Tag: masculine

10 Pieces Of Actionable Advice

Rob Says2 Comments

man in black short running on pavement road

I’ve been listening to a lot of different podcasts lately, and I’ve been watching a few different videos on YouTube when I get a chance. Honestly, I don’t nearly consume as much as I used to. Becoming a producer of content is far more gratifying and takes up far more time than consuming. You have to be active to be a producer. All you have to do to consume is click a button and sit there.

Which brings me to what the subject line of today’s post is about:

10 Pieces Of Actionable Advice:

  1. Get and stay focused. Stay on task for more than a few minutes. I know that’s hard for you in today’s day and age of dopamine hits and instant gratification, but if you want to accomplish anything, and I mean anything, in your life, you need to stay focused. Stop chasing the next dopamine hit. Watch the video for more than ten fucking seconds. Clear the fog from your ritalin addled, ADD head and stay on track.
  2. Stop asking other men to tell you what to do. This is a big one. Maybe the biggest one of all. Like I said at the beginning of this article, I’ve been listening to a lot of different podcasts lately. In one of them, the host does a Q and A session on each episode. His thoughts and his advice are great even though they are a little bit simplistic. What I noticed though is that his audience is almost entirely made of men, young men if I had to guess, and while they asked all sorts of questions across a wide range of subjects, there was a common theme to them all: “What should I do? Tell me what I should do.” If you ever want to have control over your life, if you ever want to become a leader of Men, you need to stop asking other Men what you should do. Too many men today are either completely clueless and stupid, or lazy, if I had to guess. You’re a fat piece of shit? You know what to do. Get off your ass and go for a walk. Cut down on the amount of food you consume. Eat healthier. Stop worrying about “doing it right.” Stop trying to be a perfectionist. Just fucking do it. Stop looking for someone else to hold your hand. Take a risk.
  3.  Do the work. Stop being lazy and/or entitled. Google the information yourself. Do some of the heavy lifting for once in your life. Look it up yourself. No one is your “dancing monkey,” so stop expecting them to do the work for you. Stop with the expectation that someone else will do it for you. They won’t.
  4. Stop being a perfectionist. Doing it, whatever it is, is better than not doing it, even if it isn’t perfect. When you wait until everything is “just right,” when everything is perfect, guess what happens? Nothing. You’ll never get moving. You’ll never start. You’ll never go anywhere. Why is that? Because perfect doesn’t exist except for in your head. You’ll always find some reason or excuse to not execute, to not start. Look for a reason to not do something and you’ll always find it. Always. Better to have something out there, even if it’s flawed than not have something out there at all.
  5. Stop consuming media that isn’t intended for you. Women write to and for other women, not to men. Don’t get caught up in the outrage, it’s just a distraction meant to keep you off-balance. It’s meant to cause you anxiety, distress, you name it. When that happens you can’t think straight and the usual way that we’ve been conditioned to get rid of this anxiety is to buy something. Outrage is meant get your business, nothing more. By clicking on a link, you are giving your business. You are enticed to subscribe, to sign up, to buy. The outrage is intentional in this aspect. It’s meant to get you to open up your wallet. Don’t buy into it. In the past, Men’s affairs were in the public domain while women’s affairs were in the private domain. They were separate. Now it’s all public. Stay away from media that wasn’t intended for you as a Man. The affairs of women shouldn’t concern you. Let them sort it out. Sort out your own shit.
  6. When you’ve exhausted all of your options, it’s okay to ask for help. Ask specific questions, ie. which strength training program is better for long term gains? vs. What should I do now? Do the initial work first, then ask for help when you hit a wall or get stuck.
  7. When asking for help, what do you have to give in exchange? Money? Knowledge? Labor? A skill? What value do you offer to the person you are asking the question? Their time, knowledge, and experience is valuable too.
  8. When you ask and you receive, do something with what you are given! Otherwise you are just an askhole.
  9. Manners are important. Don’t be a fuck when asking for help. Don’t demand.
  10. Stop looking for magic formulas, short cuts and hacks. There aren’t any. You have to do the work. You have to do the heavy lifting. It’s going to take time and effort. Think work in progress and think long game. Stop with the immediate gratification and dopamine hits.

