Wanzology

Michael Wansley [00:00:00]:

Keep putting faith in front and believe the best is yet to come, you'll see. Nothing in this life comes completely free, but every once in a while, you just get lucky. Welcome to another episode of Wanzology! A podcast designed to help all of us get through life, focusing more on the similarities between us than the differences. Wanzology! Proposing new perspectives to help guide you through the most dangerous place on the planet. That's six inches between your ears. Hey, welcome to another episode of Wanzology. I am your host, The Wanz, and man…

It's the weekend after Thanksgiving around here, and I'm telling you, I'm very, very happy that I survived. If you're new, welcome. If you caught the first episode, I'm so glad you're back, and I hope that you hear something that either keeps you coming back or tells you to tell someone else to take your place or both of you come back. That'd be dope. So, it's been crazy around here this week. Not much of it has been very good for me. Adversity is just one of those things that all of us have to go through. We all know this, right? And my job, that I've taken on at this particular time, in this podcast is to put my perspective on what's happened and maybe even ask questions of you as to how you'd handle it or how you got through it.

Michael Wansley [00:02:02]:

But most of all, to remind you that you can get through anything as long as you keep breathing. Of course. Because once you stop breathing, then you really have a problem. That's just my experience. Now, I don't claim to be any kind of doctor or sensei or any kind of faith healer or scholar. I'm just like you. And my hope is that we can learn from each other how to better handle all the slings and arrows that come our way in our daily existence. Right? So, in the last five days, I've let go of a long relationship, realizing that it wasn't going to serve me very well.

Michael Wansley [00:02:55]:

I thought on something this person had told me once, and I thought on it for a while. It's like, “if it doesn't bring you joy, get rid of it.” Well, I hadn't really applied that to our relationship, until I applied it to our relationship, which all of a sudden, since I wasn't getting confirmation that we would be building or more or less rebuilding the relationship, I want to be clear. This is my fault. I got upset and I couldn't handle it, and I decided to say, “I can't do this anymore.” Now, the reasons why that happened, I'm finding, are not completely of my own choosing. They're a reaction to an old thing, and I'm still figuring out exactly what the old thing is and what I can do about it, because I don't want it to happen again. I don't want to hurt anyone like that again.

Michael Wansley [00:04:01]:

I don't want to feel like this again and I can't control somebody else. So, I'm going to go do something. Well, that was kind of the beginning of the week and then it got progressively worse. It's been said life on life's terms is, well, life drama now. That's life after you fucked with it a little bit. Yep, I put my feelings out on social media and the blowback on this person was immediate. Mind you, I don't know what was said, but I know it wasn't good. It was definitely communicated to me that it was not good.

Michael Wansley [00:04:46]:

Oh, boy. So, I spent the rest of the day trying to clean that up. I had hoped Thanksgiving would be saved. I was going to go hang out with some people for Thanksgiving, but earlier in the week, someone that I was in contact with tested positive for COVID. So, I ended up on the couch watching the Star Wars Marathon and nibbling on trail-mix. I did thaw some chicken and air fried it and so I had a decent dinner. But it wasn't like everybody else was having their Thanksgiving. So, I kind of felt apart from everyone and then woke up the next morning, looked at my phone and there was a message there from the county sheriff's office letting me know that my car had been impounded!! Found about a half a mile from my place!

Michael Wansley [00:05:49]:

Meaning my car got ripped off. Yeah. So now I'm trying to figure all that out because I know it's going to cost me a buttload of money to get it out of the tow company, get there, watched as they couldn't get it started, can't figure out whether I want to take it to get fixed or what. So I have them take it back to my place, which of course meant another tow, a large amount of money to do that. Then had to walk to the local police station to fill out a report so I could get a number for when I contacted my insurance. Great. So about midway through the afternoon, I was kind of mentally spent and luckily a good friend of mine came over and kind of got me through it and got me to the other side. And by dinner time, oh, by the way, he was nice enough to bring me a Thanksgiving plate!!

Michael Wansley [00:06:52]:

So I actually did have a Thanksgiving dinner the day after Thanksgiving, and I was grateful. Well, here's the thing. All this stuff got put out on my personal social media. And the reason that I did that is because Facebook for me has always been a meeting place to keep up with people that I really don't have time to call or go visit. Social media is meant to keep well, this is what I think social media is meant for, to keep in touch with people and share your life with people that, you know, in lieu of being able to have personal contact with them. And I was feeling all kinds of some kind of way. I was feeling in a hole like the Alice In Chains song Down In A Hole. I was there and I felt alone.

Michael Wansley [00:07:45]:

The week itself was a consequence of my actions. Yeah, I get that. The universe was like, oh, you can handle this. Well, how about this? Oh, you can handle that? Well, how about this? There's a saying god won't give you any more than you can handle. Well, God must have thought I was a badass and this was like a stress test. Big time. Yet I made it through. I made it through.

