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all right all right all right we are back for another episode of the ex- homeschoolers Club I of course am your
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host Jacob goodon and today I'm joined by my wonderful friend John slagboom uh
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it has been a minute my friend since we have chatted it's been a minute yeah
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well we I have known you oh man I'm trying to think I feel like I've known
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of you for a very long time um but we've known each other for a good chunk of
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time there's a couple things that come to mind honestly when when I think of you
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one is uh I was at your graduation you you're we we discussed this like right
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before we we hit record which is like you're about four or five years older than I am and uh right before your
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graduation you had like sliced half your finger off and you had this like comically large bandage and um so
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bad so tell me really quickly tell me that story how did that happen what exactly happened there that's a great
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opener because it's ridiculous I was at home my mother was outside talking to the landscapers and
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it's weird because this was like the one time we ever had landscapers we never
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had money for that but for some I guess we're like redoing the lawn or something
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I was in my room sharpening my knife and I was like I want to see how sharp this knife is it's got to be
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really sharp and so I'm like cutting through a 3x5 card and I for forget what
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distracted me or what dip [ __ ] thing I did I looked away for a second and I looked down and my knife is like halfway
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into my knuckle okay like and and as I'm yanking my hand away this chunk of skin
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just goes flying into The Ether I couldn't find it for a while and I'm just like looking at it I can see like
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fat globules I can see like my little bit of bone and you know have you ever gotten like a really bad
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injury and it doesn't bleed for like that first like I don't know if it's a
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second or not a second like a really short amount of time is just not bleeding and I was like holy
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crap a little nauseous all a like I'm sorry to any listeners out there who might have a problem with this
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but it is what it is uh and it was just going everywhere I was spurting I'm like oh man so I like put
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pressure on it put it over my head I'm like going to my mom's linen closet I
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get a hand towel and it's just like soaking through my hand towel I'm have
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my hand over my head and I was like Mom oh right now John Calvin talk you with the landscapers [ __ ] okay so I go
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in my room I'm like okay well I better not bother my mom um Okay and like a couple minutes later I don't know how
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long it was it wasn't that long she comes and like mom um yeah so I think we
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need go to the ER and this is my first incident need to go to the ER for like an a stupidity related edged
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disaster uh so she's a veteran and she's like okay well you know we had our uh
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adopted my adopted siblings at the time and still with our family great kids but
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they were going to elementary school at like EO green or something and I forget the rough sequence of events but I think
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we went and picked them up and we go to an emergency room and long story short the emergency room was this like Vietnam
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vet doc like this old crusty like guy and uh he's like oh yeah this looks like
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one of the moons from like you know I I just got to approximate the edges and he's like long story short and ended up
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with like 12 stitches and have you ever had stitches before yep yeah okay so you
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know like the cord that they use is like pretty thin but black yeah and but this
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[ __ ] was thick like it wasn't like paracord thick but it was a lot thicker
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than like I've had a lot of stitches and it was a lot thicker than the stuff you
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usually use and I had lost so much tissue that they had to pull it together like yeah and it took a long time to
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heal as you know as you noticed um and then I could we get back and um I'm like
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looking for this piece of Flesh that is like somewhere in my room and uh like you know it's not
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anywhere on the desk it's not on the carpet and eventually I get my flashlight start looking under
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things I have a bird a little cocka at the time and um I looked underneath this bookshelf and there's my bird you know
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know birds get really good red eye effect like if you shine a light in their eyes yeah I shine under this shine
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under like my book shelf or I forget what it I think it was a bookshelf and there's my bird these like red eyes
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eating my flesh it was a nightmare oh my God that's my story that's wow wow you know what's funny I
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remember you saying the bird thing way back in the day however I always thought it was like a madeup story like I have a
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friend who got hit by a car and lost a chunk of his leg and he and he would say like oh I got mauled by a bear but no
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that was real wow what a way to kick off said a lot of like stories that were like
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embellish but that one was real well yeah I just yeah I yeah I've obviously seen the scar it's been a while but I do
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yeah I remember seeing the stitches and stuff yeah I'm sure if you're if you're
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talking about down to the bone and oh my God but yeah but I just remember you delivering some speech at your
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graduation with this gigantic it was just comically big bandage over your finger and um it looked like something
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out of the cartoons it was hilarious it was hilar I remember I that was the year
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I got like my Eagle Scout award there's all sorts of like ceremonies and things
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I had to speak at and it was literally always holding the mic and my fingers were always just like hello my name Isn
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I'm pleased to accept the eagle scout award or you know just something dorky
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like that so glad that happened oh man that's so funny well what a good way to
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kick off this episode because um that's just I I that's the memory that I think
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always sticks with me of you but glad I could leave that impression yes yeah but uh yeah like we said we've
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known each other for a good chunk of time and uh but your homeschool journey I don't know that much of because I feel
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like by the time we started to get to know each other you were you were kind of older leaving uh The Homeschool world
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and I was still very much in it so give me quite the kind of quick rundown of like were you always homeschooled you
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know what years all that kind of stuff yeah years okay when it comes down to specific details I am terrible with that
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stuff so I will give you the kind of the narrative version um but so I was born no um we're
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always a homeschooled family uh grew up in the first part of my life kind of moving around in the Southern California
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area um parents and my family so my older sister Deborah myself Lizzie hadn't been born yet Elizabeth she
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prefers that um I get to call her Lizzie older brother privilege um so Lizzie hasn't been born yet but we're living in
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Eagle Rock our Burbank Glendale area and my parents were living with my grandparents and that was really early
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parts of my life like I just remember like crawling around and eating a Lego at one point
