Adam Has a Podcast Episode 43; Leadershi-

When I was in middle school, I got in trouble a lot. Now.. Maybe the principal had such a hard on for reprimanding me because he knew my mom was going through a divorce, which made it even funnier every time my dad came to school instead of my mom. That's a speculation aside what he had stated to me was that he put undue scrutiny onto me because I am a leader and I set examples for other people. And when I go around and I don't get in trouble, that makes other people think that they won't get in trouble for the same thing. That was his reasoning for having an undue level of scrutiny for me. I know it was an undue level of scrutiny, because I never got in trouble that much in elementary school, and I never got in trouble that much in high school. So this guy had some kind of confirmation bias that he was like self prophetizing to make come true by putting a magnifying glass on me when I wasn't even the one originating the behavior. He just deemed me as the origination point. Maybe in part, his confirmation bias was supplied by my brother and sister, who were older than me and got in trouble a shit ton in middle school and were huge troublemakers. And he was their math teacher at the time. So maybe now he's like, I'm going to stick it to this kid because his siblings were a whole fucking nightmare, not even realizing I'm a completely different person. He didn't allow me the space to be a completely different person because his assumptions from past interactions, from people with my family, already made him think a certain way about him, about me. He didn't let me be my own person and show my own character, because he already had an idea of who I was from when he saw me as a baby. And then, because I would go to school, my mom would pick up my siblings and then also from the interactions he had with my siblings, he had a complete confirmation bias. And then when I got to high school, I was often scared when teachers were like, oh, I remember your sister, but my sister, the older than me, but younger of the three, made a better impression on the team teachers. She did a really hard job trying to turn around that assumption before I got to high school. and she left a good impression on these teachers to such a point where they allowed me to be my own person, because she opened up their minds to their confirmation biases, because she was getting judged harshly, and so she showed up ten times better than everybody else. And maybe that opened the door for these certain other teachers whenever I got them, I'd like, "Oh, I remember your sister." That was a positive correlation. But in middle school, I had a fucking negative correlation. And he blamed it. His ego rationalized it as I'm a leader amongst the crowd. I'm a perpetrator of new and radical ideas, and people follow my lead. And I think that was the beginning of people casting me into this leadership role. When I myself didn't comprehend it, wasn't I couldn't see. Like, what the hell are you talking about? Everybody else is acting the same as me around here. How are my actions having an impact? I couldn't calculate my impact. And I didn't want to be a leader. I remember. I'm laughing because I'm going to reveal something about myself right now. One time in first grade, that's when they introduced the concept of line leaders. But I was absent on the day that they explained the concept and the structure around how a line leader works. So then, when I got to school the next day, they did the line leading by alphabetical order, and I have a C for the last name, so I was next because there was nobody else with an A or a B last name besides one other person. And I was trying to ask everybody, what does this mean? And I was asking amongst my peers, and I received their definition of what a line leader is. Not the teacher's definition of what a line leader is. I received how they understood what the teacher had defined to them as the structure of being a line leader. I don't know if you remember being in first grade, but first graders don't have great comprehension skills. So I was asking a bunch of people trying to gather all this information, like, what the fuck is a line leader? What is this new and wild concept you guys are thrusting upon me? And someone had described to me that that the line leaders, the person at the front of the line, and they lead us all to our activity for the day, because we would have our normal classroom and then we would go to our daily activity, which was art class or gym or music class. And those three would circulate through what we did history, math, and science in our normal classroom. um And sometimes they would be stacked up. So you'd have two in a day. Like you would go to the library and then you would have gym or you would go to the computer lab and then you'd have music. So they would do two times a day and then you'd have recess. Dude, I wish my schedule was built like that like an adult. Anyways, I had perceived the line leader as you get to choose which