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Something My Mother Once Called Me..

Rob Says6 Comments

red lighted candle

March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day was exactly 6 months to the day since my Mother died. I went over to my Dad’s house and had home-made corned beef and cabbage. He did a really good job with the corned beef. We talked about Mom for a bit. For me, some days, like that day, it felt like she had just died the day before. Other days for me, it’s like it has been years since she passed.

Not so for my Father. From what he told me, every day is like she had just died. I don’t fully comprehend it but I do think I understand what he’s getting at to a degree. You see, I knew my Mom my whole life of 46 years at the time, but I didn’t spend my whole life with her. In all honesty, the last decade or so, I limited my interactions with her because she would still try and tell me what I should do and how to live my life. I don’t have time for that shit.

My Father on the other hand, spent close to 50 years with that woman. I don’t know how he did it. He was and is, a greater Man than me. I couldn’t have done it for that long. Their relationship wasn’t exactly love falling off the apricot tree or something like that. In some ways, theirs was a relationship of convenience. Practical yes, not very romantic though. Oh I’m sure there were moments, especially when they were younger that love and romance was in the air, but time always marches on.

I’m not writing this to stroll down memory lane, at least not theirs. I’m writing it because of something my Mom said to me, about me many years ago. It’s been something that I haven’t thought about in a long, long time. Something she called me.

Allow me to humor you with a backstory first. Don’t worry Dear Reader, I’ll get to the point and hopefully quickly. I know you’ve got other articles to not read and pictures of thots and food to look at on Instagram…

So the story begins when I was back in college. I was a senior, so this was 1993-1994. My Mother had a co-worker at the time who had a daughter who was enrolling at the same college that I was attending. Now this young woman had something that not just everybody had at the time. She had a stalker. I guess this guy had been stalking her for years. She would find footprints outside her window, every time she changed her phone number, he would somehow find out what the new number was and the heavy breathing calls and whatnot would continue. I guess this shit went on for years. Now in order to hopefully circumvent this guy, she was coming to the school I was attending, but under a pseudoname. Nobody except for the Dean and the campus police knew who she actually was. Well, I knew as well because this young woman told me about this stalker and told me her real name as well as her fake name that she was traveling under.

Anyways, the mother of this young woman was a very religious woman and had led a very sheltered life. When she found out through my Mother that her daughter would be attending the same school as I was, she got all excited and had a moment of fantasy where she thought that it would be magnificent and wonderful if I and her daughter would happen to start dating, fall in love, and ultimately get married. It’s a wonderful fantasy, but a fantasy is all it was. My Mother put the brakes on that in a hurry.

“Oh Kitty, you haven’t met my son. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good kid, but he, well…He tends to corrupt people.”

I shit you not, that’s what she said to the mother of this young woman. She then came home and told me what she had said. I was like, “Gee, thanks Mom. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Don’t get me wrong Rob, you’re a good kid, but you do have this tendency to corrupt the people that you are around. I know you like to party on occasion, and I know that when you have guests over, you like to make them feel comfortable. You are a very good host. You never force anything on anyone, but you always ask them if they would like something. You always offer whatever is on hand, and you make it really easy to say yes to whatever it is you are doing.”

All of this is true. I do make it easy to go along with whatever it is that I’m doing. Would you like a drink? No? That’s okay. No problem. If you change your mind, just let me know okay? I’ve got one right over here for you if you want it.

How about now? Want that drink? No? No worries. Just let me know if you change your mind, I can whip you up something really yummy, really quick. It’s not a problem, honest. I used to tend bar so making drinks is my speciality. You sure you don’t want one? I’ve got this great one that is really tasty and you can’t even taste the alcohol. It’s quite the hit at the bar, I came up with it myself.

And if you don’t want it, you don’t want it, no problem, no pressure, no worries. More for me. And I let it go at that. 9 out of 10 times I would have you drinking with me within the hour.

