April 22, 2024 • 42 mins
TAM & I focused on some articles that were as vulnerable, but not as hard-hitting as some in the past. I wouldn't necessarily call it 'vulnerability light," but maybe 'vulnerability with less of an edge.'
We started with a witty use of perspective written by Kendra Sparkles and then found ourselves reading a deep-dive into one mother's acceptance. Our ending article was a true celebration of her unapologetic choices for her life.
It truly was a bit lighter of a ride and we found smiles while discussing all three.
For more about writing with vulnerability, visit themonsteralley.com. You can find all these writers (and us) on Medium.com!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, I'm Tam.
(00:02):
And I'm Eternally Mortal.
And this is the Hidden Egg Podcast where we talk about vulnerability.
And stuff.
And things.
And things.
And maybe sometimes thunder since that might be coming through on the mic, I'm not sure.
I can't hear it through your mic, but I can hear it through the outside.
Yeah, we're in a potentially a tiny bit of a storm.
(00:22):
I'm going to take a little peek out my window.
Yeah, it's not green, so we're fine.
Yeah, we're probably good.
The wind isn't really blowing.
We live in the Midwest, so if the sky is a greenish color, then we'll probably still
do the podcast because you know what?
Tornadoes don't come here.
But it could, and we could die.
We have a huge tree that keeps losing these giant, like, thousand pound branches in our
(00:44):
yard.
It's fun.
Yeah.
Fun times.
Yeah, it's a good old tree.
Got to be like a billion years old at least.
I think.
At least one billion.
I think they said that it's at least 100 years old.
It might be like 150 based on the type of the tree that I don't remember.
Even more than a billion then.
(01:04):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
So anyway, we have quite a few different things to talk about today.
We're going to do the shout outs first, right?
Yep.
We in season five talk about articles that we've come across that have vulnerability
(01:26):
that we'd like to talk about, and we have a couple of shout outs to begin with.
Bang, bang.
Yeah, I heard that.
Thunder.
So I'm actually going to do them in a different order than I have them here because I want
to shout out to Ute's stuff first.
Because we have actually two articles that we really enjoyed reading from Ute.
(01:48):
I really hope that I'm saying her name right.
Her name Ute Lupperts?
I could be wrong.
You're getting Ute correct according to search.
Okay, apparently I'm getting Ute correct.
And she had this one article owed to Leela.
Leela?
Leela probably.
I don't know what's wrong with my pronunciation right now.
(02:09):
I meant to say Leela and then it went Leela.
I don't know.
You're probably trying too hard.
It's okay.
But yeah, it's about a pet that she ended up getting for a while.
And it's just really sweet.
It is vulnerable, but it just didn't quite fit the vibe.
(02:33):
Yeah, we kind of had a vibe going that this one didn't super fit into, but we wanted to
shout it out because it was really sweet.
I definitely had a few tears at the end of it.
Just real quick, back up a little bit.
I did say season five and it is currently season four.
My apologies.
Thank you, Sturge.
You're awesome.
I didn't even catch that.
(02:55):
That's why we have a Sturge.
But yeah, the article was cute and delightful.
I loved it.
There was a lot of Ute in the article.
You could tell that she put her heart into it and I really enjoyed it.
I agree.
I agree.
I highly recommend that people go read it.
(03:16):
There was also another one by Ute that she did just yesterday that we didn't see when
we were going over the stuff.
And it's a poem anyway.
We don't really do poems, but I thought it was really uplifting and I read it.
It's a minute long, but it really lifted me up for the day.
So I kind of just wanted to call that out.
(03:38):
You can see it in the video, but for our listeners, it's called What is a Blessing to Me?
I am counting all the ways, even if I don't understand it.
And it's just very, very cute.
It inspires, well, for me, I can't say for everybody, but for me, it inspired me to think
about what I consider blessings.
So well crafted.
(04:00):
And then our last shout out is an article that Sturge wrote that we didn't, we're not
talking about it directly, but it single handedly found all the other three in the recommended
thing afterwards.
And I don't know if that's because the topic of the article just generated really good
(04:25):
must reads or what do they call them?
Suggested reads?
Recommended.
Recommended.
But I'm going to say that it had something to do with it.
The article itself is good too.
The article is good.
The article is titled The Personal Development This or That Challenge or Writing Challenge
that Makes Me Think About My Choices in Certain Situations.
(04:46):
And you can tell already from the title that it's going to be getting into who Sturge is
and Sturge did a really good job of showing who he is as a person and what he's gone through
and how it shaped him in a certain regard.
And it's 10 questions.
You can do challenges on your own if you're a medium writer.
If I was writing at the moment, I might be interested myself.
(05:08):
But yeah, thanks for writing some good shit Sturge.
I'll be honest.
So I don't know that like we didn't really want to talk about challenge type stuff on
the podcast, at least not today.
But I am thinking about doing this challenge because of reading Sturge's answers.
(05:28):
I'm like, you know, I've been having trouble getting back into writing after all of the
health problems in the past few weeks.
And this seemed like a really fun sort of challenge prompt thing.
So yeah, I'm going to kind of say the same thing you already said.
But like the way that we because we're starting to try and collaborate a little bit more together
(05:51):
on what articles are picking.
And maybe theme them a little bit if we can.
And we just kind of started with the stuff that you all have been sharing in the self
promo channel and like then looking at the recommended from that and seeing just what
we found.
And like everyone that we decided to fit the theme we were kind of looking at were recommended
(06:13):
from Sturge's article.
And then just a quick shout out, we did see a couple of years, but they were so targeted
towards specific media that it just didn't seem to fit.
But they were and I didn't read Game of Thrones ones, Game of Thrones one at all, because
like I don't want the spoilers.
But we did check we did we did have yours up in the lineup as well.
(06:34):
Yeah, Ben, you're an amazing writer, but you get really highly focused on on your topics,
which is great.
But sometimes it doesn't really work out to find the vulnerability in here.
I'm here for Game of Thrones.
I would love some Game of Thrones.
Gay of Thrones.
(06:55):
OK.
Moving on.
Right moving on.
OK, so gay.
I don't want to make that gay.
There it is.
I don't remember what episode that was, but.
(07:15):
Oh, is that Community again?
I think it is.
Certainly looks like a classroom.
Yeah, I thought it was Community.
You know, I don't think we saw that one.
Yeah, we might have to check it out.
So Ben was talking about there's apparently a piece about Floridians being terrorized
(07:37):
by people in dinosaur costumes and that that's kind of vulnerability adjacent.
So we'll kind of shout out to that one.
I don't know what it is.
But if if hey, Ben, if you want to put your link in the description, I will put it in
the articles.
I already mentioned it.
I might as well.
It might have been a troll.
Don't make me dig for it, Ben.
(07:59):
Just give me the give me the link.
It's fine.
It's fine.
Just give me the link.
Well, I mean, we'll read it regardless of whether we decide to read it.
So yeah, anyway.
So the first article.
So the first article is by Kendra Sparkles and it's titled I almost abandoned a crying
(08:20):
baby at the zoo, but I sold her on Facebook Marketplace instead, which the title is just
just chef's kiss.
Love this.
Such a WTF like what?
And so like we were compelled to check it out and read it.
(08:42):
I'm pretty sure we got most of the way through and you still thought that she was talking
about a baby.
I completely forgot about the whole Facebook Marketplace by the time I was like two paragraphs
in.
I have no, you know, subject awareness.
No, wait, what's it called when you remember things from the very recent situational awareness?
That's not even applicable.
(09:02):
Whatever.
You know what I mean?
Object permanence, some sort of mixture of all of that.
And so I completely forgot about the whole Facebook Marketplace thing.
But your face through the whole thing was kind of like scrunched up like in disbelief.