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anyways uh so we did that and then eventually ended end up in Oxnard California Berard little 805 uh
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homeschooled from the start um and let's see I think I'm abbreviating too much now I think one of
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my earliest memories of the homeschooling experience was going to picture days okay picture days in the park um that
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was good Mrs ep's riding class at Oxnard Public Library um early early homeschooling for
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me unfortunately my mom and thank God that she's been cancer-free for a very long
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time now um but she had really bad cancer and I think this was more in junior high to be honest with you I
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think I've blanked a lot of that part out just because it was a really difficult time yeah no understandable
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yeah she was uh she was she was really bedridden going through chemo and all that stuff and she was kind of close to
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uh close to kicking the bucket there um but I was video schooled a lot of it uh with uh through Pensacola
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Christian Academy I think it's like the the the K through2 of Pensacola Christian College but we had video
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school so uh um that's that was like early years of homeschool for me before
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Co-op before group Solutions um before we really integrated with the chief when you say video school are we talking like
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VHS and DVDs VHS baby okay yeah DVDs came later but I had a little like little silver like VHS and TV and one
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player on my desk and it would be like wake up plug in the the the the tape and watch other kids go to school that
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sucked um and uh dude it was rough uh there is a lot of good memories this is just the Highlight like I I think the
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rest of my homeschooling experience before and even after my mom really got out of the the roughest of it with their
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cancer is pretty normal homeschool experience like you've described in this podcast and your other guests have but
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that was like the Highlight um or the low light uh of my homeschooling experience there because I was always
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been a really social guy yeah and I just remember watching these kids like a sitcom almost and like being like damn I
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wish I was in that monitor with these kids yeah and and then like watch and this is getting really dark really fast
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but like like the the worst part of it was was there is a window right here in my room so my TV right here my window
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and I'd be watching kids outside going to school and back it's like dang it wow
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this sucks and then the uh other negative was uh I know I'm going to start with the negative guys but I'm
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going bring out the positives later just kind of go down and then dip back up again this show is all about The Good
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The Bad Andy ugly okay so we're going there today uh yeah so I think the negative
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like academically it was kind of a mixed bag but I cheated a ton dude because you
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know this is really bad I me I feel like a piece of chip for this but like my mom
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was sick and like I'd score my own stuff and be like well you know got the answer
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book right here it's go I'm doing great in m yeah um but yeah that was kind of unique
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experience um I that only lasted a few years too and there's other things going
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on in my life so it wasn't just like you know boy stuck in his room wishing he
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could socialize there's there's pros too so I was in Cub Scouts weeow sparkies um was doing I think Jiu-Jitsu
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came later and my dad did a lot of paintballing with me and then eventually I did Airsoft with you and your Bros
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yeah so uh that was that was the like the very beginnings of my homeschooling memory though like before that I
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remember doing like mation tables and spelling with my mom on the kitchen table which was wonderful and that's how
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we figured out that my eyesight is just absolutely terrible because I was holding the spelling book up like
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backwards and upside down oh man I guess you can only do upside down my was like
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what the crap are you doing stop clowning around I just kept on doing it I was like what the crap is going on
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over here that's when I first started getting my vision checked I've been
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wearing contact since I was like eight okay so wow yeah dang a lot there to unpack a lot yeah yeah but no that's so
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it's interesting because I I had Julia humbles recently on the show uh to interview it as of recording this it
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hasn't come out yet but her mom also had cancer um as people know and and so Mrs
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Sanchez actually took over a lot of her education so she still kind of had somebody there to to do that but it's so
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interesting to hear like I mean I had video class but by video class it was typically just a lecture and then like I
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would go do a workbook but I wasn't watching other kids in a classroom I was
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typically just watching some dude with a whiteboard talk about you know 2 plus 2
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equals 4 um kind of a thing you know it was very just a lecture based but yeah you're talking about like an actual
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School room yeah I tell you kid you not it was like a sitcom of a school room because like we' go up we'd say like
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line up and like say the Pledge of Allegiance and we do crafts I remember like in Thanksgiving like Pilgrims make
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the turkey kind of thing uh yeah it was I had a crush on a girl in the TV from the you know from the video school don't
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remember her name but you know like you know it was like it was watching a sitcom you know it's kind of cool in
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that regard but to your point it's like it's kind of hard to like get a good
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education sometimes from that especially when like Mom is sick and then you're
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having to grade own work it's really easy to just kind of be like lazy yeah yeah we've all been there we've all had
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that moment but like yeah it's it's you know it's super easy to just kind of be
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like oh yeah I got an A in math you know like I definitely got the answer to this
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one that's forward all right done didn't even think about that yeah I watched the
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video mom like it's not a big deal uh I know what I'm talking about is this
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happening pre- aieve in group Solutions or like kind of in the midst of definitely pre-group Solutions I think
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group Solutions came later for us okay um I think it was during achieve but we were limited in our participation right
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you know and getting ready for this episode I was actually this a bit of a tangent but um getting ready for this
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episode I was kind of reminiscing with Elizabeth my like younger sister was like it seems like there's a couple
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distinct groups of homeschoolers and they're all kind of uh had different Focus areas or kind
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of different themes so you had the Oxnard homeschoolers and there wasn't very many of us I don't really remember
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a lot I think the powers Stovers uh a couple others maybe maybe more than I know or more than I remember
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but then there's the ohigh homeschoolers and those are like the thesians those
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are like the the I just remember going to a lot of really cool plays over there at the Mitchells and doing Airsoft and
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the riverbeds and that was like the coolest part of homeschooling for me was like anything that had to do in Ohio was
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just like a magical place and then there is the Ventura homeschoolers which was I
