New Year, New Home

If you’ve been listening to the podcast or following me on any of the social medias, you would know that right around Christmastime we purchased our first, and hopefully only, new home. If you’ve ever purchased a home, you will know how much that whole process SUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKSSSSSSSSSS!!! That’s not even counting the whole packing up everything, moving, unpacking, and cleaning the old house out with the miniscule hope of getting back any part of your deposit. There’s just so many different verifications and meetings and reverifications and documents and reverifications and processes and reverifications followed by a marathon session of signing so many documents that you start forgetting how to actually spell your name. Have I mentioned it sucks? Just checking… But we did it, and in mid December we moved in to our brand new, never before lived in, home in a gorgeous neighborhood.

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I Just Can’t Sell Myself

Recently I have mentioned that I’ve been looking into starting a career in voice over. Between my time behind a mic podcasting, and the handful of times I’ve been asked to do character reads for friends’ podcasts, I’ve found that I really enjoy the work. At the same time I’m also much more actively looking into working as a podcast editor. As much as it is the part of podcasting that most people truly hate, I actually like doing it. I enjoy getting to see the transformation from raw audio into a finished product. Unfortunately for me, both of these ventures are forcing me to do something I’ve never been particularly good at. I don’t know how to sell myself.

One of the things about me, and in turn the Odd Dad Out Podcast, is that I have always been better at promoting others above myself. It’s just sort of a thing about me. When I enjoy something, I tend to talk about it, at great length, whether you want me to or not. The thing is, I wouldn’t really say that I’m an especially great salesman. That line in and of itself is kind of a bad omen for my future in business. But the thing that I am, without a doubt, is passionate. I am passionate about music. I am passionate about podcasting. I am passionate about my friends. And I am especially passionate about sharing the things I love in a way that nobody can deny. I may not necessarily be able to sell you on my things, but you will surely know that I stand behind it 100 thousand percent. Somehow I have to find a way to take that passion about others and turn it inward to be able to promote myself.

It just feels strange to me to tell others about how great I am. I’ve always been more of a shower rather than teller. I have always felt that my work should speak for me. Unfortunately, when you are trying to get work in the first place, you’ve gotta do some talking to get them interested in seeing what you can do. That’s the number one area I have to work on, and I know it’s going to be a doozy. Aside from my time on mic for podcasting, I’m not the best at talking to people. Now, anybody who knows me would probably say differently, but it’s very different rambling on with co-workers about things in my life and talking to prospective clients about how I will be the best man for the job they need done.

Of course, I’m still very much in the baby stages of both of my business ventures. I know that it will probably drive me nuts trying to learn to sell myself and my services to people.  But I know that if I don’t learn to get out there and show the world what I can really do, I’m going to fail. And after 33 years, for the first time in my life, I think I really know what I want to do when I grow up. Of course it’d take me this long to figure this out. After all, it did take me 30 years to figure out my favorite color.

Support Hello Cancer WTF

 

Support Hello Cancer WTF

Support Hello Cancer WTF

Recently, good friend and fellow podcaster, Perry Johnson from Hello Life WTF and the Pod Stuff was diagnosed with an inoperable form of stomach cancer, which has spread to his liver and the lymph nodes in his throat. They have chosen to fight this cancer to the end and he has begun preparations for chemotherapy. This recent development only adds to the strain on this family. As the sole income earner in his family, Perry’s inability to work through treatment makes things that much more difficult.  Please support this amazing family in this time of need.

https://www.gofundme.com/hello-cancer-wtf

Adam’s Rants: I’m Not THAT Young

I have, what I think is, a common situation with my wife. I am older than she is. Specifically, I’m about 4 years older than she is. I could be completely wrong about this, but I think that it is fairly “normal” for the man in a  relationship to be slightly older if the couple aren’t essentially the same age. Anyway, I mention this because I have been cursed with eternal youth and to this day still get carded any time I have to purchase anything that may require ID (primarily alcohol.) My wife on the other hand never gets carded for anything. It’s not like she looks like she’s older than me or something. She doesn’t. She doesn’t really even look her age, at least to me. But she does look like she’s older than 21. Come on! We have 4 kids! Our oldest is a 3rd grader. Mathematically we would have to be over 21. My wife gets horribly upset when she decides to buy wine and she doesn’t get carded for it. I on the other hand get carded every single time, and I’m 4 years older than she is.

