EPI-67: Eddie Pepitone: The Insane Improbability Of Silver Linings
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I don’t truthfully know how I can shoehorn my night with Eddie Pepitone, my friend Dorian and I, into this episode’s message.
And I don’t think I care!
I just wanted to use this pic before I forgot about it!
HA!
(It’s my island! Braveheart reference!)
Here. have some more Eddie!
As you learn, ponder, assemble, rearrange, gain feedback, f*** up, and all, there will be silver linings galore.
They come about more often the longer you apply yourself to The Mission.
They will often not be immediate. But sometimes they will be freakishly fast after something you thought just ended the whole program!
My point here is, when everything breaks down, blows up or lands you in some awful situation you never saw coming, you are frequently experiencing what will later be seen as some of your largest sideways victories.
Everything you do will result in fights you don’t always win.
It’s only later that you discover had you won EVERY fight, you’d have lost the entire war!
These lessons can only come with time.
Patience, self-grace, retrospection and introspection will eventually reveal these things to be the gifts they always were.
Knowing this, as you build, takes the sting out of the losses when the silver lining is nowhere to be seen.
Trust me on this and you’ll get better at spotting the silver long before it ever hits.
It becomes a feeling. And it helps you survive the hard shots more easily the longer you go.
You just sort of come to this…understanding…with yourself and your process, to where even the sh***iest moments have a shimmer of goodness around their edges that you can already see coming.
Did that all just make sense? I hope so. I’m working on overtime here.
Transcript
Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!
Hello, fellow trauma survivors. This is Ken and this is episode 67. The insane improbability of silver linings. I’m struggling to find 1 in the present just with the act of making tonight’s podcast.
If you could see this cobbled together So as you may recall, Last week, the fucking clip that was barely welded had just a a hint of a welder’s attention in passing somewhere at the factory when they made the fucking thing that holds the the little floaty nest for my microphone so that it doesn’t pick up vibrations from the from the table or motion around it.
That broke free. So I haven’t yet gotten around to getting a new microphone.
I had another 1 at the ready but it’s a different kind of of microphone. It’s It picks up whatever’s in the room. The 1 I’m using here, you’re supposed to talk straight into the end of it.
And I’m kind of looking forward to getting rid of it so that I have more comfort in in speaking. I’ve been looking at podcasts online that have video attached, which I will have soon as well.
And I see some ideas for microphones that I’ll I’ll end up getting But for now, I found I pull III It occurred to me that I can easily fix the clip for the the nest mount if I just go get me some liquid steel, whoop some up, put a little couple dabs on there.
And it would’ve it’s like a weld. Done that those things don’t break. Well, in my shopping spree last night which I’m a terrible shopper.
I really am I find a liquid steel. And they have new versions now as well. And who knows why I didn’t just grab the shit I’m familiar with. I grabbed some of the new shit because Who knows?
It looked like it might be cleaner and neater. So and it premixes it inside 1 container, the old liquid steel 2 tubes of shit, you spurt them out together and then stir them up with a stick, kind of caveman style, kind of analog.
This other 1 I’ve I got was look nice and digital in the new age. Had a couple of tubes that combined into 1 and mixed the things at the same time with a plunger. Yeah. Well, I forgot about the nozzle that went on the front.
I’m thinking about tubes from the old days. I never even put the nozzle on the front. It’s still in the package. I’m squeezing them and 1 half of the stuff comes out without the other half.
And I end up putting that on the on the clip. And of course, that was only 1 half of the formula, so nothing nothing sealed. But I don’t know that till the next day, which was today.
Then I look at my situation and realized what an idiot I was and I put the little nozzle on and spurts some through to make to running right and mixing right and I attached some of that on.
Now that worked a little better but probably I didn’t do a good enough job of getting the the old stuff out of the way first and it it’s it’s grabbing on but nowhere near fast enough.
Should have been done already. It’s supposed to cure in an hour. It’s sort of cured and that was many hours ago.
So I’m like, okay, now I can’t mount the the nest to the boom arm. And I’m I’m starting to get hot. It’s these little things that get me hot, same as everybody else. And it occurs to me I’m like, well, I got that under microphone.
That’s got a nest. It’s just the the sound it it captures isn’t as rich. And lately for some reason something changed I can’t get the sound right on my finished product anyway.
So I’m like what the hell’s the difference? It’ll sound not good in some whole new interesting way when just play with it as we can and I’ll work with it however I can with the tools on hand and it’ll sound it’ll sound good enough.