one of these things you want to go to. They had described it, we could go to art, we could go to gym, we could go to fucking the science room. We could go, you know, they described all these places that the line leader will lead you to. And I thought I could pick out of the choice, and I was like, I don't know what to pick. Where are we going to go? And everybody else was like, I kind of want to go to the gym right now. And I was like, yeaheah, gym sounds fun. I could run around and stuff. So then I led us to the gym. And the teacher was like,Tis is it this isn't an art room. And I was like, I thought I got to choose. She was like, no, that's not how the line leader works. And that's how I learned how line leaders work. Me being in first grade, I was mortified. I was like, oh, damn it, my peers sold me down the river because they wanted to go to gym class. They thought they could game the system on my behalf and make me lead them to gym and it would just change the structure of the day. No. That's not how the system works. We have a schedule and you're supposed to go where you're scheduled to go, not where you want to go. And that's probably when my like, I don't know.. I wouldn't exactly describe it as a fear, not out of ego, but it just doesn't feel the same as fear. I just have no interest in being a leader. That's what it really began for me, that I was like, oh, fuck this leadership. You get blamed for everybody else's bad ideas. You don't really have any fucking control of where you get to go. and you're just basically a talking head that's supposed to liaison with the actual person in charge, the teacher. And you're supposed to keep all these other kids in line. That's a lot of responsibility. Like, I don't I didn't fuck with that. And I was like, responsibility adverse from that point forward. Because I already was having a lot of undue responsibilities placed on me as a fucking like six year old man. There was a lot of shit going on in my life. But yeah, and that's when it started when I was like, yeah, dude, I don't want to be a leader. I just want to go and do my own thing. I just want to, like, you know, if people want to come with me and hang out and do their own thing with me, and maybe we're doing the same thing'cause we're both doing our own thing, that's cool. But.. I just want to go do my own thing. I think that also stemmed from, like, being picked last and kickedball all the time and fucking kids making me count to 100 to prove I was smart. It's just fucking all this fat kids calling me fat. F kids that were fatter than me, calling me fat, and then everybody agreeing with the fat kit is level of fucking gaslighting, systemicic, societal gaslighting. I was like, not prepared for, but, you know, I've been exposed to it many times over at this point. I'm like, this is this is fucking second grade shit. I experienced this in second grade. Come on, guys. What's going on here? Um.. What I enjoyed in elementary school was every day after school, from, like, kindergarten to, like, first or second grade, all all the boys would just beat the shit out of each other. You would just go ham on each other. It's just fucking fighting. I guess you're so stressed out from the day. that our little minds, the only way that we could comprehend handling the stress was just beating the living crap out of each other. There were times when like all the kids would like dog pile on me and then I'd be like throwing them around because like I'm used to fighting with my older brother. So having a bunch of little kids on me. I'm like, even as a little kid myself. But then, I don't know, right around third grade, we had to third or fourth grade. We had to stop. And then we didn't really stop, and then somebody hit me in the face with a backpack full of books. It broke my nose, so.. I think that was like the end of it. My dad threw a hissy fit. Took me to the hospital. He was like, there's no. I was like, I don't need to be at the hospital right now. And the hospital, people are like, it's not that broken. It's a little broken, okay? It's not that broken. It's not that broken. It's just a little broken. I think I, when I was in the car right there, I remember fucking having it in my hand and I was like, it does feel a little.. And then I something cracked, and I was like, oh, something just cracked. I thought I just cracked it back into place. and I didn't know. Remembering it. It did hurt. So maybe I did crack it back into place and I didn't I didn't know. Maybe it just was just the upper cartilage that was dislodged. Yeah, that was the end of fucking... after school rumble time. Oh, dude, but there was like also this, like open lot in the back and it was very kind of hilly. So when it rained, the hills would get all muddy, and then we would like go mud surfing in the back hills. Oh, my God. It's fun being a muddy little kid. But then in middle school, that stupid fucking Mr. Bathroom turned up the fucking.. His name is bathroom in like Spanish or some shit. I'm not going to say his