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think the coolest most like kind of like well-rounded homeschoolers they had like
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the Ventura Vibes they're all like closer together and well connected to each other and like always doing stuff
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with each other and there's Camaro homeschoolers which were a little bit more Casa kind of got the casa group
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going on over there and um a little bit like the ohigh homeschoolers but not quite um kind of bigger family
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sometimes yeah yeah that's totally what it is like ohigh was yeah very despian
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based like pretty tight group what's funny is even within the Ohi group it felt like there was this segmented
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within the ohigh group there was the achieve ohigh group and then there was like the casa ohigh group and it was
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like the Catholics versus like the evangelicals kind of a thing right right because yeah Kaza was like very Catholic
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based uh homeschool families massive families right eight plus kids typical kind of a thing and then achieve had a
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lot more of the like two and done or like two or three kids kind of a thing um but yeah no that's that's so funny
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that you bring that up because yeah Ventura definitely was like the cool kids kind of normal some of them would
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go to like the high school or the college for a class or going to Buena later you yeah exactly they Sports yeah
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and then yeah and then ohigh was yeah we're the weirdo thespian kids um and then Oxnard was yeah Oxnard it always
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yeah it did feel like there was less kids in Oxnard however I think more I think there was under the lopezes were
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there too and you just interviewed uh Laura yeah yeah I just had Laur a good episode um but yeah there's also a bit
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of a social Island going on in oxnar too because you're only connected to Camario
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and Ventura and therefore the rest of the county through like two main highways and you had to navigate through
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suburbs to get there so there's always like added 30 minutes to whatever you're
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doing so so there is definitely a social Island and I didn't really even start
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integrating independently and this is obvious until I got a car um but I integrated so much more once I was you
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know independent in that way because just the commute and the travel times were were a lot more and I think that
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affected my my experience a lot especially in the younger years where I was so dependent on my mother to uh get
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me places um you know it'd be okay we're going to the picture day this month or
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we're going to you know this activity that month it' be kind of like two or
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three times a month tops or like maybe one or two times um to get out and get those social things so I didn't really
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even fall into like the different you know social groups and I I don't want to
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say clicks they weren't really clicks but like the social groups and kind of
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like little kadre is also not the right word you know but you know until until later on you know yeah yeah but again I
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had I had other things going on too so it just wasn't with the homeschooling
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Community yeah no and that's that's been interesting to hear from people too
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because like I feel like early on in home school years for me I feel like I did integrate more with like ohigh kids
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in sports like I I played soccer I did stuff for the rec center that kind of thing so like I had friends that were
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like public school kids also uh and then by the time I was graduating basically the majority of my
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friends were homeschool kids and we were it was all homeschool activities this the dances and uh I mean Airsoft was
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like my was my sport so it was all homeschool kids for the most part like playing and things like that so and then
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yeah to your point of like once you turn 16 you get a car you got your license so
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much easier to kind of like go be in the other friend groups right I had my venturo people had my ohigh people I had
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the Oxnard people who I saw yeah once a month or whatever and yeah it was like an
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interesting Dynamic to say the least but yeah I yeah I wouldn't say growing up I
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had like my best friend didn't live in oard my best friend lived in oh because my mom was going to drive me to
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my best friend's house uh you know six days a week uh so that's super fascinating but okay
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so here's something that I've been thinking about that is so after you graduated you came back to
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group Solutions at some point to teach a class or two thought about that and you
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taught I don't remember if it was called like Wilderness survival that was it was
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that what it's called okay and basically correct me if I'm wrong but it was kind
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of like glorified Boy Scouts to a degree of like you were just teaching us like how to camp and and just like the man
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stuff shelters fires first aid not yeah it was basically like pick and choose your adventure
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from you know stuff I learned and really appreciated that from Boy Scouts that I
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you know sorry I learned from Boy Scouts that I thought were you know really useful and that like every kid should
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know how to do like here's how to pitch a tent here's how to make a fire here's
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how to make a fire in the rain here's how to make a shelter you know here's
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how to um I think we did a little bit of literature I had them read Lord of the Flies which is like why I don't remember
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I did a lot of weird stuff that I thought was cool back then which is something we can talk about later but
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like uh yeah I remember reading because I was in that class and I remember reading lord of the
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student I remember you Jacob good yeah I think I think your class was the only reason we got to bring knives to group
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Solutions uh because you made us you had us make like bugout bags or something like that that's awesome and yeah it was
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just like you know it was just camping gear basically and uh and you I don't
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know like we all showed up with knives because you need a knife when you're in
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the wilderness and I and I remember somebody was coming by I was like um why do all these 12-year-old boys have
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knives like this this is probably shouldn't be happening don't worry we're we're uh
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we're in the wilderness survival classes yeah yeah exactly that was yeah yeah um yeah even I remember my mom
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being like yeah you can take it but like don't show like just show John and then
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just like keep it away because like I think I remember a conversation like that now I complet I'll be honest I
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completely forgot about that yeah I remember I I was I think I remember teaching it was rain
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I remember teaching a bunch of you guys I think you were in there m karelli was in it and we were trying to do like the
00:21:04
flint and steel in the rain we gotta go in it took a while but we gota go yeah yeah you had us like setting fires in
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the in the parking lot and under coverage and we're just for context too group Solutions was like at a church so
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it was not like we were not in the wilderness it was like in the middle of oxar in the suburbs yeah exactly there
00:21:24
was no Wilderness so we were just like yeah playing in like the grass basically lighting fires in Southern California
00:21:31
also um Chef kiss yeah exactly no but we but we had an eagle scout with us we were protected everything was