  I’m not one of those people who gets hung up on age. I am one of those people who thinks that age is really just a number, and legit believes it. (Not in a pervy way of course.) Again, my siblings and I have been cursed with eternal youth. I think we come from some long lost line of Irish vampires or something. Not one of us can pass for our actual age. In some respects that’s great. In others it’s kind of annoying. Aside from the previously mentioned carding for everything. There is a serious tendency of people to disregard me professionally because of my apparent age. In 13 years as a restaurant manager, nobody ever took me to be the person in charge. People always assumed that I was just some other member of the crew. Every time someone would ask for a manager I would get a sort of scowl from them when they realized that the skinny young guy was the one in charge. Then I would get the most obnoxious question ever, “where’s your manager?”  Every time I would have to fight back my Irish temper to not punch them in the throat as I tell them, “I am the fucking manger bitch!” But then I remember that I’m actually good at my job and a professional. So I climb out of my, JD from Scrubs, fantasy of throat punching and inform them that I’m the GM, and on with the interaction.
I say I’m cursed with eternal youth because interactions like that have plagued me for my entire life. Just for reference: I’m 33 years old, I’ve been married for 9 years, have 4 children, and was a restaurant manager for 13 years. But to this day, I still have to deal with people in the world talking down to me like I’m some dumb kid. Just the other day I was picking up food from a drive thru, and the guy handing me my food said, “Here you go young man.” Again, my brain goes to throat punching. “Don’t young man me. You are maybe, 5 years older than me at best,” I would have said if I were a more confrontational person. But that’s completely normal in my life, but as I get older and it keeps happening, it’s really wearing more and more on my patience.
  I never thought I would look forward to getting old just so that I wouldn’t have to show my ID to buy alcohol, even though I’ve been able to do so legally for 12 years now. Maybe some day I’ll be able to take my wife out to dinner and neither of us will get carded for our adult beverages. I just hope that day comes before my boys have to worry about this curse as well.

Blogging Blogging Blogging…

 So here’s the thing. I am fully capable of writing something in this blog space on a regular basis. If I really tried I could probably write a different post every day. Would it be something of substance? Hell if I know. Would it give a little more of a peek into what’s going on in my head? That’s much more likely. Would it maybe help drive traffic here and get me more listeners? That’s almost certain.

 So why don’t I do it? I’d love to have some really upstanding answer. I’d love to be able to say, ” My children are too important to spend all of their young lives in front of a computer.” Or maybe, “My obligations as a father are simply too crucial to escape.” But really the truth of the matter is, I’m just kind of lazy.

 Now I’m not talking about the kind of lazy where I don’t get out of bed until noon. My younger boys are 2 and 4. That is NOT an option. What I mean is much more a sort of  master procrastinator, lazy. But even that is sort of a stretch. Besides the fact that I am in fact quite busy wrangling my boys during the day, and the fact that I do put my children before other things in my life, a lot of it just comes from not wanting to do it.

 A big part of my ability to continue do my podcast has been my ability to improvise just about everything I do on the show. I don’t want to write it all out. That’s why I do my show the way I do. But here’s the thing; it’s REALLY good for the show for me to write. Google and other search hubs cannot search audio. It doesn’t matter what I say on my podcast, google cannot hear it. In order for anything I produce to be searchable, it has to be in print on a webpage. And the more things there are on that webpage in print for the little robots to search for, the more likely they are to direct things to your (my) webpage.

So, with all that in mind, I am going to try to write more. Maybe I’ll just ramble like this and get thoughts out that I don’t express in the show. Maybe I’ll just take my stories from the show and write them out. I don’t know. What I do know is that I need to be writing more, or at all. What I also know is that it is highly likely I’m just writing this to myself and nobody will read it besides the crawler bots from Google. Hello Google bots…

Adam’s Rants- The Objectification Objective

The Objectification Objective

 

 I was listening to the radio in the car and a familiar song came on, Ex’s and Oh’s by Elle King. You know you know it. It’s that song where Rob Schneider’s daughter sings about how she’s so great in bed that all the guys she used to bang are constantly hunting her down for more. Wait! What!? You didn’t know that’s what it’s about? Tic Tac Toe you say? That there is part of the problem. People don’t pay attention to lyrics, even when they like the song. The only ones paying attention are the whackos looking for a reason to be offended. But that’s not the  point. The point is that this is just one more song that shows a blatant double standard of objectifying men in music. Ex’s and Oh’s is catchy as hell, but if the genders were flipped and a man sang it, it would be  crucified as sexist and derogatory and probably result in a boycott. But if it’s done by a woman it’s feminism and strength.