name outright. Because I don't fuck you. I don't want to get into that. So I'm just going to call him Mr. Bathroom was a piece of shit, dude. Hell, shit. That, that works. I didn't think about that. Yeah, man, Mr. Bathroom applied this undue pressure onto me. And, it made me feel like singled out because I would get in trouble for the fucking shit that all the other kids were doing. And when I got in the office, the excuse of, well, I'm just following this person's he was like "D excuse to work here because you're a leader and you have to know that others will follow your example. And I suppose that opened up my mind to the reality of leadership. Sometimes leadership is a role thrust upon you by others. how others look up to you, how they trust your word, and the belief in a shared goal. In middle school, I suppose my own shared goal was to get through the day with a laugh. And that's probably what made me a leader. And the fact that I could make people laugh repeatedly over and over got them to believe in me and my capacity to make them laugh. So they looked to me as a sort of leader in laughter in a way. And I didn't necessarily perceive this because when. Mr. Bathroom said I was a leader, I only perceived leadership in a hierarchal and established structure. I didn't perceive leadership as a subconscious mechanism for monkey C monkey do. Hmm. I think to a capacity, too, I maybe subconsciously rejected the notion of me being a leader, because I needed more subconscious data in in order to rationalize the perspective and position. Huh. Because if I allowed it to consciously take root, then that childhood understanding of life leadership dynamics and structures probably would have taken hold, and I maybe would have acted differently. But instead, I I rejected the idea that I was a leader, which allowed it to exist within the subconscious longer and preserve that data gathering phase for the subconscious. Because if I didn't reject my role as a leader, then I wouldn't have pushed the boundaries. See, I've perceived it as this hierarchal system in which one's elected, and there's like, you know, I sentence out a decree and then everybody follows that decree. I understood it in a very feudalistic way. of like a, you know, a mob boss giving out orders. And that's not what leadership is. It's it's your actions. And I kind of understood that to a degree, but I didn't want to be a leader, so I was trying to reject that role by acting out the most unrecreatable scenarios. Like, I remember in sixth grade, I asked to girl out to the movies, and she said, no. And then one of my friends was like,That was still so cool, though, man. Even though she said, no, like, you did it. Like, I can't, I couldn't even do that. And I'm like, "Huh, I didn't see that perspective." I was just doing it, because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. And that was before the leadership thing was introduced. So maybe I'll come up with like a better example. One time a pen exploded at lunch, and we all took the ink and started drawing on our faces. And we did, I think, like four of us did the kiss stuff from the band. And I was a cat. Somebody else was a spaceman. and then another person was. Oh, shit, what did they have? The cat? The spaceman, the demon. And the fourth one, I don't know, if you know, you can comment it down below, please. We all did that. And, um Then everybody was trying to get the ink and diped their fingers in. Um. Everybody that wanted to do it. And then of the people that were watching us, there were those that were calling us stupid. They were like, look at those guys putting ink on their face. They're so stupid. And those were the people that I wanted to defy, those people that would call you stupid because you're doing something to have fun. I wanted to have fun in their faces.. That was leadership to me, I guess. And you know what? I think that was the kind of leadership that some kids needed because those kids that did the face paint with me, like, we all needed to laugh and one of of those kids, I remember me and him became fucking a little prankster. He had a mole on the side of his head and we had a substitute one day and he was tapping his pen on the side of his face and the substitute was like, oh, my God, why did you draw on your own face like that? Probably because she was worn, hey, these kids fucking drawing their faces sometimes. And he, cold as ice, calm as hell, said, " Ma'am, I wasn't drawn on my face. That's cancer. And then her face was priceless, dude. It was fucking awesome. She was just like... I couldn't fucking hold back my laughter because I was like, oh, my fucking God, the way this kid is doing this. He was being serious and shit, and he was looking at me and he was like, hell yeah. And I was like, I couldn't keep it together. And I was getting reprimanded for laughing, like, how dare you laugh at a kid with cancer? And then that kid had to go to the teacher and say, it's just a birthmark. I't actually have cancer. Oh, my God, that same kid, like, the