So should we kind of I don't want to give it away because like it really made it an
experience for me, but it was really interesting.
(09:25):
But it was really entertaining and she goes through her experience at the zoo with this
crying baby and the parent of the crying baby and just just kind of discussing how
being responsible for the child of a negligent parent was was really getting on her nerves
(09:51):
a lot.
And it was it had a it had a very special kind of vulnerability.
And this one this one was right after you and I had discussed the theme that we wanted
to try to do with this episode.
And we haven't really talked about that theme.
And the theme is things that are vulnerable, but not necessarily like tragic and traumatizing.
(10:13):
Right.
There's not that we're going to focus on it every time or anything, but for this one,
we were kind of looking for that whole I'm sharing my experience, I'm sharing how I felt
and experienced the experience, what it was like through my eyes, but the not like hyper
focusing on the negative bits.
A lot of times being vulnerable is really getting into the trauma of what you've gone
(10:36):
through.
And sometimes it's just sharing the experience that you had and also the emotions within
and also emotions within Jesus Christ.
Did you hear that?
God is mad at us.
I don't know if that came through the microphone, but I felt it.
(10:56):
It went crack and like went through my soul.
I am so sorry.
That was scary as hell.
What were you saying?
I'm so sorry.
No, it's okay.
What was I?
Oh, no, just about like being able to, you know, sometimes being vulnerable is getting
into the trauma of what you've been through and being able to share that trauma and everything
(11:19):
like that.
And sometimes it's just sharing an experience and our emotions through that experience,
you know, the way that we feel.
Right.
And this article just made me feel a whole bunch of things.
Whole bunch of things.
But by the end, it was a positive experience.
(11:43):
Once you get to the twist, you look back at it and you're like, oh, and it becomes like
this kind of humorous, enjoyable experience in hindsight of just being able to see how
you wrangled the perspective in such a way that made the adventure that much more appealing.
(12:05):
Right.
Exactly.
Like almost, we're almost spoiling it even by saying that, which is, you know, a little
funny now that I think about us deciding to pick this article.
It was a good article though.
But I do want to describe the article ultimately as wholesome.
Yeah, I agree.
(12:26):
I believe it is quite a wholesome article.
The sky's a little green, just letting you know.
Oh, good.
So moving on to the next one.
And this is in place of what we usually have as the abuse article that we put in the middle
(12:47):
of our podcast segments.
This one is by Deanna Bugalski.
Probably Bugalski, but you know, we're probably going to butcher her pronunciation.
So sorry.
So it's called When Boys Won't Be Boys, a New Perspective on Masculinity, Shattering
Stereotypes and Embracing New Ideals.
(13:10):
And this one, instead of it being an example of what abuse looks like, I really enjoyed
this one because it showed what to do instead.
It was almost the opposite of abuse.
It was almost like the response, not like it actually is, but like it's like what I
(13:33):
think a good response to abuse is in a certain regard.
Because okay, so to get into it just a little bit, the article is about her son.
I can go that far, right?
I can say these things.
It's okay.
I feel like we can go pretty in depth with this one because the title kind of says a
(13:53):
lot about it.
I don't want to go into the details of it, but her son isn't your typical little boy
like that you think of.
Well, yeah.
And like, you know, she gets into what the stereotypical boy that's super into sports
and roughhousing and wrestling and one-upping each other and that whole thing and how her
(14:16):
son just is not any of those things and is these other things instead.
And how much she appreciates and sees, just is aware of these other aspects of her son
that makes him not only unique, but kind of amazing.
(14:36):
Now in the interest of vulnerability, do you mind going into some of the stuff that you
talked to me about yesterday of your response, your reaction, your vulnerability in regard
to this article?
No, I don't mind.
I'll go into it.
I was going to ask even actually because you know, it is.
So she's writing this article about her nine year old son, I believe nine at the time of
(15:04):
writing.
I believe so.
And so everyone that knows me now, very, very few people know who I was when I was that
age.
But when I read through all of this, like 90% of it is me as a kid.
Like so much of it is exactly what I was doing.
(15:24):
Like there's a lot of, you know, trying out sports to see what it's like being interested
in the technical and skill aspect of it.
But as soon as it comes to like trying to one up other people, just not into it.
And that's my take on it.
I don't think that that was expressly put into the article.
It's just that that was my experience.
And she did talk about how he liked playing sports in the sense of gaining the skills.
(15:52):
But when it came to competition, her son just wasn't into that.
And so it sounds kind of parallel to me.
Yeah, because competition has always been something that I've never really been terribly
interested in.
You will throw a game in somebody else's favor just to avoid a certain level of competition.
I've worked really hard to throw games in such a way that it wasn't noticeable so that
(16:16):
the other person would genuinely feel the feeling of winning.
Let's just point out how much skill you have to have in order to purposefully lose.
That's actually harder than you think.
Well, not you, but like it's harder than most people would think.
Yeah, it does take some effort to do.
(16:37):
I was especially good at a Madden football in 2005.
You almost didn't want to talk about this article because it almost upset you.
It just hit really, really, really deep in me.
And I'm going to go into why, but I'm going to feel bad if anybody that I'm talking about
(16:59):
actually does hear this at some point in the future.
But reading it got me the closest I've ever been to reading about the mentality or the
personality of what I would say is a kindred spirit.
I don't mean a lover's sort of thing, just a person that has the same resonance as my
(17:22):
soul.
You know what I mean?
Right.
But what really, really hit me about this article was the fact that his mom is so caring
and observant that she can notice these things and write about these things and celebrate
these things.
(17:42):
And that was really what I would have wanted when I was growing up myself, was somebody
to see all the ways and the things that I did stuff.
Do you want to draw a little bit of parallels to what would the wrong way be?
(18:05):
What would the wrong way look like?
No, I'm not quite making that connection.
What do you mean?
Well, because we're talking about this is what we both agree.
This is the right way to look at the situation, to celebrate your child the way they are.
What's the wrong way?
(18:25):
Because it sounds a little bit like you've had some of the wrong way in your life to
compare to.
The obvious wrong way is the pushing, is the trying to mold your child into something that
you want instead of realizing that your child is a whole ass separate person that gets to
be whoever they want to be because they're just as deserving, I guess you could say,
(18:51):
of autonomy as you are as the parent.
Right.
So forcing your child into any box is going to be bad, in my opinion.
That's kind of why I put this in the abuse slot because to me, abuse happens from people
trying to control other people and that can happen parent to child as well.
I think it does happen a lot, parent to child.
(19:11):
I think it does too.
We just don't see it as that.
I think it's happening less and I think that there's a pendulum effect to it to where in
the past 10 to 15 years, there's been a lot of child taking away the autonomy of parents.
Yeah, that's also true.
There's a little bit of a pendulum effect in there.
(19:33):
I want to come back to the chat because I was just trying to make sure that you got
out the things that we had sort of discussed yesterday before moving on to what Sturge
was saying, but Sturge has been saying some stuff in the comments.
Certainly he also identifies with not really being into the stereotypical boy stuff, although
he also sort of was into it as well in probably another unique way.
(20:01):
Yeah.
Your approach to competition is maddening to him.
Yeah, and I will expound a little bit further on that because there was a time in my early
20s when I was getting high every day and going over to a buddy's house and we would
play fighting games.
We would play Tekken and Soul Calibur and another game that I can't remember the name
(20:22):
of.
Crystal?
GEM?
There was something, I can't remember the name of it.
My buddy Dragon, I just knew him well enough to know that he just wanted to play the game.
He was never angry at me or at the game or even at himself when he lost.
He was genuinely interested in the skill of the game and if it didn't work out for him
(20:45):
or if it janked him into bad places, he was never upset with the people around him.
