Wanzology

“Shama-lama-lama. Ding-dong!”
Animal House... Great movie! Great movie!

Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, you guys. What's happening? Wanz here. Another episode of WANZ-OLO-GY, how are you doing? I hope you're well. I hope you and yours are well, I hope you're getting everything out of life. that you're putting into it. Cause that's kind of the way it works. Bad, good, whatever.

So, I'm going to get right into it today. I want to talk about this chapter of #THEBOOKOFWANZ:
“Tryin is the very thing we all get to do when we don't listen to a, when we don't listen to the fear and the crap. Trying is the very, trying is the very thing we all get to do when we don't listen to the fear and crap we tell ourselves.”

Ever notice that we limit ourselves based on what we think the outcome, ever notice that we limit ourselves based on the outcome we think, ever notice we limit ourselves based on what we think the outcome is going to be? It doesn't matter if you're trying to cook a recipe for the first time, go on a first date, enter a job interview, at some point during the process, the thoughts of failure and its consequences seem to take us to that place of fear and insecurity. I notice that when I think I know an outcome. I'm usually wrong. I got tired of being wrong and started to work on focusing on the effort that thing I had complete control over. That effort. If I didn't try very hard to prepare, to help someone, to find some place, or discover how to do something, how could I possibly expect there to be a good outcome?

I heard once, “fail to plan and you're planning to fail”. Makes sense to me. I'm a firm believer in knowing as much information as possible before deciding to act on anything. It may sound daunting, but then again, so is life.

There are those who don't get the opportunities others of us do to make the best of what we have in our lives. Inside, there’s a voice that tells us all kinds of things. We each have a choice to listen to it or ignore it. Me? I question it. I’ve been known to lie to myself, so I don't trust any little voice. I never used to know the difference between the true and the false. I noticed when I look back on parts of my life, I'd had so many good ideas that just never ended well when I acted on them. Some of those actions hurt people and me too.

I've since gone back and cleaned up a lot of that wreckage. While doing so, I found the little voice inside didn't always tell me positive things, nor always negative things. It just spoke to me. So, these days, I practice having a debate with that voice. A big, loud one, or a quiet, small one, to get more information.

Hopefully you can get more information and use it to make better decisions. Last episode was, ‘you either die, or you make decisions.’ The two things in life that you absolutely, positively have to do. It's that way for all humans, right? You ain't special. Well, maybe you are. And I just don't know yet. One thing I do know is, unless you attempt something, your chances of succeeding are greatly decreased as are your chances of failure.

A long, long time ago, I got up on a stage and sang for my elementary school. I, I can't even remember why I did it, I just knew that I really wanted to do that. And when I was done, everybody was clapping and cheering, and it made me feel really good. That's one of, quote unquote, ‘those’ moments. We all have them. Those pivotal moments where It’s damn scary. Damn scary, the possible outcomes. They're damn scary. But you try anyway and……FIND OUT IT WAS A BLOODY SUCCESS!! Yay!!! You find out that you were a bloody success! You can do this! Well, the finding out part you didn't know before. Remember? Riding a bicycle with no training wheels? Remember? I mean, the first time I ever rode a bike that had, like, speeds. It was a three speed. I forgot the brake was on the handle. So, my, I'm, I'm, like, going a little too fast. And, and my feet are pedaling backwards as much as possible and I’m not stopping a-a-and, BOOM! I ran into a parked car. What did I learn? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. The break is over there.

Everybody has those kinds of moments. Now, what are you going to do? What are you going to do now? I mean, now. How about now? Now? Maybe now. Choices are made, all the time, and you try. You might fail, you might succeed. Nothing might change. All three are possibilities, and everything in between them is frightening. Or is it? Could be frightening. Not knowing is kind of scary. First time you make something for somebody and they're about to take a bite. It's kind of scary when, when they lift the food up to the mouth and it goes in and you look at their face and analyze what it tastes like. More importantly, do they like it? Or, blind date time. We're gonna meet in front of this store by this lamppost, and you're all posted up across the street waiting for that person to get there to see if they're their real face matches the profile picture that made you want to reach out to them in the first place. And if they do, then you, then you actually go and introduce yourself and you start walking, and as you're talking to them five or ten minutes later, you realize, Wow! They talk a lot! Or the opposite, why aren't they talking? Or, somewhere in between. For all you know, you know, you had similar experiences, both of you owned goldfish when you were kids, or you both had, uh, both of you, your first car was, like, a Japanese car, or something. Now you'll still get to choose whether you're going to stay on that date, or if there's a second date, or if that date ends early, or whether there'll be a next date. You know? But you gotta try. Life is like Lotto.