year after the Boston bombing, we didn't have a gymnasium in our school because they were doing construction. So we had to have like our field day across the way in a random field. There was some guy that had a fucking umbrella that looked like like something else. And the teacher got paranoid because everything was at its height at this time. He's like, oh no, I don't know what's going to happen here. And the same kid yelled, bomb. The fucking teacher hit him on the head. He fucking just.... He just fucking. He wasn't even think it. He just a kid yelled off, and then he just went fucking slacked. And then he went, oh, no, I just ate a can. Then he had to play damage control. because he just hit the kid. I fucking miss Nick Bell so much. Oh my god. Oh, what a fucking awesome person he was. Um. The teachers like teacher was like, if you tell on me for hitting you, I'm going to tell them a y- yell bomb, you're going to feel way more trouble. There's one day in science class that we were like, "Let's perform an experiment." And we took an open water bottle and put it on a seat. and we knew it was somebody else's seat. And we're like, do you think he's gonna notice? And then in the morning and homoom, he pulled out his chair. The fucking water bottle went everywhere. He was like, what the fuck? And everybody was like, ahha, you suck. You spilled your water. And then Nick was in his homeroom class. He was making fun of him. It wouldn't let it go. Oh, my God. I'm like.. On one hand, I'm like, Mr. Bathroom was applying undue pressure, and then on the other hand, I'm telling these stories that like one time I was running down the hallway and I kicked a fucking lock so hard on a locker that it flew off. Fuck, there was this one time where a kid threw a fucking penny at me and called me a Jew, and I was like, I'm not a Jew. You're a Jew. And then a teacher who was Jewish only heard me say that. And then I guess she started chasing me down the hallway. Like, excuse me, young man. Stop right there. And I didn't fucking hear her. So then I went to math class like nothing was wrong because nothing was wrong in my mind. And then I got a call to go down to the principal's office, and then I got called down at the principal's office. And this is one of those times where I'm like, this is undue pressure, man, because we call each other Jews back and forth all the time, I'm like, I'm not the first one to start this shit. Look at my hair. I have really curly hair at the time. I was like, look at my hair. I'm the one getting called Jro every day, and I'm fucking getting in trouble for calling another kid Jew at the fucking impetus of being called one myself. Oh, my God. When I first got to the office, I didn't even remember. I was like, "The fuck am I down here for?" He was like, did you call a student a Jew in the hallway? I'm like, I don't know. It's so commonplace that I was like. Fucking maybe is it Tuesday? I'm like, I'm not the one that hucked the penny, though. I'm kind of glad my super curly hair kind of straightened out of it. I don't know what that was in middle school. Maybe puberty, like, struck in the extra hormones, just made my hair mad fucking curly, but I had these tight curls and everybody started calling me Juro. And I just laughed along with it because Jufro was a lot better than being called Auntie boobs. So kid fucking started calling me Auntie Boobs in sixth grade in the locker room. because he said I had man titties and then he said and I was like, thisis doesn't make sense. Why are you calling me Auntie Boo? boobs, though? He was like, because aunts always have nice boobs that you want to look at. And I harked back, I was like, dude, that means that you like your aunt. That's fucking creepy. Why the fuck are you admitting that to that right now? I was like, dude, that means you're looking at your aunt's rack, you fucking weirdo. Why the fuck are you comparing me to your aunt's rack? You fucking freak. And then I tried complaining to the fucking gym teacher, and he was like, I hear what you say back and forth in there. And I'm like, dude, that's not an adequate response to this. You know then that they started this bullying shit, and I'm just standing up for myself. There's one time it was this fucking. They put a fucking like 16 year old in our sixth grade fucking gym class. He was like, held back a whole bunch of years, transferred into the school.. And we were all uncomfortable as fuck. They were all, like, bullying each other. Or I guess this was maybe their thought. They're all bullying each other. Let's put a real bully in there to bully all of them. So maybe they'll be nice to each other. But we were all like, dude, I don't feel comfortable changing in front of this fucking adult right here. And then he didn't like being in there either. So he started fucking fighting with kids. And then he sat on me because I guess he was just trying to get suspended again. That was fucked up. I hated the locker room, bro. That's why, like, when Mr. Bathroom was calling me a