So I learned that when I played with him was the only time I ever felt free to really try
my best and that was the only time that I've ever played Soul Calibur or Tekken again.
Well, I don't know, you and I played some, Liz.
(21:07):
I might have tried against you too because I forgot that you and I had played that Soul
Calibur a little bit, didn't we?
Yeah, we played Soul Calibur but we played a lot of the Mortal Kombat.
Oh yeah, the Mortal Kombat, that's right.
Deception, is that what it was called?
I think so.
The one with all the mini games because I loved the mini games.
Yeah.
I guess I used to do that with one of my friends as well.
(21:30):
We just kind of sit and play those because it was really fun.
But you did used to throw the game with me and I started picking up on like, why are
you doing these things?
Why are you losing all of a sudden in stupid ways?
And then eventually that led to you explaining that that's just sort of something that you
(21:53):
do.
And I was like, well, don't do that anymore.
If I'm going to lose, I want to lose.
Right.
If it pisses me off and that upsets you, that's a discussion we need to have.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think we've had that discussion a couple of times.
We played a lot of video games together over the years.
I'm not nearly as sore of a loser as I used to be.
(22:16):
Right.
It's not a big deal anymore.
You've definitely mellowed out in the same way that Sturge has, I would say, probably.
Not knowing Sturge is a competitive Sturriot.
I agree, Sturge.
It's still there a little for me too.
I mean, I still get a little bit of a competitive spirit every once in a while, but I just,
I don't have the experience of that being outwardly projected.
(22:39):
It's always that I didn't hit the buttons in the right way or I didn't take into account
the strategy the right way or something like that.
For me, it's like when it comes out, when it comes out and it's obvious, it's usually
because the other person or at least one of the other people, their skill level is so
much higher than mine.
(23:00):
It doesn't feel fair for me to be playing at the same level as them to begin with.
I should have been given a handicap.
Sure.
That makes sense.
Absolutely.
We kind of got a little off topic here.
Yeah, a little off topic, but competition is a big deal, especially in the Midwest, but
it's a big deal in America in general.
(23:23):
That really kind of shows Scrabblego, high skill player, heck yeah.
It does kind of go to show what Deanna's article really pulls out of people because whether
you grew up AFAB or AMAB, you're going to have some experience with the prototypical
boy upbringing, especially if you're talking about sometime between the 80s and the 2000s
(23:47):
or maybe the 70s and the 2000s.
We talked about all that spawned from this article.
Yeah, it did.
It went so many places.
If there's only one article that people will read out of this whole episode, I would suggest
this one because it really provides a unique perspective.
(24:12):
I know that there are people who have the perspective and that they've been louder about
it recently, but it's still kind of a new perspective on that kind of parenthood of
like, maybe my kid isn't as gender as their gender would suggest and maybe it's okay.
Yeah.
Maybe it's okay.
And honestly, I just really want to highlight how much she pays attention to her son, how
(24:38):
much she knows about who her son is.
I think that's a great thing to do for your loved ones.
Just know who they are.
I think that's probably the best gift you can possibly imagine from my perspective.
Agreed.
Okay, well, we'll move on to the last one.
They've all been pretty uplifting, to be honest.
(25:00):
I don't think any of these were really downtrodden, but this one's by Rachel A. Pfeffer.
I am so sorry if I've pronounced this incorrectly in any way, but the article is called I May
Be 60 and Single, but That Doesn't Mean I Want to Date You and Having to Explain Myself
is Exasperating.
(25:21):
Apparently, Sturge knows literally everybody.
Sturge has read literally all of the Medium writers.
He, for several weeks, was reading like 200 to 300 articles per day.
Wow.
I'm pretty sure he's read everybody who has ever written on Medium in the last three to
(25:41):
four years.
That's impressive.
I was once at a time where I had read every article on cracked.com and watched every video,
but that was many years ago, so I am impressed.
Yeah, it's exploded.
I could be exaggerating, but not as much as you would think.
(26:03):
Sturge is no joke.
He's just amazing.
He is very fast at reading.
Sometimes I'll send him something and he'll be like, oh, could you look over this?
And two minutes later, he's like, yeah, I looked over it.
Here's my feedback.
I'm like, how did you?
I just sent the link.
Heck yeah.
So, yeah, I'm not surprised at all that all of these writers are like, oh, I love that
(26:30):
writer.
I love that writer.
It just means that we have good taste.
It means we're doing pretty well.
I loathe the day that we bring somebody up and Sturge is like, I've read them.
That's not great.
Oh no.
Oh no.
So anyway, back to Rachel's article.
I particularly loved this and this article actually kind of sparked a slight disagreement
(26:54):
between us.
To an extent, yeah.
There was like just a bit that I was a little bit like I started to kind of get distracted
in the middle of the article and it was just happened to be one of the parts that you were
like really honed in on.
That's the tornado.
Yeah, I was I was just noticing that it's probably fine.
(27:19):
It's probably fine.
So if the recording cuts immediately, it cuts quickly, you all know what happened.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
This is fine.
It's the little dog within the fire room.
Yeah, fire.
Okay.
This is fine.
(27:40):
So Rachel in this article, like goes through so much vulnerability to be honest.
So much.
I forgot we were talking about our slight little conflict.
So let's give it a little.
No, we can start there because because it has to do with that.
Like she goes into the the drudges of her romantic life up to now, but like doesn't
(28:06):
go so deep into them that that it's traumatic.
Right.
Exactly.
And she covers like a couple of several decades of experience in this, not hyper detailed
about all of that stuff, but lets us know the the points that happened and why she feels
the way she feels.
And that's amazing.
(28:26):
You know, like being able to give that much perspective into it.
When I read this at the end, I was like this perfectly explains why she feels the way she
feels about that.
And I'm so happy that she's living her best life.
Like honestly.
You know, right.
Yeah.
But there was some points in there that you didn't quite identify with.
(28:48):
Yeah.
So there was some references to past relationships and I'm going to kind of called it the middle.
And there was some like really shitty stuff that happened to her.
And then there was some after after that, she talked about her ex-husbands because she
(29:10):
has two ex-husbands if I understood the article correctly.
And like the getting married part just kind of started to I just got a little distracted
basically.
I started to lose interest in a certain regard.
Not that it was poorly written or anything.
It's just I'm not really a marriage person.
And so it just didn't.
(29:34):
Am I explaining this right?
Can you help me?
Yeah.
It's just that there were some elements and you and I like when we were talking about
it, I mentioned that like maybe it's a gendered thing that like women tend to look at marriage
and security.
Security.
Yes.
Thank you.
The security of it in a different way.
(29:56):
We were more more more likely to notice the security aspects.
So like there was a point where she was talking about how she had rented out a condominium
or whatever or an apartment, I'm not sure, below where her husband lived.
And they technically lived in separate places, but like in the same building.
(30:18):
And that kind of lost you.
But like for me, it wasn't a lull at all.
I was like, oh, that's actually pretty smart.
I wish I could do something like that.
And I like we had this sort of like, well, from your perspective, and I'm sorry if I'm
putting words in your mouth, so correct me if I'm wrong.
It sounded like you read it as though it were like a flex about her wealth, whereas I was
(30:41):
like, well, you could you could amend that to just be in the same apartment building.
And it's not about the wealth.
It's about the separateness of the experience of being able to have your own place to go
back to and having the security of being with someone, but also not having to be with them
all the time.
And you and I had a slight disagreement about whether or not that was gendered.
(31:05):
Well, kind of to an extent.
Yeah, because my perspective on it was like, you know, the the the getting married, the
choosing a whole life partner thing in that regard was a little outside of my wheelhouse.
And then the because it was it wasn't just a condo.
It wasn't just like an apartment building or anything.
(31:26):
This was like, no, it looked like a mansion or something.
