from everybody, don't feel like you have to go see them. If your parents are retired, maybe they can come see you. You know, maybe you can work that out. You know, I know a lot of people feel like they have to go and be in a certain place every time. For me personally, I enjoy it as a time to be home, be in my house, to have my daughter have Santa Claus come to where she lives. You know, that's a big deal is being home, being comfortable, not being rushed. Those are kind of my thoughts on and I wonder other people's opinions on that. Well, I understand that Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of Jesus and I'm not taken away from that. But what I am saying is if you're celebrating Jesus, it doesn't need to be by belittling your family and, you know, making everything harder on them. I don't really think that's what he represented so much as he is and was and will be the salvation of the world. So if you're celebrating that, then great. But if if it gets off of that path and it gets into stress and added problems to everybody, then no, you're not celebrating it in the way that I believe the holiday was set up to celebrate him. And once again, just my opinion. But if you're listening to it, you're listening to this to get my opinion. So there you go. Well, I guess I'm going to wrap this thing up. This is just a test run on this and just getting comfortable with doing what I'm doing here. But I want to wish everybody a good December coming forward and a Merry Christmas. I'll probably get to you again, but going forward starting in January, I'm going to try and put out a weekly podcast just about what's going on locally once again. And and it's going to be fun. We're going to have some fun here. So thanks for listening to me so far. Have a good Christmas and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Transcribed by https://otter.ai