fucking leader, bro. I was like, you got some shit fucked up, fam. You see how they're treating me back there? Is this how you treat a leader? Is this how you treat a leader when he's in his boxers? Chief, huh? But, um... time and time and time again, I was thrust into that role as a person who makes an impact. I just have an impactful way at doing things. And time and time again, that that chose others, or chose that made others choose to see me as an impactful individual, because they can see the impacts that my actions have had. I'm over here acting things out, I'm at the center of it, so I can't see, you know, the same perspective that it teacher has where they say, you know, Adam said this one joke in the morning and then throughout the day, other kids started whispering and murmuring this joke more and more around the school. They got to see that perspective, because they had a stagnant position in which more individuals would filter into them, so they could see how ideas and actions and thoughts and gossip were spreading throughout the school more so than I could. Because it took me a while to realize that like one of these kids I considered my best friend was actually like breaking into my locker and writing fucking mean notes. And he was always going through my shit, and I was like, "Who's going through my locker when I'm not here, man? And it was like him. And he was talking shit behind my back, and I had no fucking idea.. until it reached a point that, he wrote something about somebody else in my locker, and I took a picture of it, and I got in trouble because they thought I wrote it, and I was like, no, man, somebody keeps breaking into my locker. And I took this picture to fucking expose whoever's breaking into my locker and writing notes on my whitebo. And then this fucking piece of shit kept telling me throughout the day. He's like, I know who did it. I know who did it. I'm not going to tell you until the end of the day. And then at the end of the day, he told me right in front of the principal, like I couldn't just go turn and tell the fucking principal right now, what he had just told me. And I told that to him to his face. I was like, "You know that you're saying this right now in front of the principal. It doesn't matter that it's the end of the school day. I can just go and tell him right now, but I'm not, because that's not how fucking friends treat each other. You should have trusted me that I wasn't going to tell on you, and you shouldn't have fucking dicked me around all day, fucking with me and wasting my time. And that was the end of that friendship. That was like the real fucking. The end of the relationship was that summer when he fucking tried stealing a girl from me and then she told me all about it. She was like, you know that he's doing this behind your back? And I was like, what the fuck? Because he would make fun of her to my face. and he would get others to make fun of me for liking her. And then behind my back, he would go and talk to her. And then she told me that, and I was like, "Are you fucking kidding me right now?" So that was the end of "I'm not gonna hang out with these guys anymore, outside of school. And then when I found out that he did that in my locker, that was the end of I'm not going to talk to this kid in school ever again. He's just a fucking ghost in the hallway. He's a betrayer and a fucking mentally impaired individual. There's something wrong with him. He was held back a year. His fucking gears don't turn right. Or they didn't back then. I haven't talked to him in years because his fucking comprehension capacity is so low that I don't want to waste the time trying to explain things to him that he's not going to get for another fucking two months. Because that's how it was sometimes. Like, you could really fucking map that shit out. I'd be m math class and we would be fucking covering shit and she would be moving on with some students and he would be stuck on the same fucking shit that we were covering two months ago not understanding it. So there's like factual fucking data to back that one up. And, you know, maybe that comes with when you're a person of impact, people will try to cut you down and stab you in the back and things like that. And you just have to learn to keep fucking going, no matter who betrays you if it's a fucking best friend or, you know, anybody, you just got to learn to fucking pick up the pieces and move on, because this person doesn't dictate my life. Even though they want to, no matter how much they want to try, they don't dictate who I am in my sense of character, and that can definitely be displayed by the fact that, I don't know, maybe right around when we graduated, his girlfriend matched with me on Tinder. And I knew it was his girlfriend' because I saw the pictures back, like, you know, in passing. And I was like, hey, man, what the fuck? I messaged her, hey, what are you doing matchesing with me? Aren't you dating somebody else right now? And then I took a screenshot of that, and I sent it to him, and I said, hey, man, this is how real friends are supposed to treat each other. And then I blocked him. 