The information’s the important part. There’ll come a time when I can get these things professionally produced and it’ll be out of my hands anyway. Just keep moving. Like I’m always telling you guys, just keep moving.
So I go find the the condenser microphone, which I bought a long time ago, I’m sure it’s still fine but it does not connect. It connected to my old laptop but it does not connect to my new iMac, the desktop mac.
There’s there’s no fitting to shove the old style USB plug into. And Now now now I’m going thermonuclear in my mind and I’m trying not to scream and yell and holler and and and almost doing it.
At least not at length. And because I can’t believe now I now I don’t have the right hole on the back of the computer. Now a hole’s stopping me.
I’m really starting to spin the fuck out. So I go through all my cables. You know how cables just kinda come to you and you got 7000 of them and you have no idea what they came with or how you collect them. Well none of them worked.
None of them matched. So I ordered a cable. Which will be here Wednesday, which does us no good tonight. So right now, I use the nest from the condensing my phone and I took the I think it’s called a shotgun mic.
I have that sitting loosely in that nest and I’m being careful to not touch the tabletop. And the way it’s designed, the cable that goes into the bottom of the microphone is is it sticks out further then the base for the nest is tall.
So it would hit the table. So I have this whole thing balanced on my morning ritual snack boxes. My dates and my crackers. It man, I’ll tell you what guys, whatever it takes.
Alright? That’s that’s the first lesson. Whatever it takes, just keep your shit moving. It doesn’t matter. In the long run, by the time any some people find me, they will never even have heard any of this old stuff.
This will have become old. You guys will laugh. You’ll be in the inner circle where we’ll laugh about the good old days. When Ken seemed to do this, you know, like he took a brick to the head and but but trooper that he is that he was.
He kept going with his special self Anyway, so this seems to be working. I got the headphones on and I’m not hearing any any movement out of the microphone.
So And as I sit down to get ready to record in my bad cave, which I spent a lot of money on and put a lot of work into to build myself with, dead mass material and moving pads and and a bunch of other stuff.
I hear on motor running somewhere. An electric motor running somewhere.
It’s it’s a nearby freezer in the house and something changed outside the room I did a little housecleaning and something moved that clearly must have eaten up that sound because I’ve never heard that in here before.
Now I can hear the basically it’s a refrigerator. Compressor. I can hear it running. I’m like you gotta be shitting me. That went off all the while I was fixing the microphone. And then as I get ready to hit record, it came back on.
I took a moment to be with that rage that micro rage out burst, no noise, no nothing. I just sat and stood. As I went to open my mouth to record, the town I live in has a fucking fire station, you know, air air siren thing.
I’ve hated it my entire goddamn life. I don’t see the point in today’s days and day and age with cell phones and at the very minimal pagers and you can find people.
Without blasting the entire fucking neighborhood awake with an air siren that can be heard miles and miles and miles. I just don’t care.
I’ve hated this thing my whole life. So, anyway, that’s what that’s what I’ve been dealing with just to get this episode off the ground. There’s other things, but, you know, we’ll have to just call it a call it a raging day there.
Now be the title, the insane improbability of silver linings, I can’t see it right now in regards to what I just shared. It’ll come later. The silver lining I’m mainly going to talk about is what happened recently with my mom’s house.
I shared earlier She cashed in an investment that was supposed to be something that would feed her and take care of medical bills or whatever into old age.
She cashed 1 of those in and it was substantial to pay for what ended up being an overpriced job by somebody that doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing.
It it gone wrong in so many ways and it it’s still happening. It’s gone over time. It’s been a hard thing to live with, and we just keep finding more and more things.
This contractor just doesn’t do right. I’m not gonna say their name. I’m not vindictive that way. I don’t think anything good comes from that. But I definitely won’t forward their name on anybody that might need what what it is they do.
I just ain’t gonna share I learned a long time ago when you talk bad shit about people, it it just comes back to haunt you some way. And if nothing else, it it’s just not a way to move through the world.
As pissed as I am, and there’s the the disc contractor’s given us plenty to be pissed about. As pissed as I am, I do not believe it was done in malice. I just believe they’re not good at what they do.
The the guys that are working here, I believe they’re working at their top capacity, top capability. It’s just that they shouldn’t be here doing anything period. Somebody with a higher skill set should be doing it.
You know what I’m saying? They’re wonderful. We really like these guys. And then I’m at work all the time. I’m not here to oversee something. I know a little bit about everything they’re doing, everything.