00:21:39
fine a totally sane and Bright Young Eagle Scout that has never made a mistaken his life y yeah yeah yeah well
00:21:48
okay but you brought up Lord of the Flies and that was another thing that I was thinking of I was like I I was like
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I'm pretty sure that I read that book because of John okay so you so why did
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why that book you know um because I think there wasn't a lot of reasoning behind it I just you
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know there's a bunch of kids on the island and they had to survive until they rescued yeah and I think I had like
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skimmed through it before and they were reading through I'm like oh [ __ ] this is dark it's a dark
00:22:17
book I think one of the parents asked me too and I was like it's about kids surviving on an island like why didn't I
00:22:23
have read Hatchet or something you know exactly exactly I was going to bring that up I was like hatch is such a great
00:22:29
book for that because it's yeah but Lord of the Flies they turn on each other
00:22:33
they're murdering each other it okay yeah no but that was a great class I yeah I remember very specific thing like
00:22:40
starting fires you taught us how to change a tire on a car like you taught us some really basic stuff jump starting
00:22:45
a car jump starting a car you know stuff that I use to this day so thank you you're welcome you're welcome but do you
00:22:54
remember why it was that you came back to teach's class like was there a reason
00:22:57
behind it or you just were like I'm passionate about this and I just I think
00:23:01
we need something like this I don't remember a specific reason yeah um but I've always been passionate about that
00:23:08
in fact now I have a son it's nine months 10 months 10 months and on the 15th um I've been really thinking about
00:23:18
how I want to recreate the things I was able to learn through the Boy Scouts in the context of you know just a bunch of
00:23:25
young men and their fathers and sometimes families going out and doing just having fun just having fun in the
00:23:30
outdoors and learning useful life skills and not making about like Wilderness survival but like just skills that are
00:23:36
good to have and fun to have and knowing how to Camp well and how to be prepared
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for um you know not having your bed and a running water sink and a toilet and just being able to be outside
00:23:48
comfortably and learning how to enjoy nature and the outdoors and what to do when you know something happens like you
00:23:53
cut half your finger off because you're an idiot you know um it's just you know
00:23:59
so that was one of the things I loved about Scouts was you know those kinds of skills and beyond that just like how to
00:24:05
be a a a good citizen you know um a a a good productive young man in a lot of different areas of life and I think
00:24:13
that's really valuable aspect of scouting and I think um I can't remember
00:24:17
the specific reasons why I came back and taught at group Solutions but I've always been
00:24:22
passionate about those kinds of lessons that I got from scouts back in the day um and maybe that's why I wanted to go
00:24:28
back and and teach it yeah um so yeah I don't know I don't know I don't remember
00:24:33
why but I've always been passionate about that and it's continued to be like
00:24:36
a thing that interests me that's cool because yeah I mean there wasn't a lot
00:24:40
of stuff like that at groups it was very much like it was it was a lot of moms teaching classes there was a few dads
00:24:47
but there really wasn't any classes like that and so it was cool it was definitely and that's why I took it
00:24:53
because it was more interesting than taking a science class or you know something
00:24:59
Jacob but um that's so cool too that it's something that you want to pass on
00:25:02
to your kid and I and that's something I was going to kind of navigate into was
00:25:07
like you know you know we've been out of homeschooling for a number of years for
00:25:12
it sounds like 15 years for you 10 years for me and like you know life has changed so what's like what's going on
00:25:19
now what what what's different and you know hit me with that once I graduated I
00:25:26
kind of bounced around junior college for a while one thing listeners get a counselor when you're
00:25:33
going to Junior College or you'll go to Junior College for two damn long I was like why haven't I gotten my
00:25:40
AA yet what's going on and I just because I was I wasn't Tak taking responsibility for it and I was just
00:25:45
kind of like I guess I'll take this I guess I'll take that I guess I'll take
00:25:48
this like you haven't completed your your PRX for for University and um it's so funny because
00:25:54
my father just came up um and he brought me a bunch of the stuff from the house so my old notes um my you know just a
00:26:01
bunch of paperwork and and memorabilia and I was going through it and yeah I had taken so many classes at Junior
00:26:08
College just because I didn't I didn't really have a direction I didn't really
00:26:12
know what I was doing or I was going and that was fine I learned a lot while I was there and had fun but after that I
00:26:16
went to Junior College and then I started like applying out to different universities I got accepted to Aza
00:26:21
Pacific which I completely forgot about I found the acceptance letter and but I ended up going to csuci
00:26:28
and uh that was a wild time man uh yeah that was that was really really crazy uh
00:26:37
grew a lot grew up a lot there um did a lot of things I shouldn't have done there just something I also want to
00:26:43
touch on and talk about um but at a high level you know graduated from Co-op went to Junior College went to C
00:26:54
Channel Islands um met my wife in 2015 I was I think a sophomore or a senior think it was a sophomore at
00:27:08
CCI um met my wife a long distance she was the maid of honor I was the best man she's up here in Idaho and kind of had a
00:27:17
longdistance relationship for a while um and then from 2015 through 2017 he's working at a startup up over
00:27:28
in Pacific Palisade so kind of near Santa Monica moved up from Santa Monica to spoken Washington and St Patrick's
00:27:37
Day of 2017 lived up there until last November no last October 2023 my wife and I got married in
00:27:51
2018 I had my son in November of 2023 and now we're here nice so I've been through so many
00:28:01
different things as we all have in that time I've been through so many changes
00:28:05
in that time as well not so much physically it just gotone fatter uh but spiritually philosophically politically
00:28:14
oh we're doing well man we're fat and happy yeah uh just so many changes man and
00:28:21
it's been so interesting because you know when I left the Ventura County area
00:28:25
I lost contact with a lot of people like the only person I've really kept in
00:28:29
close contact with this Caleb G great guy great friend um you know I still follow or people follow me from those
00:28:36
days though I don't really interact with them but it's just been really wild
00:28:40
seeing the changes that everybody's gone through this past 15 years for me it
00:28:45
sounds like um yeah so now I'm here I have a kid living in the panhandle of Idaho no I'm not a white supremist for
00:28:52
some reason that's a meme that's going around I'm Mexican in the panan of Idaho
00:28:56
and I haven't received any uh uh racism so that's just a mean but don't come up
00:29:00
here anyways if you're from California it sucks it's terrible I wouldn't
00:29:03
recommend it um keeping keeping the gold for yourself I see what what are you talking about I
00:29:10
know what you're talking about um but yeah that's a long that's the that's the
00:29:13
really high level View and there's so much to hit on and talk about but yeah
00:29:18
what are you doing careerwise select the highlights I'm an energy engineer okay
00:29:23
so I'm an energy engineer I've been in the energy industry for shoot 10 11 years now I started in 2013 at CC
00:29:32
China Islands as a student assistant and it kind of worked my way up that's actually why I moved up to Spokane is
00:29:37
because when I met London I was like this beautiful woman lives very far away from me um so it was advantageous that
00:29:45
at the time I had a job at a startup that was uh my responsibilities were looking at what other companies and
00:29:51
Industry were doing and if we could you know do anything better so I found a really large company called Ng
00:29:59
um based up in spok p and I got a like 90-day attempt to hire and thre everything in the back of my little subc
00:30:06
compact hatchback Econo box and found a roommate with a six-month lease and kind of moved up
00:30:13
there and made it work it it's cool to see where the homeschool people have landed because and some people fast
00:30:21
start some people slower start I mean I graduated 2014 from high school within a
00:30:27
couple yeah moved to Illinois for college yeah three years in college graduated I had
00:30:35
more you talked about getting a counselor and that was something my parents did for me that they that helped
00:30:40
significantly I knew that for my personality I was like if I go to a community college I'm gonna get stuck
00:30:47
and kind of just I I was just going to spin my wheels and not get anywhere and I was like I got to got stuck yeah and
00:30:56
and I think that was a thing that was common among a lot of The Homeschool kids and I think it had to do with this
00:31:02
is not to blame the parents but I think a lot of parents their end goal was just
00:31:05
get my kid graduated oh 100% yeah they weren't 100 yeah they weren't looking to
00:31:11
the future of like what's the next step for they're like doing this month to
00:31:13
month and they weren't investing you know like yeah well they were investing
00:31:17
way but like they weren like what do we need what does this kid need in like 10 years you know exactly yeah and and I
00:31:23
think that's where not to toot my parents horn but my parents did a good job of when I from when I was young to
00:31:30
graduating they were like very much like well here's kind of what life looks like
00:31:34
right of like you're going to be a kid and you're going to go to school and
00:31:37