'Cause I didn't care for his response. It's just gonna be some kind of fucking ego protection mechanism and deflection of fucking factual evidence presented that he's not a good person. And maybe that's what they meant by I'm a leader. that for some reason, even though I can do all these extreme and impactful actions, I still somehow maintain my moral compass, and that's a quality of a leader, I guess. Or something that people that called me a leader want to see more of in their leaders. Because these were teachers and principles and, you know, trusted adults that were telling me, you're coming off as a leader. And I never wanted to be the leader. And I think that is the true quality of a great leader. It's not somebody who makes their entire ego or personality based upon or around the fact that they're a leader or their title as leader, somebody who doesn't even want to be a leader at all. Just a guy, just a guy doing things. I do things with a fucking thoughtfulness in mind, and when I put that thoughtfulness into things, even when it's a prank, it seems to have an impact that affects others in the way that they think. But I'm not doing that because I like to be a leader. I'm doing that because I like to think. I like to be logical. I like things to be sound for me. I like there to be a basis, a grounded reality, because I'm the type of guy that sometimes some very ungrounded reality stuff happens to me that's very metaphysical, very transcendental, very fringe type stuff. So I need to be able to see an objective grounded reality in order to hold on to a collective reality that we all share and not get mind blown by all these amazing, you know, low probability things that I'm seeing. There's things that can happen. There's just a very, very low probability that they happen. And sometimes some people get to see these low probability things, like discovering a giant squid in the deep ocean. Those were myth for the longest time. People were like, nah, the Kraken's a myth.nt until we got cameras down deep into the ocean and then we reallyized, oh my God, there's giant squids down here. There's enormous squids down here. And that kind of reignited,Well, you know what? The Kraken might have been an actual sea dwelling beast that might live in the deep to this day or might have, you know, died off because it didn't have enough food sources to keep it that size. Or enough oxygen, because there was a lot more oxygen in the water and in the atmosphere a million years ago, which allowed bugs and plants and animals to be a lot bigger. And when you're looking at the entire history of time and stuff, my little blip right here and now. To me, I'm like, whatever. What happens happens. I'll make the best of it. But I guess that level of thinking is something that people look up to. The way that you can just let water roll off of a duck's back. And I didn't realize that that made me a leader for some. So I was trying to actively deny these other qualities of a leader, these more colloquial and like the more familiar understandings of what a leader was. I was trying to reject the more familiar archetype of what a leader is, in favor for my own internal guidance. What I ended up accidentally doing was further reinforcing those qualities that people had seen in me that had made them call me a leader in the first place. A leader isn't just somebody who other people imitate, a leader is somebody who inspires others. You can inspire themselves through actions. You can inspire them through words. You can inspire them through connections. movements, like collective movements, like parades or rallies or riots or protests. They all get quotes, because they're all technically the same thing depending on where you put in the camera. Is a leader somebody who takes time to point those things out? Even though it may detract, because they know that the knowledge is valuable to those that are listening and that can't comprehend. Does a leader see that everybody can have the same potential? Maybe that's what makes the difference between a leader and a normal person is a leader sees that everybody can have the same potential. It's just inspiring them to act on that potential, that which is their job as leader to accomplish. A leader, a true leader, must have the beliefs that the people that he's trying to inspire have the capacity to be inspired. And I forgot about my capacity to be a leader until a package got stolen mine, and I decided to go on a little rant about it. and um I was like about a month ago now, maybe a month and a half. And just the other night, somebody was, I don't know if they were doing it purposefully, but they were mimicking my rant. I don't know if they were trying to do it to poke fun at me, or if they themselves were going through a mental crisis or a moment of action or ranting. I gave him like an hour or so to rant it out. So I was like, that's understandable. I usually