A large chateau that like her, I guess that that partner at the time was living in the
upstairs aspect of and she moved into the downstairs aspect of as a separate living
place, but still in this very nice place.
And I was the first thought when I saw that was like, not everybody can do that.
(31:52):
And of course, not everybody can do that.
Like, that's just my thought and where my mind took me and why my mind kind of turned
off a little bit within there.
Like, I don't I don't I definitely want to make it clear that like, I don't think that
she's bad for doing that.
She was living her best life.
She lived within her means and made the choices that she wanted to make to make herself as
comfortable and happy as she could.
That's great.
(32:13):
Yeah.
It just pointed out that like, even though it's vulnerable, it what's vulnerable to
one person doesn't always hit everybody.
That's kind of the point is it like your experiences and my experiences are different.
So the things that I relate to aren't going to over like some there's some overlap, but
(32:36):
it's not going to be a 100 percent overlap on the things that you relate to.
Right.
Absolutely.
And you did genuinely and and possibly accurately bring up that it's potentially just a gendered
experience because, you know, there are certainly like when we grew up as me, a little boy and
you as a little girl, like we're kind of shown different things.
(32:57):
We taught different things, but just shown different things and attention to.
That's why there's 55 year old men that are terrified of tampons.
So are there really no joke?
I'm kind of being an asshole.
OK, I was going to say, like, can you back that up?
Because I've never heard of this.
But I wouldn't be surprised with the world the way it is.
(33:18):
No, you're not Sturge.
Don't give me that.
And Sturge is trying to say he's terrified of tampons.
Don't lie.
Oh, also, I want to say Sturge said in chat, Mike and I will likely never get married even
though we would want to.
And I hope you do.
If that's what you guys want to do, I really do hope you get to have the experience that
makes you happy.
I'm not against marriage as a concept.
(33:39):
I just it doesn't spark with me.
It's not a thing that makes my heart flutter.
You've talked about not wanting to own a person.
And the idea of marriage feels too much like reducing the other person to property for
(33:59):
you.
Right.
And it's so easy for me to look at that and be like, I don't want people to think that
I'm saying that.
Right.
It's a perspective.
As a married couple.
Right.
I look at it and I'm like, I like the idea of being owned and then also owning the other
person.
It's like a shared experience.
We agree that we want to have some ownership over each other's, I guess, loyalty, fidelity.
(34:27):
Right.
But I can see from your perspective that, you know, you you're it's valid for you to
see it the way you see it.
I just don't have to see it that way myself.
Right.
Absolutely.
And you you have been totally open with that for all the people to like it's it's not like
(34:47):
you're all like, oh, no, this is my perspective.
I need everybody to understand and see it from this perspective.
It's just.
OK, so there's a gift that Sturge put on here of I don't even know how do you explain this
gift?
It's a dude in some army get up who takes a box of tampons out and then bites the top
(35:11):
off of it and throws it at his wife, presumably his wife.
Like it's a grenade.
And then yells grenade.
And then yells grenade.
It looks like an amazing tick tock, to be honest.
You know, it's probably just those supers, too.
You can tell because it's green, the green color on them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because, you know, they got they got to be color coded because they they often call them
(35:34):
different shit.
So like green is always super orange is super plus yellow is regular.
Yeah, you get used to that.
Oh, and before I'm called out for misinformation, I don't know if they're necessarily any 55
year old men that if you throw tampons at them, they're going to run away because they're
scared of them.
I just think that if you ask your 55 year old uncle to go pick up to go pick up tampons,
(36:00):
he's just going to immediately like, no, he's going to say no.
Or he's going to laugh at you or he's going to make fun of you or he's going to be mean
to you.
Ben was talking about the shapes video and I'm like, what shapes video?
The gif of the putting this the round peg into the square hole.
I get it now.
I don't.
OK, so I'll have to share it with you.
(36:21):
But there's there's a video where like it's this woman reacting to a video of a guy putting
stuff into a children's box like that.
Yeah, there it is.
There it is.
That's the video.
Click on the video.
If you well, maybe, maybe not right now, but like at some point it's I don't want to spoil
(36:44):
it because it's it hits in a certain way.
Anybody listening to this?
The video is in the chat.
I'll put it.
I'll put it on the the articles for this episode also.
So yeah, it's it's a great it's a great video.
I'm not going to lie.
(37:06):
You're not going to like it at first, but it it grows on you.
OK, well, I mean, I watched I watched some weird shit.
So you know, it makes sense.
You're right, though.
It does look like that girl, but I don't think it's the same girl.
I think it might be a different girl.
Yeah, I don't know if we said all the things about Rachel's article, but it it rounded
(37:27):
out incredibly nicely.
There was definitely stuff in the article that gained back my attention after I had
lost some of it.
And it is such a such a, you know, self empowering article from my perspective.
Agreed.
I do agree.
I love the way I can.
(37:48):
I concur.
I love the way that she goes through her basically her entire dating history without going into
the details in a traumatic way.
And then you end up at the end like, yeah, her freedom is is OK.
Like she doesn't need to be with a person if she's happy.
You just you just end up feeling really happy for and a little like frustrated that she
(38:10):
has to deal with people that don't believe her.
Right.
Exactly.
Because, of course, the article was spawned by a right.
But I think a lot of people out there think that if you're alone, then you must be miserable.
So one of the things one of the things that I found in one of my favorite YouTubers, what
(38:33):
is his name?
The speech professor.
That's what is his YouTube name is.
And one of the things that he was talking about in his podcast with some other woman
that I remember when her name was, was that like people think guys especially like guys
think that they are competing against like the top tier of guys for women's attention.
(38:59):
But that's not true.
What they're really competing against is the peace that they feel when they're alone.
The peace of women feel when they're alone, the peace of mind and tranquility that women
feel when they are completely alone and not in a relationship.
That is what you're competing against.
And that's kind of what she's she's like, I don't need it.
(39:19):
I don't there's no there's no joy in the relationship for me.
The peace that I get when I'm alone is all I want.
Exactly.
I've been trying to compete against that piece for like 25 years.
Trying to be the most chill motherfucker in the world.
You know what I mean?
You do pretty good.
You just need you just don't get out there.
(39:39):
Like that's your biggest problem.
You just don't get out there.
Yeah.
And by the way, Sturge, you are wrong.
It doesn't grow on you like the ending to Promising Young Women.
Do not watch that movie.
It's a well now I'm interested.
It's a it's it's it's a good movie for what it is.
But you don't go into it thinking you're going that you're going to enjoy the movie because
(40:04):
you'll get disappointed at the end.
There has never been a movie that goes deleted off the server faster than this movie.
We finished the movie and within five minutes he was already like I can delete this off
the server.
Right.
Understood.
Yeah.
(40:24):
I'll keep that in mind.
So you know, keep that in mind.
Understood.
I can't wait, honestly, because I sometimes also like disappointing media.
Yeah that's true.
That's true.
You might you might find that you enjoy it.
(40:44):
But we will have things to talk about after you watch it.
Probably.
So anyway, that's that's that's the lineup of articles.
I think this is a pretty short episode, but we've been kind of both recovering from pretty
hectic and draining weeks.
So I think that's probably all we got for today.
(41:07):
Do you have any final thoughts you want to share before we end the episode?
No, I don't think so.
I hope that everybody enjoyed the non-traumatic vulnerability.
We tried really hard.
I go really in deep in depth with things like vulnerability to me starts where most people
(41:27):
stop being vulnerable.
So trying to find things that are vulnerable, but aren't like heavy hitters for me is kind
of a big task.
So I hope that it I hope that we were able to get the effect that we were looking for
out of it.
Yeah, I hope so, too.
(41:50):
Well eternally mortal.
Thanks for stopping by.
We appreciate your time and attention.