Life is definitely more like the lottery than anything else I can think of right now. Because to win, you have to play. If you don't play, you can't win. If you don't participate in your own life, the odds of you getting anything you want are greatly decreased. No one's just going to come up and give it to you.
You got to earn it. That's where your experience comes in. Because hopefully your experience taught you some things, and when you learned those things, your choices improved, your effort improved, and your results improved. But none of it happens unless you try.

Man, in college, I had the worst time sometimes, inside my own head. Because I would try to study like everyone else, right? Everyone else looks like, when I'm watching them study, they're sitting down with whatever book or paper, and they're reading it, and I’m not sure what's going on in between their ears, but my ears are going, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, shh! Shh! Uh shh, uh-huh, uh-huh, shh, shh. I have to keep shushing that other voice that distracts me. Used to drive me nuts. And then I finally get in the room to take the test. And the answer, I mean the questions, the questions don't really make that much sense and what was I reading again? Ahh…For all my school career I've always been a C student. Very disappointing for me who wanted to be more like a B, B-plus; I didn't, you know, I knew I wasn't gonna be a, an A student, but damn, C is like, average. Not good, not bad. And that used to really bug the crap out of me. And it seemed, no matter how hard I tried, at almost every subject, or almost every sport, at almost everything, no matter how hard I tried, I always came out to be kinda in the middle. Always considered myself not to be that good looking, but I wasn't that ugly either. Always in the middle. And it took a long, long, long, long, long, long time for me not to associate being average with being mediocre. Because mediocre is supposed to be horrible. But is it, really? Mediocre. Is it the same as average? Who decides? You? Someone else?

I went, uh, to sing the national anthem at a middle school about 60 miles from where I live and the event was a basketball game. The basketball game was being played by special needs kids. A few of them in wheelchairs. Most of them had no concept of how basketball works, so, there was no, you know, you could, you didn't have to dribble. You didn't have to pass, you didn't have to do anything right. And there were other kids out there assisting. “Hey, go that way.”, “No. No, you throw it again.”. “Here's the ball, try again.”, “Shoot again, shoot again, shoot again”. And you know, just being in that gymnasium made me feel better than before I got there. Looking at those kids faces as they tried. Having small idea of what they were doing, they still tried. And most of the crowd that was in the gymnasium were other middle school students. They outnumbered the parents like almost three to one. Took up one whole half of the gym. And when somebody, anybody, made a basket, everybody cheered. It wasn't one team against another. Not at all. All it was, were individuals trying, and their effort helped everyone in the gym feel better. Especially, especially when they made a basket.

I drove away. I drove home from that, from that experience imagining what, what would it be like if every one of us encouraged every other one of us: “What are you doing?”
“Oh, I'm, I'm trying to get ready for this job interview.”
“Oh, what's it for?”
“Uh, it's, it's, it's for this, It's, you know, for this, I don't know, I’m not even sure I can do it.”
“Well, how can I help you get prepared? You've done other things. I'm pretty sure you can do this. How can I help you? I know someone who's done that before. You want to talk to him?”

What if we were more like that? Instead of sitting in a corner going, “Jesus, I don't know the answer to that question on the interview. I'll never get this job.”

What if?

Little secret, I've been in tech for, I had been in tech for 23 years. I got my first software test job in 2000 and got laid off the third day of January in 2023. So I thought, okay, I'll just learn some programming skills and be able to get another job, and I beat my brains out for months. Every day. Trying to learn. Practice, learn, practice, learn, practice, learn, over and over and over again, because, you know, repetition is the cornerstone of learning, but after a few months, it hit me, I’m not getting any callbacks for an interview, I wonder why that is. So, I went back and re-read some of the job requirements that I applied for and they were all asking for YEARS of programming experience. I barely had months. It was very, very disappointing. Cause I tried really hard to learn and again, just like in college, just like in high school, just like in junior high school, I was average and they were hiring excellent to above average people. Very disappointing. So, what did I do? Now I still have this curiosity that I can't seem to shake. There are things that I want to know how to do, programming is one of them. I want to know how to do that. So, I'm still dabbling in it.