take about an hour to lose steam. But I started recording it 'cause I was like, hee's starting to mention some pretty weird things at a certain point, and I'm starting to feel pretty weirdly targeted by this. So I'm going to have this as just in the pocket evidence in case anything does come out of this, because this is getting to be really strange. And then I started thinking about it. Well, if I'm willing to do that, then how many people are willing to videotape me when I'm inside of my home and I'm having my own kinds of rants? And I had a whole moral dilemma about sharing it, so how many people don't go through that moral dilemma, and just go ahead and share it. I got to experience the other side of the coin that, oh my God, maybe people have been walking by my house and recording me when I'm talking to myself. in the same way that I just did that to that guy. But he was like outside of my window, yelling. It felt fucking creepy and weird. And at the same time, though, I needed to make sure that what I was hearing was accurate and true, because he was mimicking pul parroting, copying my own rant from a month prior so much so that I felt as though this was a poignant lesson for me to learn right now. And so I put on the recorder, so I could go back and listen to it later and say, yeah, he did say, what is the point. That wasn't something that I just made up That is something that I actually heard and was true and was real. Now, saying what is the point is't the copyrighted phrase,body can say, what's the point and wonder the fucking point any time they want. But that's one of those moments that made me feel a little, ooh, I'm a little spooked out right now, because he keeps saying this and that, and that's what I said last week, when I was ranting. So this is what really made me rethink about my impact that I have and my leadership qualities and goals. Because right now, this person, whether they were consciously trying to achieve this or not, provided an example to me that my actions have impact or my actions have consequences, even if the consequences are the pervading of the wrong message.Cause it is kind of wrong to flip out about somebody stealing a package. It is wrong to steal a packageage, though. So that's that moralistic gray area in which I like to live that I feel as though a leader cannot fully, truly express themselves in, and which is why I sort of reject leadership. I like to fully express myself in that gray area when somebody does something like steal a package of mine and it pisses me off, I want to scream my little head off. And you know what? I respect that same guy when people were shooting off fireworks the other night. He was like, "The fireworks, I can't stand it, I can't take it. That's a respectable thing, dude. You might have PTSD, you might be a veteran. I don't know what's going on with you.Talk your shit, big man. I agree with you on this front. Yeah, fuck yeah, man. But then when it started going into the, okay, I knew I was crossing the line when I was ranting. I don't know if you know that you're crossing a line right now. I was crossing a line on purpose to be impactful, to be a dick, because I'm just a fucking dick. Sometimes I like to cross lines to prove that I could cross lines, and maybe that's the same thing that he was doing. So maybe I gave a very bad example of how you should cross lines. Because ultimately, bitching and moaning and yelling about stuff doesn't accomplish anything. People have proven that to me time and time and time and time and time again ever since I was a little kid, because I've always fucking been one of those people that you could just set off if you do the right kind of things to me. I've worked on it for a long time, so I'm better now. But when I was a little kid, I lived in a very bad environment, too. I got to be honest about this. It was a very stressful environment. There was people always fighting around me, and I just wanted like a moment of peace. That's why, like, me as an adult. I just want to go off and do my own thing because I know how argumentative people can be. I don't want to fucking take part in that because if we're going to argue, no, we're not. I'm not going to fucking stand for it. And if you have a logical point of view, I demand that you present it to me in a peaceable manner. You don't fucking shout it at me. And sometimes when people have a logical point of view and they talk it to me, they present it to me nicely and I listen to it, and I realize that's not logical, I explain it to them nicely. Here's the flaw in your logic. That's how you can have productive conversations while totally skirting around arguments, but it takes a lot of mental fortitude and internal knowledge in order to really get around to that dismissal of the egoic desire to argue your point of view rather than just admit when you're wrong. Yeah, I was right now, I'm going to confront it right now and be like, "Yo, I was wrong. That is not. That's not the way we achieve things around here. I should have done the