So I was the Corruptor according to my Mom. I was good at it too. Still am. And not just with drinking. With a lot of stuff actually. But hey, if you don’t want to do it, that’s cool. No problem. Honestly I don’t give a shit if you do what I’m doing or not, I just don’t want you to feel left out is all. I just want you to enjoy yourself as much, or even more than I’m enjoying myself, and I enjoy shit a lot.

Initially when my Mom told me what she had told this young woman’s mother about me, I was a little butt hurt. Jesus, you would think that your own Mother would have good things to say about you, which in all honesty, my Mother did. She was realistic though. She was never one of those mother’s that said, “Oh my kid would never do that.” She was always of the opinion when somebody asked her if she thought I was capable of something, she was always like, “Well, I would hope I raised him better than that, but I wouldn’t say for sure that he wasn’t capable of it.”

She knew me well enough to know that I’m capable of a lot. Good, bad, and ugly.

So on March 17th, six months to the day since my Mom died, I heard her voice in my head, and it was this story about me being the Corruptor, that showed up. It brought a smile to my face and I won’t lie, it brought a couple of tears to my eyes.

I miss you Mom.

Oh, in case you were wondering:

That stalker? He got caught later that year. Turns out he was the young woman’s boss that she had been working for since she was 16 or so. Guy was married and had a young baby. He went to jail and I don’t remember if he ended up going to prison or not. He lost his marriage and custody of his child over the whole ordeal though.

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Biology Doesn’t Care

Rob Says9 Comments
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30 Year Old Co-worker, Ray Mangum

Biology doesn’t care about “Body Positivity.”

Biology doesn’t care that “Big is Beautiful.”

Biology doesn’t care that “Fat is Where It Is At.” Or what ever other nonsense that is being spouted.

Even though we as people are living longer lives compared to our predecessors thanks to modern medicine, health care (cough) and science, just who, exactly, is living longer at the moment?

The Baby Boomers, that’s who. My Father.

Boomers for the most part haven’t always had a shit diet. But many millennial’s do.

Have you seen the kids today?

When I was a kid, I can tell you how many kids there were in my elementary school, junior high (middle school) and high school that were were what we can classify as morbidly obese. There were 2.

And yes, both of them actually had glandular problems.

I can’t even begin to imagine how many kids there are today in today’s school systems that would be classified as morbidly obese. (For all you stat guys and number crunchers, let me know. I’ll admit, I’m too fucking lazy to look it up.)

Lot’s of teens and early twenty somethings out there with way too much weight going on.

Here’s my prediction followed by a personal anecdote:

Life expectancy for the Boomers will carry on as we are basically seeing at the moment.

Gen Xer’s (Me included) will have a mixed bag when it comes to life expectancy. Some will live longer than what has been in the past, even giving the Boomers a run for their money. The other half? Shorter life spans. Maybe what was the average about 10 years ago or so. Maybe even less.

The Millennial’s?

At least the ones that are obese and morbidly obese? Shorter life spans than the Gen Xer’s.

I think you’re going to see a “crisis” here in the near future. Like in the next 10 years.

These young fatties are going to be dropping like flies.

Dying by the time they hit 40. If they’re lucky.

I’m thinking that it’s totally possible, and even probable in many cases, that they’ll be hitting the grave in their 30’s.

Here’s my personal anecdote:

Several years ago, I knew a guy by the name of Ray Mangum. Nice guy. Young guy.

The dude was about 6’1 and at his heaviest, he weighed almost 450 pounds.

He started losing weight and according to him, his doctor highly recommended it.

It’s too bad though. Ray didn’t get to finish losing the weight that he so desperately needed to lose.

On a Saturday night, he died from a massive heart attack.

Ray was only 30 years old.

I wasn’t shocked about his death. I had thought to myself, “Here’s a guy who if he doesn’t lose weight and change his lifestyle, will be dead by 40 or so.”

The shock was how young he was. 30. In fact, he had just turned 30 only a couple of months before his death.

Biology doesn’t care about “Body Positivity.”

We’ll see how this whole thing plays out in the next decade or so.

Guys, if you need to work on your weight, now’s the time.

Do it before it’s too late.

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