I hope you find smiles this day.
And I'm the accidental monster.
You can find us both on medium.com.
Check the monster alley.com website out.
It is the monster alley.com for any information you want about the podcast or different publications
(42:15):
we have on medium or how to support us and yada yada yada.
And follow yourself always.
Hi, I'm Tam.
(00:02):
And I'm Eternally Mortal.
And this is the Hidden Egg Podcast where we talk about vulnerability.
And stuff.
And things.
And things.
And maybe sometimes thunder since that might be coming through on the mic, I'm not sure.
I can't hear it through your mic, but I can hear it through the outside.
Yeah, we're in a potentially a tiny bit of a storm.
(00:22):
I'm going to take a little peek out my window.
Yeah, it's not green, so we're fine.
Yeah, we're probably good.
The wind isn't really blowing.
We live in the Midwest, so if the sky is a greenish color, then we'll probably still
do the podcast because you know what?
Tornadoes don't come here.
But it could, and we could die.
We have a huge tree that keeps losing these giant, like, thousand pound branches in our
(00:44):
yard.
It's fun.
Yeah.
Fun times.
Yeah, it's a good old tree.
Got to be like a billion years old at least.
I think.
At least one billion.
I think they said that it's at least 100 years old.
It might be like 150 based on the type of the tree that I don't remember.
Even more than a billion then.
(01:04):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
Uh huh.
So anyway, we have quite a few different things to talk about today.
We're going to do the shout outs first, right?
Yep.
We in season five talk about articles that we've come across that have vulnerability
(01:26):
that we'd like to talk about, and we have a couple of shout outs to begin with.
Bang, bang.
Yeah, I heard that.
Thunder.
So I'm actually going to do them in a different order than I have them here because I want
to shout out to Ute's stuff first.
Because we have actually two articles that we really enjoyed reading from Ute.
(01:48):
I really hope that I'm saying her name right.
Her name Ute Lupperts?
I could be wrong.
You're getting Ute correct according to search.
Okay, apparently I'm getting Ute correct.
And she had this one article owed to Leela.
Leela?
Leela probably.
I don't know what's wrong with my pronunciation right now.
(02:09):
I meant to say Leela and then it went Leela.
I don't know.
You're probably trying too hard.
It's okay.
But yeah, it's about a pet that she ended up getting for a while.
And it's just really sweet.
It is vulnerable, but it just didn't quite fit the vibe.
(02:33):
Yeah, we kind of had a vibe going that this one didn't super fit into, but we wanted to
shout it out because it was really sweet.
I definitely had a few tears at the end of it.
Just real quick, back up a little bit.
I did say season five and it is currently season four.
My apologies.
Thank you, Sturge.
You're awesome.
I didn't even catch that.
(02:55):
That's why we have a Sturge.
But yeah, the article was cute and delightful.
I loved it.
There was a lot of Ute in the article.
You could tell that she put her heart into it and I really enjoyed it.
I agree.
I agree.
I highly recommend that people go read it.
(03:16):
There was also another one by Ute that she did just yesterday that we didn't see when
we were going over the stuff.
And it's a poem anyway.
We don't really do poems, but I thought it was really uplifting and I read it.
It's a minute long, but it really lifted me up for the day.
So I kind of just wanted to call that out.
(03:38):
You can see it in the video, but for our listeners, it's called What is a Blessing to Me?
I am counting all the ways, even if I don't understand it.
And it's just very, very cute.
It inspires, well, for me, I can't say for everybody, but for me, it inspired me to think
about what I consider blessings.
So well crafted.
(04:00):
And then our last shout out is an article that Sturge wrote that we didn't, we're not
talking about it directly, but it single handedly found all the other three in the recommended
thing afterwards.
And I don't know if that's because the topic of the article just generated really good
(04:25):
must reads or what do they call them?
Suggested reads?
Recommended.
Recommended.
But I'm going to say that it had something to do with it.
The article itself is good too.
The article is good.
The article is titled The Personal Development This or That Challenge or Writing Challenge
that Makes Me Think About My Choices in Certain Situations.
(04:46):
And you can tell already from the title that it's going to be getting into who Sturge is
and Sturge did a really good job of showing who he is as a person and what he's gone through
and how it shaped him in a certain regard.
And it's 10 questions.
You can do challenges on your own if you're a medium writer.
If I was writing at the moment, I might be interested myself.
(05:08):
But yeah, thanks for writing some good shit Sturge.
I'll be honest.
So I don't know that like we didn't really want to talk about challenge type stuff on
the podcast, at least not today.
But I am thinking about doing this challenge because of reading Sturge's answers.
(05:28):
I'm like, you know, I've been having trouble getting back into writing after all of the
health problems in the past few weeks.
And this seemed like a really fun sort of challenge prompt thing.
So yeah, I'm going to kind of say the same thing you already said.
But like the way that we because we're starting to try and collaborate a little bit more together
(05:51):
on what articles are picking.
And maybe theme them a little bit if we can.
And we just kind of started with the stuff that you all have been sharing in the self
promo channel and like then looking at the recommended from that and seeing just what
we found.
And like everyone that we decided to fit the theme we were kind of looking at were recommended
(06:13):
from Sturge's article.
And then just a quick shout out, we did see a couple of years, but they were so targeted
towards specific media that it just didn't seem to fit.
But they were and I didn't read Game of Thrones ones, Game of Thrones one at all, because
like I don't want the spoilers.
But we did check we did we did have yours up in the lineup as well.
(06:34):
Yeah, Ben, you're an amazing writer, but you get really highly focused on on your topics,
which is great.
But sometimes it doesn't really work out to find the vulnerability in here.
I'm here for Game of Thrones.
I would love some Game of Thrones.
Gay of Thrones.
(06:55):
OK.
Moving on.
Right moving on.
OK, so gay.
I don't want to make that gay.
There it is.
I don't remember what episode that was, but.
(07:15):
Oh, is that Community again?
I think it is.
Certainly looks like a classroom.
Yeah, I thought it was Community.
You know, I don't think we saw that one.
Yeah, we might have to check it out.
So Ben was talking about there's apparently a piece about Floridians being terrorized
(07:37):
by people in dinosaur costumes and that that's kind of vulnerability adjacent.
So we'll kind of shout out to that one.
I don't know what it is.
But if if hey, Ben, if you want to put your link in the description, I will put it in
the articles.
I already mentioned it.
I might as well.
It might have been a troll.
Don't make me dig for it, Ben.
(07:59):
Just give me the give me the link.
It's fine.
It's fine.
Just give me the link.
Well, I mean, we'll read it regardless of whether we decide to read it.
So yeah, anyway.
So the first article.
So the first article is by Kendra Sparkles and it's titled I almost abandoned a crying
(08:20):
baby at the zoo, but I sold her on Facebook Marketplace instead, which the title is just
just chef's kiss.
Love this.
Such a WTF like what?
And so like we were compelled to check it out and read it.
(08:42):
I'm pretty sure we got most of the way through and you still thought that she was talking
about a baby.
I completely forgot about the whole Facebook Marketplace by the time I was like two paragraphs
in.
I have no, you know, subject awareness.
No, wait, what's it called when you remember things from the very recent situational awareness?
That's not even applicable.
(09:02):
Whatever.
You know what I mean?
Object permanence, some sort of mixture of all of that.
And so I completely forgot about the whole Facebook Marketplace thing.
But your face through the whole thing was kind of like scrunched up like in disbelief.
So should we kind of I don't want to give it away because like it really made it an
experience for me, but it was really interesting.
(09:25):
But it was really entertaining and she goes through her experience at the zoo with this
crying baby and the parent of the crying baby and just just kind of discussing how
being responsible for the child of a negligent parent was was really getting on her nerves
(09:51):
a lot.