other stuff much louder, which was filing police reports, filing a report with eBay, filing a report with Discover., or the credit card company, filing a report with the post office. Those are all the things that actually resulted in true change in action, not the fucking crazy man grants, not the moments where lapses in mental acuity, but the application of knowledge. in the logic that something that was illogical had occurred. In this instance of the package being stolen, the ill logical thing was the package was stolen. That's an ill logical thing, because that's a federal crime. I don't know why you would risk. I think it's like five to ten years in prison for stealing, like $50 merchandise. I don't know, but the type of person that would rik federal law like that that says a lot about their character, I think. I don't know why I'm watch the side like that. and I think the threat of having a character around that flies in the face of law and order is more insulting to me than the actual package theft. The fact that somebody would have the gall to disrespect law and order in the first place to me, is more infuriating than the actual package being stolen. And that's why my rant went a little off the rails, and more into law and order territory. This guy's talking about fireworks and stuff and then he's going off on all these different kind of things. I gave him his space to rant in the same way that people gave me my space to rant. But in that space, I had learned how I had become a catalyst in this situation. and that how my words had an impact, even when I didn't intend it. And I I guess that's the hallmark of a natural born leader. Some people strive to be leaders their entire lives.. They put their egos on it. It's a goal to attain to, and then some people are just born leaders, just the way that they act, the way that they are, the way that they do things, influences other people to follow in their stead. There's two different kinds of leaders, I guess, that we're talking about here. A leader that commands a legion to his will and sends out demarcations of, you know, my intent. And then you have a leader that inspires others. You have a On one hand, you have a leader who maybe uses fear and control and all these tactics to control all the people that are under him. And then you have another leader that doesn't even realize that there's people following him, because he's not he's busy not turning around. That's one of the things, though, as soon as you become aware of the concept of leadership, you can't really exactly make yourself ignorant to it again. You can misunderstand the concept, like how I had done when I was younger, but all that had really done was reinforce the qualities that I wanted to see in others. And in myself. Outgoing, funny, charismatic, fearless, anxietyless, I didn't know what anxiety was until I was, like, 18, and I was dating a chick and she started describing all of my mannerisms as anxiety. And then I started to believe that I had anxiety, but I don't actually have anxiety. I never had anxiety in the past. I was one of those kids. I would write. speeches to run for class president purely as a joke. I would write an entire speech as like a parody speech, and then I would get up and I would give the speech like it's a serious speech. And I would try to get people enthralled and I be, and the audience would be cheer against stuff. I did this every single year until it was senior year. And senior year, I actually kind of wanted to be president a little bit. But I had already built up this reputation that I was running as a joke. So nobody really believed me when I kept asking people, "Hey, did you vote for me? They went, "I thought you were running as a joke. I thought you didn't want to be president. "Oh my God, if I knew you actually wanted it, I would have voted for you." I was like, "Fuck. Maybe that's one of those instances where people are saying one thing in your face, but they're really saying other things behind your back and that's what you don't know and what you don't see as a fucking person in the moment. Yeah, when I actually wanted it, oh, my God, there's a bird. Oh, it flew away again. Dude I don't know what'ss up with this. This is two podcasts in a row where a little bird comes and flies and looks at my window, and as soon as I try to get a picture of it, it goes away. But, um.. yeah, I guess it's kind of a difficult thing to achieve in the real world, but in my personal opinion, it's the leaders that don't want to be leaders that make the best leaders. What do you think about that? I don't know. It's been 55 minutes. I'm pretty sure that that is long enough for a podcast. Do you want to say goodbye? Come here. You want to see goodbye?. She's saying goodbye. And goodbye now. Keep it easy out there, everybody. See you later. Think on the concepts of leadership. What qualities do you see in yourself that you would like to see in leaders? And what qualities would you like to see more of in the world? All right, keep it easy, please.