Michael Wansley [00:08:15]:

My choice is to focus on my breathing so I know time is passing. And thanks to Matrix Revolutions, I am familiar with the phrase everything that has a beginning has an end. It's a process. The trick is knowing where you are in the process. So, if you are in the thick of it and it doesn't feel like you have anyone or anything to lean on, I would suggest cluing in that big pot of social media friends. Maybe start a chat with just a few of them because you will be surprised who they tell you they see. Because sometimes looking at ourselves with our own eyeballs that only see out is difficult. It's like holding your palm up to your eyes and bitching about not being able to see the back of your hand.

Michael Wansley [00:09:28]:

Try it. Put your palm just above your nose and cover both your eyes. Now try to see the back of your hand without moving your hand. No splitting your fingers doesn't count in a mirror. No, it's hard and it's also deceptive because once you back your palm away, it's a little easier to see the back of your hand. And I say that in the context of I was feeling like she ought, she ought. This allowed me to get a different perspective. It allowed me to be more honest with myself.

Michael Wansley [00:10:20]:

It allowed me to be courageous. And most of all, it inspired me to reach out to people that I trust, which is almost everyone. I try really hard not to associate with assholes, as I'm sure you're on that same tip, you don't want assholes in your life. But my people have held me up before and so I went back to them and sure enough, man, sure enough, 5 hours into the evening, I'm going to bed and I'm still responding to notes, text messages, back-channel messages, acknowledging replies under my post. And the vast majority of them remind me what I needed to know. They're reminding me that despite my best efforts to the contrary, I am a nice person, a talented person. Everyone makes mistakes and I am worthy of love. It may not be the love that I want, but is there really a difference between the love you get from a cocker spaniel and the love you get from a golden retriever? From a tabby cat versus, like a Siamese cat.

Michael Wansley [00:11:56]:

That was the only breed I could think of. I know they're not that friendly. I get it, but you get my point. My dad used to say, “Does it matter more that you get the answer or where you get the answer from?” And I'm all about trying to find answers. I don't have that many questions, but when I do, I have to look at my own record and see, what did I decide before? How did it fail or succeed? And can I try something different? And when I can't, I ask somebody else. When I want to ask a lot of people, I put it out to my social media and let them tell me something I may not know because I'm not cocky enough to think that I know everything. That's another thing my dad used to say, boy, quit acting like you know every damn thing. And I think a lot of us get caught up in that trap all the time.

Michael Wansley [00:12:59]:

We're intelligent. That means the answer can't possibly be simple, can it? Got to be like rudimentary theoretical, hypothetical, psychological physiology with a sprinkle of some kind of weird space dust magic. Man, hate to break it to you, one in one is still two. No matter how you slice it. It's kind of simple. I figured that I make things more difficult than they really are because I think they have to be because of how they feel in the moment. Are you like that? Does that make sense? Because in retrospect, when I go back over those moments that I feel something, oh, man, my perspective is different because I'm not in it. I'm past it.

Michael Wansley [00:14:11]:

That whole hindsight is twenty-twenty thing? Yeah, about that. Hopefully you're not like me and you use it as the club to beat the snot out of yourself for being an idiot. Hopefully you look back and it's like, oh, well, I zigged where I should have zagged, or I zigzagged and I should have stood still or I shouldn't have said a damn thing at all or whatever. Just something different. I am tremendously glad that the week is over and now we're going into a weekend and there's still wreckage from the week that I'm going to have to live with and try and clean up and be accountable for and maybe even make an amends or tooth. We'll see. All I know is this space in Wanzology. This is the space where I hope I can be an example of how not to do things or if you've done things, how to not have them linger with you, and if they do linger with you, how to shake them off.

Michael Wansley [00:15:41]:

We are so much more than we tell ourselves. It's crazy. We're not. It is. That it being life. Life is crazy. We don't control it. We control how we react to it.

Michael Wansley [00:16:00]:

But we don't always realize that because we're in it. And being in it is great if you're on a roller coaster. If you like roller coasters, being in it is great, exhilarating exciting. But when you're in conflict and you're fighting guilt and shame and fear and all kinds of other things that make your stomach curdle, when you're in it, ain't no fun. Ain't no fun at all. But that's okay because all you gotta to do is keep breathing. If you keep breathing, you'll get through it. Why do I say that? Because when you stop breathing, that is when you have a real problem.

Michael Wansley [00:16:56]:

Think about that one for a while. Cool. So, I'm going to go and I really want to thank you for hanging out with me for a little bit. Next episode, I'm going to once again outline why I am here and why I'm trying to do this. I will also let you know where this podcast is going to go next. I am The Wanz and this has been Wanzology! Hey, thanks for being here today. I want you to go to your social media and look for W-A-N-Z ology Wanzology Wanzology!!

Michael Wansley [00:17:36]:

You can catch me in my music and my story on thewanz.com. Byeeeee.

Do something good for yourself, then go do it for somebody else. I'll see you.