And it was it had a it had a very special kind of vulnerability.
And this one this one was right after you and I had discussed the theme that we wanted
to try to do with this episode.
And we haven't really talked about that theme.
And the theme is things that are vulnerable, but not necessarily like tragic and traumatizing.
(10:13):
Right.
There's not that we're going to focus on it every time or anything, but for this one,
we were kind of looking for that whole I'm sharing my experience, I'm sharing how I felt
and experienced the experience, what it was like through my eyes, but the not like hyper
focusing on the negative bits.
A lot of times being vulnerable is really getting into the trauma of what you've gone
(10:36):
through.
And sometimes it's just sharing the experience that you had and also the emotions within
and also emotions within Jesus Christ.
Did you hear that?
God is mad at us.
I don't know if that came through the microphone, but I felt it.
(10:56):
It went crack and like went through my soul.
I am so sorry.
That was scary as hell.
What were you saying?
I'm so sorry.
No, it's okay.
What was I?
Oh, no, just about like being able to, you know, sometimes being vulnerable is getting
into the trauma of what you've been through and being able to share that trauma and everything
(11:19):
like that.
And sometimes it's just sharing an experience and our emotions through that experience,
you know, the way that we feel.
Right.
And this article just made me feel a whole bunch of things.
Whole bunch of things.
But by the end, it was a positive experience.
(11:43):
Once you get to the twist, you look back at it and you're like, oh, and it becomes like
this kind of humorous, enjoyable experience in hindsight of just being able to see how
you wrangled the perspective in such a way that made the adventure that much more appealing.
(12:05):
Right.
Exactly.
Like almost, we're almost spoiling it even by saying that, which is, you know, a little
funny now that I think about us deciding to pick this article.
It was a good article though.
But I do want to describe the article ultimately as wholesome.
Yeah, I agree.
(12:26):
I believe it is quite a wholesome article.
The sky's a little green, just letting you know.
Oh, good.
So moving on to the next one.
And this is in place of what we usually have as the abuse article that we put in the middle
(12:47):
of our podcast segments.
This one is by Deanna Bugalski.
Probably Bugalski, but you know, we're probably going to butcher her pronunciation.
So sorry.
So it's called When Boys Won't Be Boys, a New Perspective on Masculinity, Shattering
Stereotypes and Embracing New Ideals.
(13:10):
And this one, instead of it being an example of what abuse looks like, I really enjoyed
this one because it showed what to do instead.
It was almost the opposite of abuse.
It was almost like the response, not like it actually is, but like it's like what I
(13:33):
think a good response to abuse is in a certain regard.
Because okay, so to get into it just a little bit, the article is about her son.
I can go that far, right?
I can say these things.
It's okay.
I feel like we can go pretty in depth with this one because the title kind of says a
(13:53):
lot about it.
I don't want to go into the details of it, but her son isn't your typical little boy
like that you think of.
Well, yeah.
And like, you know, she gets into what the stereotypical boy that's super into sports
and roughhousing and wrestling and one-upping each other and that whole thing and how her
(14:16):
son just is not any of those things and is these other things instead.
And how much she appreciates and sees, just is aware of these other aspects of her son
that makes him not only unique, but kind of amazing.
(14:36):
Now in the interest of vulnerability, do you mind going into some of the stuff that you
talked to me about yesterday of your response, your reaction, your vulnerability in regard
to this article?
No, I don't mind.
I'll go into it.
I was going to ask even actually because you know, it is.
So she's writing this article about her nine year old son, I believe nine at the time of
(15:04):
writing.
I believe so.
And so everyone that knows me now, very, very few people know who I was when I was that
age.
But when I read through all of this, like 90% of it is me as a kid.
Like so much of it is exactly what I was doing.
(15:24):
Like there's a lot of, you know, trying out sports to see what it's like being interested
in the technical and skill aspect of it.
But as soon as it comes to like trying to one up other people, just not into it.
And that's my take on it.
I don't think that that was expressly put into the article.
It's just that that was my experience.
And she did talk about how he liked playing sports in the sense of gaining the skills.
(15:52):
But when it came to competition, her son just wasn't into that.
And so it sounds kind of parallel to me.
Yeah, because competition has always been something that I've never really been terribly
interested in.
You will throw a game in somebody else's favor just to avoid a certain level of competition.
I've worked really hard to throw games in such a way that it wasn't noticeable so that
(16:16):
the other person would genuinely feel the feeling of winning.
Let's just point out how much skill you have to have in order to purposefully lose.
That's actually harder than you think.
Well, not you, but like it's harder than most people would think.
Yeah, it does take some effort to do.
(16:37):
I was especially good at a Madden football in 2005.
You almost didn't want to talk about this article because it almost upset you.
It just hit really, really, really deep in me.
And I'm going to go into why, but I'm going to feel bad if anybody that I'm talking about
(16:59):
actually does hear this at some point in the future.
But reading it got me the closest I've ever been to reading about the mentality or the
personality of what I would say is a kindred spirit.
I don't mean a lover's sort of thing, just a person that has the same resonance as my
(17:22):
soul.
You know what I mean?
Right.
But what really, really hit me about this article was the fact that his mom is so caring
and observant that she can notice these things and write about these things and celebrate
these things.
(17:42):
And that was really what I would have wanted when I was growing up myself, was somebody
to see all the ways and the things that I did stuff.
Do you want to draw a little bit of parallels to what would the wrong way be?
(18:05):
What would the wrong way look like?
No, I'm not quite making that connection.
What do you mean?
Well, because we're talking about this is what we both agree.
This is the right way to look at the situation, to celebrate your child the way they are.
What's the wrong way?
(18:25):
Because it sounds a little bit like you've had some of the wrong way in your life to
compare to.
The obvious wrong way is the pushing, is the trying to mold your child into something that
you want instead of realizing that your child is a whole ass separate person that gets to
be whoever they want to be because they're just as deserving, I guess you could say,
(18:51):
of autonomy as you are as the parent.
Right.
So forcing your child into any box is going to be bad, in my opinion.
That's kind of why I put this in the abuse slot because to me, abuse happens from people
trying to control other people and that can happen parent to child as well.
I think it does happen a lot, parent to child.
(19:11):
I think it does too.
We just don't see it as that.
I think it's happening less and I think that there's a pendulum effect to it to where in
the past 10 to 15 years, there's been a lot of child taking away the autonomy of parents.
Yeah, that's also true.
There's a little bit of a pendulum effect in there.
(19:33):
I want to come back to the chat because I was just trying to make sure that you got
out the things that we had sort of discussed yesterday before moving on to what Sturge
was saying, but Sturge has been saying some stuff in the comments.
Certainly he also identifies with not really being into the stereotypical boy stuff, although
he also sort of was into it as well in probably another unique way.
(20:01):
Yeah.
Your approach to competition is maddening to him.
Yeah, and I will expound a little bit further on that because there was a time in my early
20s when I was getting high every day and going over to a buddy's house and we would
play fighting games.
We would play Tekken and Soul Calibur and another game that I can't remember the name
(20:22):
of.
Crystal?
GEM?
There was something, I can't remember the name of it.
My buddy Dragon, I just knew him well enough to know that he just wanted to play the game.
He was never angry at me or at the game or even at himself when he lost.
He was genuinely interested in the skill of the game and if it didn't work out for him
(20:45):
or if it janked him into bad places, he was never upset with the people around him.
So I learned that when I played with him was the only time I ever felt free to really try
my best and that was the only time that I've ever played Soul Calibur or Tekken again.
Well, I don't know, you and I played some, Liz.
(21:07):
I might have tried against you too because I forgot that you and I had played that Soul
Calibur a little bit, didn't we?