you're going to do this and that and then you're going to graduate and then
00:31:39
you're going to probably move out you're going to go to college or you're going
00:31:42
to get a job or you're going to do a trade like they so they had set this trajectory in motion and then they were
00:31:46
like as I got older they were like okay well he seems inclined to go to college so let's figure out how do we get him
00:31:53
there and uh you know and so part of the reason I think homeschool parents get stuck on the like we just got to get in
00:32:00
through high schools cuz there was a lot of homeschool parents who didn't go to
00:32:03
college um there's a lot who did and there's a lot who didn't and so I think
00:32:07
that the ones who didn't they really just were like I don't know what the
00:32:10
next step is because they didn't take it themselves and to your point they they
00:32:15
didn't know how to bring in a counselor to say and somebody who was an expert in
00:32:19
it to say hey here's what you need to do and that helped me so much cuz like
00:32:23
applied to six schools got into like all six of them and this is making me sound
00:32:27
like a genius I'm a very average person when it comes to intelligence you're
00:32:31
less [ __ ] than me [Applause] Jacob you did very good you know I'm really proud of what I did to advance
00:32:38
your career through my Wilderness survival classes clear that was the one thing that was the one thing that set me
00:32:43
apart in all of my college applications I was like I understand how to start a fire with flint and steel um y just you
00:32:51
got scholarships to all the prestigious and I've read Lord of the Flies that's
00:32:55
all I need we're good so but yeah to your point it's like it would it would have been very easy to
00:33:02
just get stuck without kind of that guidance to be like okay like here's what you're going to do and then you
00:33:07
know have a once you get in there have a plan and you know be okay with the fact
00:33:10
that yeah you might major in something that never use down the line but that's
00:33:14
okay you know um some people choose a major that's a little bit more specific
00:33:19
and then they really pursue that but anyway that was yeah that's my little soapbox moment of like parents help your
00:33:27
get out please for the love of God when it comes to stuff also going to college is it's it's hard work but to actually
00:33:35
get into college a lot of homeschool kids I think they get afraid because will I am I actually smart enough to get
00:33:41
into college because sometimes you're told that you're like the dumb kid and
00:33:46
it's like no you're a genius and you totally are smart enough it's just a
00:33:49
matter of getting the paperwork in order really is all it is anyone can give it to College oh yeah absolutely they want
00:33:57
your money guys they want your money they want your money so bad they'll give
00:34:02
you loans that you can never get out of unless you die yeah yep there's that and then guess
00:34:08
what they will come to you and they will say you're an alumni we're going to beg
00:34:11
you for more money to support other students I don't okay I don't understand
00:34:15
why people I guess I could so I work at a large University now I'm not going to
00:34:19
name it but um I kind of understand now why people do that I I don't understand
00:34:26
personally but like I I work at a large University now that has his own football
00:34:29
teams that has his own sports programs and like there's so much College spirit
00:34:33
and like where are these people yeah so I get like if you went to that college for four years and did like the what
00:34:40
everybody expects to do the university experience I could see why you'd have a
00:34:43
dedication to your Alma matter Mo whatever I don't even know how to speak Jake that's how bad my education was no
00:34:50
but um I just have never understood from my own perspective like you ain't kidding any more of my money
00:34:58
yo I'm paying interest on what I took what you guys gave me already yeah I really think it has more to do
00:35:06
with sometimes it's a legacy thing um yeah you know uh and then other times I
00:35:13
think you know for those people I went to a college where it was a smaller Christian college but there was some
00:35:18
there were some big guys who had gone there one of the CEOs of like Pedigree dog food had gone there you know and he
00:35:25
wanted his name like on buildings and that was like his deal like it was like it had less to do you could you could
00:35:32
tape it up and put it in a pretty box that was like it's benefiting the students but ultimately it was I want my
00:35:38
name on a plaque now look if I could have my name on a building I would love to do that because
00:35:43
everybody like can you go to the slag boo building no the slack boom boo the the the what build just to screw with
00:35:51
people I don't have building money you know it's not yeah hey someday you never
00:35:55
know you never know well it's so cool too that like you brought up wanting to teach your son
00:36:04
about like the Wilderness and be involved in like just like giving him that experience that you had of a kid of
00:36:11
like going on adventures out in the wilderness so I do I ask this of most people is just like you
00:36:17
know are you thinking of homeschooling your kid public schooling you obviously want to be involved in his education to
00:36:24
some degree but like are you have you given it any thought I mean it's been 10
00:36:27
months so you know we got to be thinking about these things today you know dude dude yeah I got his whole life planned
00:36:33
out he's going have to do all of it you know I got I got all all planned out got
00:36:37
on my rails no um that's a good question so I definitely don't want to put him
00:36:43
through public school you know when I was a kid I really wanted to go to public school and we even tried testing
00:36:48
into public school and I AC the testing like but you're gonna have to start back
00:36:51
as a freshman again and at that point I was already a sophomore in high school was like yeah no I'm not doing that um
00:36:57
and I'm honestly looking back in retrospect I'm so glad I didn't go to
00:37:00
public school so glad um know a lot of good kids that grew up and went to public school but I'm just glad I didn't
00:37:07
um I don't see sending my son to Public School uh I might say I kind of mean we
00:37:12
you know my wife and I um private school it depends like that shit's expensive
00:37:18
man yeah and um there's a lot of good private schools around where we live right now but it also depends uh I
00:37:25
honestly think that you know my wife and I we could put a pretty robust homeschooling curriculum together for
00:37:30
him and you know obviously wouldn't be all us on our own um but I'm pretty
00:37:35
proud of you know the things that we both know um I feel confident in the ability to at least for the first few
00:37:42
years you know get him on the right track you maybe even get him accelerated past what would be kind of normal for a
00:37:48
public school actually I'm pretty confident I could do that but um yeah I it I think I would be down to
00:37:59
homeschool him I have no worries about his social life up here so the neighborhood or the
00:38:05
town we live in is really small it has two universities close to it though so it's kind of like small big yeah um and
00:38:12
the neighborhood we live in is like a Pixar neighborhood from the you know 90s still and we all of our friends are
00:38:20
within walking distance there's a ton of young families just like us that have
00:38:24
you know they're starting their families or they may even have like three four
00:38:27
five kids now and they're all within a couple years of Theodore's age range
00:38:30
they're all within bicycle distance so I'm not even worried about the social
00:38:35
aspects they're all great upstanding families um yeah I I mean I could totally see
00:38:41
homeschooling him at least for the first couple years Junior High maybe and then
00:38:48
maybe just like doing Junior College stuff at high school like it's not looking back in retrospect and you know
00:38:54
I know it's different when you're looking forward at it as a kid like it's just not that bad I think that's
00:39:00
that's something that I tell myself constantly is I'm like it always um uh
00:39:06
what's What's the phrase I usually say I I it's all going to be okay like that
00:39:10
was like even back in the day it was like when when stuff sucked when school was hard when I was like I wish my mom
00:39:17
just put me in regular high school or whatever it was like it's all going to
00:39:21
be okay and yeah looking back on it it's a lot easier to say like no like legitimately it's all going to be okay
00:39:27
and uh to your point I think you have you don't have to have a full decision
00:39:32
today I just but to hear that it's like yeah you want to be involved and you
00:39:36
know and I would say yes I would put my kid through homeschool it's kind of just
00:39:41
context dependent on what happens when get closer to that point but I would definitely do that I think too what's
00:39:48
interesting is is like there's so much more flexibility with like homeschooling
00:39:54
and even like yeah even even some of the Alternatives of like you can still do a
00:39:59
public or private school education that's got some flexibility to it you know and so I think it's just one of
00:40:05
those things where it there's there's so many options now I don't know like when we were kids
00:40:11
I feel like the option was like home school private school public school and that's not 100% true I knew there was
00:40:17
other options in that but like it really felt like those are the three options and now it just feels like there's a
00:40:22
hundred different options of things you can do um yeah especially post pandemic exactly yeah exactly I mean I just I've
00:40:30
met so many people recently who are like they're full-time rvers and they technically homeschool their kid but
00:40:35
they their kid has a classroom with people and they log into zoom and they you know do all kinds of stuff together
00:40:41
um and it's like that's a cool experience that it probably it might have existed when we were kids but I
00:40:48
don't I never had heard about that until now you know it's wild kind of talking
00:40:53
on the same notes is we have so much more information available to us today than we did even in like the late 90s
00:40:59