  
Looking back, the music world is full  of male objectifying songs. Salt n Peppa probably had the most iconic example ever with “What a Man.” Great song. It’s a classic, no doubt, but all it talks about is how attractive this guy is and how great he is in bed. Even more recently, Christina Aguilera had “Candyman.” Super upbeat, very swingy, dirty as all get out. The entire song is devoted to describing the guy all the girls wanna fuck. No romance, just talking about tongue skills, panties dropping, and a real big “moan…”
 I’m not saying men don’t make these same songs about women. Hell, you’ll find at least one on every rap album ever made. That’s not the point. The point is that when a man does it, it is called out for what it is. When a woman does it, it is labeled as some form of female empowerment or feminism. So to that I call bullshit. Man or woman, objectification is objectification. Don’t tap-dance around it.

 Here’s the twist. I’m not complaining about objectification. In it’s own way, objectification is a personal goal of every person on Earth. You’d be hard pressed to find a person that wouldn’t want “somebody” to stare at them thinking, “I want a piece of that.” No, not everyone, but at least that special someone. Even in that capacity it is still objectifying someone. Why do women wear sexy clothes, so others will look at them. You may get the excuse of ” it makes me feel better about myself.” Well you don’t feel better if nobody is looking. You don’t wear the wonder bra for your personality. On the same token, a man will go to the gym, and primp and groom, and show off just so women will look at him and fantasize about sex. People don’t stare at brains. Objectification isn’t all bad. There’s an entire industry based on it. It’s called “modeling.” The point is that everyone wants to be seen as a sexual object to somebody at some point. Man or woman, it doesn’t matter. Just don’t bullshit about it.



Am I a Nerd or a Geek?

 Am I a Nerd or a Geek?

 So, if you actually know me, or have listened to my show for very long, you may have figured out that I am kind of a nerd. Or am I a geek? That is the question at hand isn’t it.
Not that it’s an idea that has plagued me or anything, but once a thought pops into my head it is difficult to kick it until I think it through. Such is the case now. I’ve always said that I am kind of a nerd. I was good in school. I picked up a few college credits early. I aced every class with hardly any effort. By most interpretations, I would be called a nerd. I’ve also been a video game fan, and comic fan, and movie fan… I guess I’m not really helping the nerd argument here.

Nowadays there is quite a dividing line between what is a “Nerd” and what is a “Geek.” Honestly I never really knew or cared that there was a difference. But, since the thought popped into my head, I just had to look it up. I had to see where I actually fall in the whole nerd-geek spectrum. So, I looked into it and according to Urban Dictionary a “nerd” is somebody who is smart but not very social. They don’t talk much and have few friends. They are generally nice but lack the social skills to go out and make friends. This sounds a lot like me. “Geeks,” on the other hand, socialize but it is usually based around some passionate obsession. Comic books, video games, Dungeons and Dragons, and other such groups come to mind.

Honestly I’m not really digging these definitions. I found a couple infographic things to try to make more sense of it, but they just made things more complicated.

 

To break this one down for me, I personally can go either way with coffee or soda, maybe more toward coffee. But then I live in t-shirts and sneakers and have played guitar for 17 years. But I also am both a cat and dog lover. So I’m leaning more geek on this one.

So in this one I do have a particular interest in academics, but my knowledge also has that mundane to encyclopedia thing going. I am absolutely introverted and generally socially challenged despite being quite long winded and hosting a comedy podcast. On the nerd side, I absolutely have a wide range of generally impractical skills just because of my interest in everything, but that blends into both having an interest in movies and games. I’m absolutely a fan of new gadgets. They are like new shiny toys. I don’t even know how to call it on this one. I’m once again pretty split on where I fall.

So what have I learned here? Apparently my chronic indecisiveness extends even to this most superficial element of my personality. It’s bad enough that I can’t pick out what I want to eat at a restaurant easily, but now I can’t even figure out if I’m a nerd or a geek. But really does it matter? Yes it’s both a very profound and utterly stupid question. I don’t require a personal definition of what I am. I don’t have to fit into one particular category. Honestly I feel better not being one or the other.  Nobody should be just one thing, or obsess over labels. You be you and I’ll be me, in all my smart-assed indecisive geeky nerdom.

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