But, there are things that I'm good at that most programmers are not. Hell, there are things that I'm good at, like telling you stories, that programmers could never do. I don't know many programmers who can just go walk out on a stage and sing a song in front of ten, fifteen thousand people. Hell, I don't even know, I don't know too many programmers who can just get up in front of 5 people without getting nervous and not being able to really function, but that's something that I've always been able to do. I've always been able to, I’ve always been able to entertain. So much so that I, I coined a phrase: “I was a ham before there were pigs.” As the more I look back over my memory, I was the happiest when I was performing, quote unquote, for someone. I loved it. Touring with Macklemore, my five minutes of fame, almost every night for two and a half years, was when the beat would drop. For Thrift Shop, it got past the, “wut, wut”, and the,”ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, bow!”, and that beat would drop, which was my cue to walk out on stage. And I could walk out, and it didn't matter if it was 50, 500, 5 thousand, fifty thousand. Never mattered. Find my spot on the stage, take that big breath, and out of my mouth came, “I'm gonna pop some tags, only got twenty dollars in my pocket. I, I, I'm hunting, looking for a come-up...”, well, you know the rest. And for those five minutes, you couldn't stop me. You couldn't contain me. I was in my place. I had the realization right before we went on Saturday Night Live. Um, I'm standing side stage and I'm just standing there with a microphone in my hand and by monitors in my ears, I can hear what's going on and the song starts and right when the song starts, little voice inside my head said, “God built you for this!” I'll never forget it. I'll never ever forget that moment. Ultimately, I’ve like put it out to other things. God built me to entertain. It's one of the things that I'm really, really good at. I'm also really, really good at listening. I'm pretty good at cooking. There are other things I think I'm good at. I have memories that show me that I was good at something. And in every single instance, whether I was good at it or not, all of them have one thing in common. I tried. There are things that I haven't tried. I can't say that I'm any good at them, ‘cause I have no evidence, I have no experience. Skydiving for one. I'm looking forward to trying that once. Never been up in a float plane, but I'm getting ready to do that. Regardless of how many news stories I've seen of float planes crashing in the middle of nowhere. I still have to try it.

I'm not a, I'm not a, in any way, an expert Python programmer, but I still want to know how to do things with Python ‘cause I like it. And it's those things, the things that I like keep me trying. I don't buy lotto tickets anymore though. I tried that, never won. So, I decided to take those efforts and put them into something else. How much effort do you put into what you're doing? How you work? How you play? How you're there for or not there for other people? How much you're there or not there for yourself, two words. Cause you know there's a difference between your-self, two words and yourself, one word. We get to see yourself, one word. Only you see your-self. Two words. My experience has been, you know, if I make the inside better, the outside is better. Could you have the same experience? I don't know. Why don't you try, try, try, try. You never know until you try. That's what they say, right? I mean, the alternative is not being able to try, in which case, you're probably dead and not hearing this, or you're in a position where you'd like to try, but you're incapacitated. I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend. I really don't. Because, man, I never, ever, ever, ever take a dump on somebody who's trying. It's about the effort. That's what we control. And where there's a will, there’s a way, there's a way. There's always a way. Remember, Bruce Lee said, “Be like water. Water always finds a way.” Don't think so? Water helped build the Grand Canyon. It didn't always, it wasn't always that big. Water helps us survive. Ice is not water. Ice is ice. Steam is not water. It's steam. Both of them are made from water, but they're not water. Water is water. Here's the catch. Water changes so that it can go and do and be more things. Why can't you go and do and be more things? Hmm? Why can't you make those changes?

Here's a secret. You can. You can do anything. Don't believe me? Try. See what happens. Try until you succeed.

Thanks for hanging out for me today. I hope that you are more successful than not. I hope that you have a good rest of your day, night, whatever. And Lord knows if it's Wednesday, it's another edition of WANZOLOGY. Cool! Thanks for listening. I appreciate you very, very much.
And I hope you take care. No, how did the kid say it? Oh, they go. Bye.