early 2000s early 2010s even um where you know like heck just even talking about something totally unrelated but
00:41:07
similar diet and food you know like you know I grew up eating you know pretty good food but also a ton of [ __ ] and you
00:41:15
know now we're raising you know our kid on like you know eating a lot of red
00:41:19
meat a lot of liver a lot of lot of vegetables lot of lot of like all these like foods that people have been eating
00:41:24
since you know we were created you know and um and it's just you know because
00:41:30
there's so much more awareness of like oh yeah know [ __ ] that makes more sense
00:41:33
but like the only reason I even took that seriously is because you you have the internet right here and you can research
00:41:43
high quality information instantaneously yeah okay so it's like you know everything going on with AI now
00:41:54
even know it's like kind like AI seems to be a little bit biased in some ways
00:41:58
but you know there everything going on with AI teaching software just connectivity to um educational
00:42:06
programs the options are abundant and they're boundless and uh parents have more resources than ever right now to
00:42:15
give their kids the best I'm GNA say opportunity to to fully maximize their potential yeah yeah no I think about all
00:42:26
the things we were passionate about as kids right it's like you know passionate
00:42:30
about Wilderness and camping and you know those types of things and I was passionate about like dance and music
00:42:36
and the entertainment industry and stuff like that and so the amount of things that I have learned now just from the
00:42:46
internet I mean I'm a podcast producer now about I knew some about audio engineering but like about 90% of what I
00:42:54
do for my work is YouTube University dude that didn't exist like 10 years ago
00:43:00
okay so yeah like like but it's like one of those things where it's like I just
00:43:05
went on YouTube I just got on Reddit I just you know like you're saying I just
00:43:08
accessing information on the internet that didn't exist 10 15 years ago that
00:43:14
just it it's not even that it's information that didn't exist but it
00:43:18
wasn't readily available 10 15 years Ag and so here we are living in the digital
00:43:25
age um I was going to ask you so are there any in you know I we've been kind of prepping for this interview
00:43:34
for a couple weeks now but like yeah have there been any memories as you've been thinking that have just like stood
00:43:40
out as like just a favorite memory a cringe moment a just like a significant thing that happened that you're just
00:43:49
like I got to share this I think one of my favorite memories maybe it's because
00:43:52
I saw a photo of this recently but I think it's actually rooted in that is I
00:43:56
remember were going to you know the Little Harbor that was in Ox art that they kind of dug out and
00:44:04
built when we were going to group Solutions yeah um I forgot the name of it but there's like a Starbucks there
00:44:10
there's a yolandas at one point and the smoothie place and yeah you walk around
00:44:15
and be like boats for all the rich people with all the rich houses yeah um anyways I remember going
00:44:22
there after group Solutions with a bunch of like our click my click basically or
00:44:26
the click I was a part of it wasn't mine I was kind of the loser of the punch
00:44:29
maybe but it was just you know me Caleb Laura Mueller Amil gutterz uh a bunch of
00:44:35
other people too but I was like the core four in my opinion and we go there after
00:44:39
group Solutions get like smoothies and kind of walk around and just be teenagers and have a good time you know
00:44:44
those were the really core moments almost like breakfast club like moments for me whereas yeah um just being able
00:44:51
to hang out without adults and be kids or young adults and just you know shoot the [ __ ] kind of like
00:44:59
what we're doing right now you know with uh except without beer and cigarettes
00:45:03
and with uh orange dreamsicle yogurt smoothies you know yeah those those were really just the
00:45:10
core cherish memories I really enjoyed the dances um you know the skating plus I suck so hard at skating it was like a
00:45:21
ritual humiliation um going to it but like the payoffs in terms of socializations were
00:45:27
more than worth it you know what's funny I the last time I was in Ventura I went
00:45:32
to skating plus because they have there huh it's still there they had like an
00:45:36
adult uh only night kind of thing and uh car I texted Carrie FR I was coming to town I said hey we got to do some fun
00:45:44
let's go skating and uh and her and I the entire time were just like weirding
00:45:50
out because we were just remembering all the racing at the at SK the skating plus
00:45:55
like uh you know we were like oh this conversation happened over there and this thing happened over there and just
00:46:01
like weird reliving these memories together it was really funny and um yeah and her boyfriend and my wife were just
00:46:07
kind of like why is this place so special to you and you like we're like you just don't get it it was like like
00:46:13
you said it's like our breakfast club moment it was just like one of those things that's so burned in there of just
00:46:19
like it all comes back you're just in that place and you're like I remember
00:46:22
this and I remember that and I remember this person falling and I remember you know this person winning this game and
00:46:27
you know whatever it's just funny to like go relive some of those memories and in those places again yeah
00:46:33
absolutely just a lot of Golden Memories in that regard in terms of cringe memories there's so many having a hard
00:46:40
time like picking one you know you should ask Caleb y he knows all my he has all the dirt on me he's got the dirt
00:46:46
okay he's got the dirt but uh you know honestly I think most of the cringe moments had to do with like girls and
00:46:52
like attempts at romance and like misguided attempts at Romance okay uh I was so ill advised when it
00:47:01
came to like how to handle those types of emotions um and I think the cringiest thing about me
00:47:11
what among a many of the cringiest things about me especially in that time um the time was cringe it was I got a
00:47:21
lot of my social information from movies okay okay I watched so many movies and I
00:47:28
got all of my like you should do this this will definitely work from movies and um I can't name a specific event or
00:47:39
accounting like I'm sorry because it would be hilarious if I could but I just
00:47:43
remember just like like why isn't this working and um just the whole courtship
00:47:51
culture and just yeah oh my gosh just being a just being a 16-year-old dude in a homeschool World our homeschool world
00:48:00
was brutal in that regard um no definitely like the cringiest of of memories from there I didn't I didn't
00:48:08
date at all in high school um and I'm trying to remember I just tried to yeah okay but I didn't even the
00:48:16
thing is I didn't even try to like I had crushes on people obviously but I just
00:48:19
was like I'm not I'm not I wasn't going for it but um but yeah talk like the
00:48:26
court thing was weird right like I'm not alone in thinking that that was strange
00:48:31
I think that was a mistake I think that was a community culture mistake yeah uh did you ever read the book um I kiss
00:48:40
Dating Goodbye I've heard about it a lot I never bothered to crack it open this is
00:48:46
just this just smells like horseshit from here man yeah it's kind of that concept of like
00:48:53
it's it's it's that concept of like well dating is like is a non-committal type
00:49:00
of thing right it's just kind of which is like this is [ __ ] but like it was
00:49:05
kind of this like he was he was preaching this idea that like dating is like non-committal because like you're
00:49:11
basically just like I'm gonna hang out with this person and potentially get some kind of sexual gratification out of
00:49:15
it and then like when I'm done with it I just throw it in the trash and move on
00:49:20
yeah right and so it was kind of then placing this whole courtship idea of like you're G to go into dating somebody
00:49:26
with this strong intention of like we're GNA get married which is like the point
00:49:31
the the reason to date somebody is to know do you like this person cancer or not you know yeah exactly there's a
00:49:39
reason that you have to like get to know somebody and you can still have that like internal intention of like if this
00:49:44
isn't going somewhere it's pointless but like it takes months sometimes before
00:49:48
you even get an idea like if you get that idea like of somebody of like could I be with this person you know yeah and
00:49:55
I think there's an definitional distinction that wasn't made at that time there's a difference between hookup
00:50:03
culture dating and courtship and those are really important distinctions to make because when I was
00:50:11
in college and and to to air on the side of you know tipping my Hut to courtship
00:50:17
culture is hookup culture is horrible I went through a lot of that in college okay and that was like I thought it was
00:50:25
great at the time and looking back was like that was terrible for me um and for the people that are involved with it you
00:50:31
know um and I have a lot of regrets from that and a lot of lessons learned so cup
00:50:35
culture is honestly frankly toxic and I think it's a really horrible disease of
00:50:40
our culture um on the other hand you have courtship which is like this chalc like my lady I must throw myself on my
00:50:51
sword to slay the Dragon for your love you goddess of beauty and it's like bro you're
00:51:01
17 yeah exactly it's like healthy dating is probably the way to do it courtship
00:51:07
definitely not hookup culture you're going to regret it it's not good for
00:51:11
anyone and there's it's called it's called finding the balance man it's
00:51:15
called finding this maybe not balance between hookup culture and dating because there's no balance there but
00:51:21
just you know investing yourself genuinely in someone to find out who the are who you are to them
00:51:29
and if that's a good thing and if it is that's great get married have kids
00:51:34
you'll have more joy than you've ever had in your life if it's not get the
00:51:38
heck out of there with Grace if you can you know gently if you can but if that person's not the right one for you don't