Yeah, we played Soul Calibur but we played a lot of the Mortal Kombat.
Oh yeah, the Mortal Kombat, that's right.
Deception, is that what it was called?
I think so.
The one with all the mini games because I loved the mini games.
Yeah.
I guess I used to do that with one of my friends as well.
(21:30):
We just kind of sit and play those because it was really fun.
But you did used to throw the game with me and I started picking up on like, why are
you doing these things?
Why are you losing all of a sudden in stupid ways?
And then eventually that led to you explaining that that's just sort of something that you
(21:53):
do.
And I was like, well, don't do that anymore.
If I'm going to lose, I want to lose.
Right.
If it pisses me off and that upsets you, that's a discussion we need to have.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think we've had that discussion a couple of times.
We played a lot of video games together over the years.
I'm not nearly as sore of a loser as I used to be.
(22:16):
Right.
It's not a big deal anymore.
You've definitely mellowed out in the same way that Sturge has, I would say, probably.
Not knowing Sturge is a competitive Sturriot.
I agree, Sturge.
It's still there a little for me too.
I mean, I still get a little bit of a competitive spirit every once in a while, but I just,
I don't have the experience of that being outwardly projected.
(22:39):
It's always that I didn't hit the buttons in the right way or I didn't take into account
the strategy the right way or something like that.
For me, it's like when it comes out, when it comes out and it's obvious, it's usually
because the other person or at least one of the other people, their skill level is so
much higher than mine.
(23:00):
It doesn't feel fair for me to be playing at the same level as them to begin with.
I should have been given a handicap.
Sure.
That makes sense.
Absolutely.
We kind of got a little off topic here.
Yeah, a little off topic, but competition is a big deal, especially in the Midwest, but
it's a big deal in America in general.
(23:23):
That really kind of shows Scrabblego, high skill player, heck yeah.
It does kind of go to show what Deanna's article really pulls out of people because whether
you grew up AFAB or AMAB, you're going to have some experience with the prototypical
boy upbringing, especially if you're talking about sometime between the 80s and the 2000s
(23:47):
or maybe the 70s and the 2000s.
We talked about all that spawned from this article.
Yeah, it did.
It went so many places.
If there's only one article that people will read out of this whole episode, I would suggest
this one because it really provides a unique perspective.
(24:12):
I know that there are people who have the perspective and that they've been louder about
it recently, but it's still kind of a new perspective on that kind of parenthood of
like, maybe my kid isn't as gender as their gender would suggest and maybe it's okay.
Yeah.
Maybe it's okay.
And honestly, I just really want to highlight how much she pays attention to her son, how
(24:38):
much she knows about who her son is.
I think that's a great thing to do for your loved ones.
Just know who they are.
I think that's probably the best gift you can possibly imagine from my perspective.
Agreed.
Okay, well, we'll move on to the last one.
They've all been pretty uplifting, to be honest.
(25:00):
I don't think any of these were really downtrodden, but this one's by Rachel A. Pfeffer.
I am so sorry if I've pronounced this incorrectly in any way, but the article is called I May
Be 60 and Single, but That Doesn't Mean I Want to Date You and Having to Explain Myself
is Exasperating.
(25:21):
Apparently, Sturge knows literally everybody.
Sturge has read literally all of the Medium writers.
He, for several weeks, was reading like 200 to 300 articles per day.
Wow.
I'm pretty sure he's read everybody who has ever written on Medium in the last three to
(25:41):
four years.
That's impressive.
I was once at a time where I had read every article on cracked.com and watched every video,
but that was many years ago, so I am impressed.
Yeah, it's exploded.
I could be exaggerating, but not as much as you would think.
(26:03):
Sturge is no joke.
He's just amazing.
He is very fast at reading.
Sometimes I'll send him something and he'll be like, oh, could you look over this?
And two minutes later, he's like, yeah, I looked over it.
Here's my feedback.
I'm like, how did you?
I just sent the link.
Heck yeah.
So, yeah, I'm not surprised at all that all of these writers are like, oh, I love that
(26:30):
writer.
I love that writer.
It just means that we have good taste.
It means we're doing pretty well.
I loathe the day that we bring somebody up and Sturge is like, I've read them.
That's not great.
Oh no.
Oh no.
So anyway, back to Rachel's article.
I particularly loved this and this article actually kind of sparked a slight disagreement
(26:54):
between us.
To an extent, yeah.
There was like just a bit that I was a little bit like I started to kind of get distracted
in the middle of the article and it was just happened to be one of the parts that you were
like really honed in on.
That's the tornado.
Yeah, I was I was just noticing that it's probably fine.
(27:19):
It's probably fine.
So if the recording cuts immediately, it cuts quickly, you all know what happened.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
This is fine.
It's the little dog within the fire room.
Yeah, fire.
Okay.
This is fine.
(27:40):
So Rachel in this article, like goes through so much vulnerability to be honest.
So much.
I forgot we were talking about our slight little conflict.
So let's give it a little.
No, we can start there because because it has to do with that.
Like she goes into the the drudges of her romantic life up to now, but like doesn't
(28:06):
go so deep into them that that it's traumatic.
Right.
Exactly.
And she covers like a couple of several decades of experience in this, not hyper detailed
about all of that stuff, but lets us know the the points that happened and why she feels
the way she feels.
And that's amazing.
(28:26):
You know, like being able to give that much perspective into it.
When I read this at the end, I was like this perfectly explains why she feels the way she
feels about that.
And I'm so happy that she's living her best life.
Like honestly.
You know, right.
Yeah.
But there was some points in there that you didn't quite identify with.
(28:48):
Yeah.
So there was some references to past relationships and I'm going to kind of called it the middle.
And there was some like really shitty stuff that happened to her.
And then there was some after after that, she talked about her ex-husbands because she
(29:10):
has two ex-husbands if I understood the article correctly.
And like the getting married part just kind of started to I just got a little distracted
basically.
I started to lose interest in a certain regard.
Not that it was poorly written or anything.
It's just I'm not really a marriage person.
And so it just didn't.
(29:34):
Am I explaining this right?
Can you help me?
Yeah.
It's just that there were some elements and you and I like when we were talking about
it, I mentioned that like maybe it's a gendered thing that like women tend to look at marriage
and security.
Security.
Yes.
Thank you.
The security of it in a different way.
(29:56):
We were more more more likely to notice the security aspects.
So like there was a point where she was talking about how she had rented out a condominium
or whatever or an apartment, I'm not sure, below where her husband lived.
And they technically lived in separate places, but like in the same building.
(30:18):
And that kind of lost you.
But like for me, it wasn't a lull at all.
I was like, oh, that's actually pretty smart.
I wish I could do something like that.
And I like we had this sort of like, well, from your perspective, and I'm sorry if I'm
putting words in your mouth, so correct me if I'm wrong.
It sounded like you read it as though it were like a flex about her wealth, whereas I was
(30:41):
like, well, you could you could amend that to just be in the same apartment building.
And it's not about the wealth.
It's about the separateness of the experience of being able to have your own place to go
back to and having the security of being with someone, but also not having to be with them
all the time.
And you and I had a slight disagreement about whether or not that was gendered.
(31:05):
Well, kind of to an extent.
Yeah, because my perspective on it was like, you know, the the the getting married, the
choosing a whole life partner thing in that regard was a little outside of my wheelhouse.
And then the because it was it wasn't just a condo.
It wasn't just like an apartment building or anything.
(31:26):
This was like, no, it looked like a mansion or something.
A large chateau that like her, I guess that that partner at the time was living in the
upstairs aspect of and she moved into the downstairs aspect of as a separate living
place, but still in this very nice place.
And I was the first thought when I saw that was like, not everybody can do that.
(31:52):
And of course, not everybody can do that.