00:51:45
try to make it work because you're just GNA be paying the piper later bro yeah no I totally I
00:51:53
totally agree with you it's such a weird ah such a weird concept that like I
00:52:00
think one of the reasons I didn't date in high school primar partly had to do
00:52:03
with the courtship thing because I was just like I just I kind of knew I don't want
00:52:09
somebody's parent tagging along I don't want to go on a date with somebody and
00:52:13
their sibling be there as a chaperon like I'm an adult I'm mature you know
00:52:19
like I'm mature enough to I say I'm mature 16 17y old kid is not mature but
00:52:25
but like but like you know I was like it's not about for me it was like it's not about funny
00:52:32
business it's like we're just going to hang out kind of a thing so when I got
00:52:35
to college it was interesting because as I started to pursue girls there was those few who started to
00:52:41
have like one of the one of the girls I was interested in she had this rule where she's like well if we date you
00:52:45
have to call my dad and get his permission and I was like nope no we're not going to date then and like because
00:52:50
I was just like if you you're an you're an adult you get to make your own
00:52:54
decisions you know um and if you're not comfortable doing that and you rely on
00:52:59
your dad to do that for you that's it was like red flag right and to your point of like that's the healthy balance
00:53:05
between hookup culture and and kind of then the cording and finding that middle ground of dating where it was just like
00:53:12
that for me was a that was a no so I was just like we're not doing that um but
00:53:17
then I started to find people who were like yeah let's go have fun we'll go get
00:53:21
dinner you know go to a concert go do whatever and then you find your person hopefully yeah once you find your person
00:53:28
it's like yeah people out there man yeah but you you invest your time and your
00:53:32
energy in this person and you go yeah this is the person I want to be with and uh there's a lot more to it than that
00:53:38
but funny story not mention that um so my wife and I were dating in college or talking to each other really and I
00:53:46
wanted to start dating her and the funny thing is so preface I was a hedonist in college so I left hom School
00:53:55
culture and I went insane which is something I want to talk about if we have time later I see that
00:54:01
pattern in a lot of people specifically in achieve kind of circles that kind of like seemly went off the deep end or
00:54:09
just like totally didn't end up the way that we were thought we were going to
00:54:12
like our parents thought we were going to end up which is fine Free Will and all that but I was just interesting the
00:54:17
pattern that I've been seeing um but I did it too I went off the deep end so deep you know sex drugs
00:54:24
rock and roll um I was terrible rock and roll I was severely uncool up to this day but I did
00:54:31
it you know and um anyway so my wife and I or uh you know at the time we were dating she was
00:54:40
like you know I really like you in fact you know we love each other but you know
00:54:43
I can't be with you you have no Foundation dude like you're you're a
00:54:47
punk like there's good stuff here but you're a punk and I'm not going to be
00:54:50
with you if you're a punk and um funny thing is is we did have that I did have
00:54:57
that conversation with her father because she wanted me to get her his permission which I think is Honorable
00:55:01
you know not not required but I think it's honorable and um her father he and I are great friends
00:55:10
I love my in-laws uh at that point he's like no I forbid you from talking to my
00:55:15
daughter because he knew from a mile away that he was talking to a punk and I was a punk at that time um and I was
00:55:22
like okay yeah I'm going to keep on talking with your daughter bro like but it's just funny that that came
00:55:30
up you know that wasn't honorable of me um it ended up working out we have a
00:55:34
great relationship in our families and um but I just thought that was funny that you mentioned that we'll talk about
00:55:40
so you wanted to yeah you brought up wanting to talk about kind of going off the deep end a little bit and I think
00:55:45
that was yeah I've seen that too it's been true of and I I think it has to do with
00:55:51
partly like The Homeschool bubble that we grew up in was very it was very much that it was a very much bubble right and
00:55:57
it was I don't know if you felt this way I I definitely felt this way growing up
00:56:01
where I kind of had this skewed view that everybody inside the bubble was like we were all the same we all believe
00:56:06
the same thing we all had the same values didn't fight like it was very yeah exactly
00:56:13
monoculture and and then to come out of it and realize like oh people's parents
00:56:17
are like don't get along or these siblings like really hate each other or like this stuff like this was happening
00:56:23
at home or this person had this experience you know it's like very interesting and it was like yeah it
00:56:30
shakes you quite a bit right and you kind of I don't know you can sometimes snap right and kind of go and be like
00:56:35
well now I'm just gonna be that Rebel so yeah talk about your experience with
00:56:39
that yeah I'm just gonna talk about my experience because that's the only one I
00:56:42
can speak to like we've seen it and I won't go into other people like what
00:56:45
I've seen other people because that's not fair to them um but in my own experience like I left the home I got
00:56:52
roommates that were you know just typical college guys and I was like dude life is so freaking
00:57:00
cool like we're partying all the time chasing skirts you know just you know smoking
00:57:08
dope like life was fun but there was completely it was just pursuing the desires of the flesh full stop you know
00:57:16
and one of the things that I think was a weak aspect that you know I only hold myself uh myself responsible
00:57:24
for the actions that I've taken um but I think there's predispositions that can happen based on the way that
00:57:31
you were raised and one of the things that led me to leave the church full on when I was a kid was I just saw a ton of
00:57:39
hypocrisy um in my own household in the homes of other people and I used a lot of that as an excuse to do whatever I
00:57:46
wanted which wasn't right but a lot of people do that um to do whatever I wanted but also just like a lot of don't
00:57:52
do this don't do that kind of thing um Without Really explaining it other than
00:57:56
Jesus told you so or just like it's in the Bible or you know all these things
00:58:00
but there's no deep meaning like you can't [ __ ] a kid kids are smart man
00:58:03
even me significantly average could tell that like hey there's no real reason behind
00:58:10
there's no real like fundamental philosophy behind the reasons you're giving me it's just we don't do this
00:58:15
because we're X or don't do that because of why and it's not like what's good
00:58:20
what's bad like actually good and bad you could say you know drinking cocacola
00:58:24
is bad okay um that's not good enough because Coca-Cola tastes great smoking
00:58:29
cigarettes is bad for you okay um clearly not motivated enough with the information you've given me or not
00:58:36
convinced enough with the information you've given me and it's not the parents
00:58:38
job to convince that something is bad it's a parents job in my opinion to be
00:58:45
informed enough so that they can actually give a good reason as to why something is bad or something shouldn't
00:58:50
be done um whether or not a child will be convinced or do the right thing or or or pursue wisdom is totally up to the
00:58:59
kid but it's the parents responsibility and the parents opportunity to pass on that wisdom in
00:59:06
such a way that it's not just yeah so what I love ice cream I'm G eat ice
00:59:10
cream every day eat for breakfast lunch and dinner yeah you didn't tell me you
00:59:14
didn't sufficiently convince me why it was bad thing and it's it's more Nuance in that because
00:59:20
like you know parents don't always have the opportunity or really the it's not
00:59:25
always the appropriate thing to like sit down and like have a aristan dialectic with their child as to why something may
00:59:31
be bad but like it's important as a child grows older that they know that what their parents and that the
00:59:37
community that they're being raised up in is doing things genuinely and not just to check off a
00:59:43
box or just to meet a performance standard which I think was really prolific um in many communities and I
00:59:50
think it was pric in ours as well um and I think that's why as soon as kids left
00:59:54
the house many many of them went off the deep end because they traded off one set of
01:00:01
assumptions and one set of Notions for another one because they never really had a foundation in that first set to
01:00:08
begin with they were just doing what they were told either directly or indirectly from the culture that they
01:00:12
were brought up in and now they're inserted into a whole another culture and of course of course they're going to
01:00:18
do whatever the heck they want in that culture because they weren't really rooted in that one in the first place so
01:00:25
um yeah so I mean as soon as I left the house um you know I everything that was fun and pleasurable I I went after a
01:00:34
full stop and I tell you it was like having schizophrenia because you know you have that you know I don't know if
01:00:40
you've gotten stoned before but like you know that anxiety that can happen it's
01:00:43
like oh man this is so wrong this is so wrong I can hear my heart beating yeah you know it was it was like
01:00:51
a mix of that and like just like the best highes listening to like the Grateful Dead But like um you it was
01:00:57
like this like because I had given my life to Christ before I went to college but it
01:01:03
was a meaningful level but not in a really informed or even knowledgeable level I had genuinely done it but it was
01:01:13
like it was in a I would say kind of like a rocky soil context maybe I don't
01:01:19
know I'm not a philosopher but um because I anyway it's given that context
01:01:27
like man I was in college I was like running two different ways in one time you know and I was like smoking dope to
01:01:33
try to get myself to sleep because I was like battling my conscience all the time
01:01:38
and I was like reading the Dow day I got super into other religions like like reading like you know the da Jing the
01:01:48
dhap like trying to find Truth where I knew really it wasn't and I don't mean
01:01:52
to be preachy and pastoral or anything I'm not and I suck at that but like I'm
01:01:56
just giving you my experience yeah I was just I was just running I was running from I was running from what I knew was
01:02:02
truth um and I'm so thankful that I met my wife because she uh has more of a
01:02:09
spine than me and she's like dude you are messed up man what are you doing bro um and that's
01:02:16
really I was like what am I doing what what is this life that I'm living right
01:02:20
now and um yeah it's been let's see 2015 to now yeah so I left college and I totally
01:02:29
flipped the bucket you know I used to be you know young Earth creationist evolution is bad we should drill more
01:02:35
you know before I went in college and then I totally just traded that off for like Bernie Sanders um everything is
01:02:42
like you know climate catastrophism and you know just being afraid of everything and trying to give
01:02:50
license to everything I wanted and trying to just be totally truth is subjective morality is subjective
01:02:58
therefore I can do anything I want and I that messed my life up so bad man and then just thankfully I was able
01:03:08
to I was given an opportunity to turn away from that um and I never would have unless I met people who actually think
01:03:18
who actually think critically and it's not that they subscribe to a certain set
01:03:23
of beliefs or anything it's just more like old school like critical thinking
01:03:27
you know they say they teach you critical thinking in University I have my doubts because I never really challenged
01:03:37
what I was taught in h school and then I went to University and never really challenged what I was taught until I
01:03:44
left it and I actually started being challenged on the assumptions that I had just been freely given not freely it was
01:03:51
you know had to take out student Lo to get them in University and um yeah it's
01:03:56
been it's been a wild ride it's been good I think I think I've grown a lot
01:04:00
and um yeah I would just say I know I totally took a long T man I'm sorry but
01:04:07
no that's that's good you were going you you were inting you hit the flow and you
01:04:12
were like I gotta ride it no I think I think what you're saying is is very no
01:04:17
it's very important because one of the things like college shook me too with
01:04:23
that concept of like I felt felt like I I had a religion class one of my first semesters of college he comes in the
01:04:31
class he's sitting us down he's asking us questions the very boilerplate Christian questions of like
01:04:38
do you believe in s-day creationism do you believe that Noah Arc is a was a reality right or is it a parable these
01:04:45
types of questions right and I'm sitting there giving my cookie cutter answers of
01:04:49
going well yeah 7-Day creationism duh 24 hours 7 days a week duh who it question
01:04:56
that I also went to a Christian college so I was still of that mindset that I'm
01:05:00
inside of a bubble and I was inside of a bubble a little bit of a bigger bubble but but everyone here agrees with my
01:05:07
thinking my rationale here and so so I start to do these start to say these things in class and he goes but why but
01:05:15
why it was like an annoying toddler kind of ask you know proding their parent but
01:05:19
why why are we doing this why are we making and I couldn't answer it and it yeah to your point it's like it sends
01:05:25
you down the spiral of like do do I either just go with whatever's next right this next belief
01:05:32
system that someone lays out for me or sense in the moment right or do I sit down and do my research to say I'm gonna
01:05:41
read these other religions I'm going to read these other works of um you know
01:05:46
scientists and artists and all these things of like these ideas and start to develop what I actually personally
01:05:52
believe and build that backbone and that Foundation that then your life can be built on and like that was tough dude
01:05:59
that was like it changes you because you start to go into spiral mode really easily where it's like it becomes so
01:06:07
easy to just be like well I'm just going to go along with what everybody else
01:06:10
does because I felt like I had done that the whole my whole life right so it's like
01:06:15
it's just the easy route to just continue to do that and it's like that yeah that's I don't know we're we're
01:06:21
supposed to create our own belief system based off of critical thinking right based off of our own research and it's
01:06:29
okay to disagree it's great have conversations please do you know and respectful conversations with one
01:06:35
another because that's that's where we get lost a lot of times to think is you
01:06:40
don't agree with me you're written off as you don't agree with me you know and
01:06:43
it's like and things get really heated because I think it's really it's really
01:06:48
scary I mean I can say to speak of this from my own experience it's really scary
01:06:51
to have your belief system really core level it's really scary to possibly be
01:06:56
wrong yeah and um not even realizing that in the moment but like at a really deep level you do realize oh man I don't
01:07:03
know the answer to that question [ __ ] um and but you don't have time to do that
01:07:08
in a conversation so barring a really good conversation with people who have open
01:07:15
minds are willing to concede that they don't know something things can get really heated really quick I mean we see
01:07:21
that United States of America 2024 yeah don't need any example you just turn on
01:07:26
the news but like um yeah I think I mean I yeah I it's just like there's
01:07:37
reality is definable and like you can follow the questions and the path to understand to get a closer understanding
01:07:47
of that I'm not saying that I can leave people to that I'm not saying that I can
01:07:51
even do that myself but the important thing is just really asking yourself Hest questions and seeking honest
01:07:57
answers um it doesn't even have to come from it absolutely doesn't have to come
01:08:01
from a chistian perspective it can come from a completely a religious perspective but
01:08:06
reality is real and if you're seeking you're going to find things I mean hey
01:08:11
that's to you know to bring It full circle that's how I came to the realization that Bigfoot is real so John
01:08:17
this has been fantastic it's been great to catch up with you and um I yeah before we wrap cuz I feel like we could
01:08:25
go for another two hours um but um is there before yeah before we go is there anything you want to leave
01:08:33
the people with anything that's popped in the brain of like oh shoot we didn't
01:08:37
touch on this but if not we can always do a part two if if new thoughts arise I just say you know I spent a lot
01:08:44
of time just trying to be the cool guy and just trying to live live I would say a lot of the experiences that I had were
01:08:50
kind of like synthetic almost there's a lot of genuine stuff there's a lot of
01:08:53
good stuff but I really didn't start learning anything about myself until I met people who weren't afraid to
01:09:06
call [ __ ] on things and challenge my assumptions and challenge me um and I think that's something we didn't get a
01:09:15
whole lot of growing up I don't think many people do so I'm not just putting
01:09:19
that pin in you know the GRE up in particular I think that's really important for everyone to have and not a
01:09:24
lot of people get so I mean I just say I'm really happy with the way I grew up for the most part
01:09:30
because obviously things that be done better but that's just life baby um and just challenge yourself challenge
01:09:37
your assumptions and um yeah you know it's sad I see a lot of lonely people out here these days and
01:09:47
specifically in the society you know a lot of a lot of Lely dudes a lot of Lely ladies meet each other go out get
01:09:54
married have a family have kids it's awesome it doesn't matter if you're poor
01:10:00
or you're broke dude having a family is the best thing that has ever happened to
01:10:07
me it's great that's glad I'm glad to hear that yeah and yeah just to put a bow on
01:10:16
everything too is like I I have been practicing this this year 2024 I made kind of a promise to myself that when
01:10:24
people come to mind I do my best to reach out to them because I think it's the universe's way
01:10:29
of if someone Pops in my brain whether it's I saw them post something on Facebook or whether I had a memory of
01:10:36
them or whatnot it it's a reminder to reach out to that person and say hello and so I
01:10:42
encourage people to do this is like this week if someone comes to your mind whether it's your mom your sister your
01:10:47
brother some distant friend that you haven't talked to in a decade uh like John and I haven't talked to each other
01:10:53
in forever like reach out to them say hello ask them how they're doing listen
01:10:58
to what they got to say and just be there for them you know and let them know that they're being heard with no
01:11:02
expectation back that they're going to give you anything but just let them know
01:11:05
that you're thinking of them and uh yeah with that dude this has been awesome uh
01:11:12
man I would love to have you back sometime because this has been a great conversation and I appreciate you being
01:11:17
vulnerable and open and um yeah yeah talking about it sweet well this has been the ex homeschoolers Club
01:11:25
and uh you know it's it's cool to go deep I'm very excited with the direction that the show
01:11:32
is going and uh if you're enjoying it I would love for you to hit that subscribe
01:11:36
hit a follow five star it if you think it's worth it um all of the things worth
01:11:42
all of the things um that you know how to do if you've got questions or you want to chat with me there's two ways
01:11:48
you can do it you can either email me at exhs [email protected] uh that'll be linked
01:11:54
in the show notes or you can reach out to me on Instagram again it's exhs Club
01:12:00
um on all the social platforms and uh yeah my DMs are open so uh yeah this has been great reach out if you've got
01:12:08
questions until next time we'll see you all right peace [Music] [Music]