Like, that's just my thought and where my mind took me and why my mind kind of turned
off a little bit within there.
Like, I don't I don't I definitely want to make it clear that like, I don't think that
she's bad for doing that.
She was living her best life.
She lived within her means and made the choices that she wanted to make to make herself as
comfortable and happy as she could.
That's great.
(32:13):
Yeah.
It just pointed out that like, even though it's vulnerable, it what's vulnerable to
one person doesn't always hit everybody.
That's kind of the point is it like your experiences and my experiences are different.
So the things that I relate to aren't going to over like some there's some overlap, but
(32:36):
it's not going to be a 100 percent overlap on the things that you relate to.
Right.
Absolutely.
And you did genuinely and and possibly accurately bring up that it's potentially just a gendered
experience because, you know, there are certainly like when we grew up as me, a little boy and
you as a little girl, like we're kind of shown different things.
(32:57):
We taught different things, but just shown different things and attention to.
That's why there's 55 year old men that are terrified of tampons.
So are there really no joke?
I'm kind of being an asshole.
OK, I was going to say, like, can you back that up?
Because I've never heard of this.
But I wouldn't be surprised with the world the way it is.
(33:18):
No, you're not Sturge.
Don't give me that.
And Sturge is trying to say he's terrified of tampons.
Don't lie.
Oh, also, I want to say Sturge said in chat, Mike and I will likely never get married even
though we would want to.
And I hope you do.
If that's what you guys want to do, I really do hope you get to have the experience that
makes you happy.
I'm not against marriage as a concept.
(33:39):
I just it doesn't spark with me.
It's not a thing that makes my heart flutter.
You've talked about not wanting to own a person.
And the idea of marriage feels too much like reducing the other person to property for
(33:59):
you.
Right.
And it's so easy for me to look at that and be like, I don't want people to think that
I'm saying that.
Right.
It's a perspective.
As a married couple.
Right.
I look at it and I'm like, I like the idea of being owned and then also owning the other
person.
It's like a shared experience.
We agree that we want to have some ownership over each other's, I guess, loyalty, fidelity.
(34:27):
Right.
But I can see from your perspective that, you know, you you're it's valid for you to
see it the way you see it.
I just don't have to see it that way myself.
Right.
Absolutely.
And you you have been totally open with that for all the people to like it's it's not like
(34:47):
you're all like, oh, no, this is my perspective.
I need everybody to understand and see it from this perspective.
It's just.
OK, so there's a gift that Sturge put on here of I don't even know how do you explain this
gift?
It's a dude in some army get up who takes a box of tampons out and then bites the top
(35:11):
off of it and throws it at his wife, presumably his wife.
Like it's a grenade.
And then yells grenade.
And then yells grenade.
It looks like an amazing tick tock, to be honest.
You know, it's probably just those supers, too.
You can tell because it's green, the green color on them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because, you know, they got they got to be color coded because they they often call them
(35:34):
different shit.
So like green is always super orange is super plus yellow is regular.
Yeah, you get used to that.
Oh, and before I'm called out for misinformation, I don't know if they're necessarily any 55
year old men that if you throw tampons at them, they're going to run away because they're
scared of them.
I just think that if you ask your 55 year old uncle to go pick up to go pick up tampons,
(36:00):
he's just going to immediately like, no, he's going to say no.
Or he's going to laugh at you or he's going to make fun of you or he's going to be mean
to you.
Ben was talking about the shapes video and I'm like, what shapes video?
The gif of the putting this the round peg into the square hole.
I get it now.
I don't.
OK, so I'll have to share it with you.
(36:21):
But there's there's a video where like it's this woman reacting to a video of a guy putting
stuff into a children's box like that.
Yeah, there it is.
There it is.
That's the video.
Click on the video.
If you well, maybe, maybe not right now, but like at some point it's I don't want to spoil
(36:44):
it because it's it hits in a certain way.
Anybody listening to this?
The video is in the chat.
I'll put it.
I'll put it on the the articles for this episode also.
So yeah, it's it's a great it's a great video.
I'm not going to lie.
(37:06):
You're not going to like it at first, but it it grows on you.
OK, well, I mean, I watched I watched some weird shit.
So you know, it makes sense.
You're right, though.
It does look like that girl, but I don't think it's the same girl.
I think it might be a different girl.
Yeah, I don't know if we said all the things about Rachel's article, but it it rounded
(37:27):
out incredibly nicely.
There was definitely stuff in the article that gained back my attention after I had
lost some of it.
And it is such a such a, you know, self empowering article from my perspective.
Agreed.
I do agree.
I love the way I can.
(37:48):
I concur.
I love the way that she goes through her basically her entire dating history without going into
the details in a traumatic way.
And then you end up at the end like, yeah, her freedom is is OK.
Like she doesn't need to be with a person if she's happy.
You just you just end up feeling really happy for and a little like frustrated that she
(38:10):
has to deal with people that don't believe her.
Right.
Exactly.
Because, of course, the article was spawned by a right.
But I think a lot of people out there think that if you're alone, then you must be miserable.
So one of the things one of the things that I found in one of my favorite YouTubers, what
(38:33):
is his name?
The speech professor.
That's what is his YouTube name is.
And one of the things that he was talking about in his podcast with some other woman
that I remember when her name was, was that like people think guys especially like guys
think that they are competing against like the top tier of guys for women's attention.
(38:59):
But that's not true.
What they're really competing against is the peace that they feel when they're alone.
The peace of women feel when they're alone, the peace of mind and tranquility that women
feel when they are completely alone and not in a relationship.
That is what you're competing against.
And that's kind of what she's she's like, I don't need it.
(39:19):
I don't there's no there's no joy in the relationship for me.
The peace that I get when I'm alone is all I want.
Exactly.
I've been trying to compete against that piece for like 25 years.
Trying to be the most chill motherfucker in the world.
You know what I mean?
You do pretty good.
You just need you just don't get out there.
(39:39):
Like that's your biggest problem.
You just don't get out there.
Yeah.
And by the way, Sturge, you are wrong.
It doesn't grow on you like the ending to Promising Young Women.
Do not watch that movie.
It's a well now I'm interested.
It's a it's it's it's a good movie for what it is.
But you don't go into it thinking you're going that you're going to enjoy the movie because
(40:04):
you'll get disappointed at the end.
There has never been a movie that goes deleted off the server faster than this movie.
We finished the movie and within five minutes he was already like I can delete this off
the server.
Right.
Understood.
Yeah.
(40:24):
I'll keep that in mind.
So you know, keep that in mind.
Understood.
I can't wait, honestly, because I sometimes also like disappointing media.
Yeah that's true.
That's true.
You might you might find that you enjoy it.
(40:44):
But we will have things to talk about after you watch it.
Probably.
So anyway, that's that's that's the lineup of articles.
I think this is a pretty short episode, but we've been kind of both recovering from pretty
hectic and draining weeks.
So I think that's probably all we got for today.
(41:07):
Do you have any final thoughts you want to share before we end the episode?
No, I don't think so.
I hope that everybody enjoyed the non-traumatic vulnerability.
We tried really hard.
I go really in deep in depth with things like vulnerability to me starts where most people
(41:27):
stop being vulnerable.
So trying to find things that are vulnerable, but aren't like heavy hitters for me is kind
of a big task.
So I hope that it I hope that we were able to get the effect that we were looking for
out of it.
Yeah, I hope so, too.
(41:50):
Well eternally mortal.
Thanks for stopping by.
We appreciate your time and attention.
I hope you find smiles this day.
And I'm the accidental monster.
You can find us both on medium.com.
Check the monster alley.com website out.
It is the monster alley.com for any information you want about the podcast or different publications
(42:15):
we have on medium or how to support us and yada yada yada.
And follow yourself always.
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