I can catch things as they’re going sideways but I’m not here to see it because I gotta fucking eat so I gotta go to work. For now, for now. Work is coming close to being closed out.
So the silver lining in this particular case is what how and when I went to look for help, my same contractor gave us a quote for the roof that turned out to be insane. I didn’t even know till I started asking around.
And I called at first I called a a local Veterans Services Agency and a government agency, and I knew they couldn’t help me. I knew they didn’t have any program that applied to our situation, and they did not.
But they had a private network of local business people and other people who cared about vets and just were at the ready to help vets. In a time of need. So that sprung into action.
I talked about that on the the last episode I think. It got it got big. I don’t feel like covering everything because it has been a lot. Matter of fact, if you go to gofundme dot com and just punch in Ken Jensen.
You’ll see me and with mom around my dad and the go fund me page I built. It explains the whole incredible story that this has turned into. It’s turned into just something so huge and so good with so many people giving so much.
And everybody working in concert to make sure that a a charity got involved and we have to we have to meet certain requirements to receive their funding my dad’s old Army unit kicked in big time and they wanted to help.
They’ve been wanting to help ever since he died last August.
20 23. Now, he died, or, yeah, it’s 20 23. He died in 20 22 in August. And they’ve been dying to do something for him because he gave so much to so many. It was really an incredible amount of giving he did that was just his nature.
He never wanted anything for anything. It’s just how he moved through today. So these guys, because they loved him so much, have been dying to help any way possible.
And and here I handed them a, you know, a project to do that very thing. So we’ve figured out a plan so far the the charity would only pay for stuff if licensed insured companies were doing the work.
Now in our personal network, we have retired master contractors who can do everything under the sun, a handful of them and most of the guys in this unit, there were mechanics, there were builders.
They did that in the marines. They’re they’re all guys that did stuff with their hands and and some of them own properties and stuff.
They know what they’re doing. They can do everything needs to be done. It’ll be done well, it’ll be done up to code, but they’re not professionals. It’s another 1 of them things.
There’s but, you know, don’t even get me started on on fucking with the government requiring people to have a registration to do the dumbest shit side note, did you know the government just for you to cut hair?
Just for you to cut hair. There’s something like a 6000 hour lab time requirement before they’ll let you cut fucking hair and anybody that cuts hair is already good at it. That’s why they want to do it for pay. So anyway, where was I?
Okay. So the silver lining with the with the house. So we figured out a way to have the charity pay for most most of the big things, the really big things. Because it was more than what we even originally started out with.
The major systems in the house needed to be taken care of. A generator had to be purchased, a whole house generator. Mom mom’s she’s 75. I don’t When I move to where I’m going next, I won’t be close by.
I don’t want her here with a small generator that got to pull out of the shed, hook into the house, pour fuel, switch a bunch of switches off of commercial power onto house power, and do that in the middle of a storm in the dark which is when it’ll happen.
No. I I just want I want when the 1 when the 1 power goes out and new power comes on. Maybe she pushes a button. That’s it. And I don’t want it to be enough to where it’s operating a kitchen light in the fridge.
I want the whole house up and running. I don’t want her to be insecure in any fashion. That’s now being taken care of. Then there’s a bunch of small projects where people are donating oh, everyone’s donating time, time and labor.
Nobody’s charging for any of that, even the stuff that falls out the purview of falls outside the purview of the charity’s requirements and mom’s gonna have a, you know, a completely rebuilt house at this point and sorry to say, once the guys are here, we’re gonna have him come and look at the stuff the first guy never did right and get some things tuned up the way they should have been done in the first place.
And the silver lining part here is if the first guy hadn’t overcharged us to the degree he did. None of this other project thing would have taken place.
And if far outweighs the cost incurred so far of dealing with this other company in time, stress and money. It’s it’s more Their shoddiness has more than than been repaid by the awesome thing that got turned on in response to it.
Now we’re still not happy the the problem is still is still taking place and has yet to be resolved but so much other good, you know, so so many other good things came out of it, it it it literally has been worth the bad things that preceded it.
You’re going to find this same scenario playing out countless times as you try to take your story pro and you have to take your story pro.
If your story is only a book, you might win But as I got taught a long time ago, a book by another company that kicked off my entire adventure that led you to me. The book is just the world’s best business card.
If you, if 2 people, you and someone else stand up in a crowd, you guys the exact same service to sell for the exact same value, but 1 of you wrote a book about it, who’s the audience gonna pick?
That’s what the good of a book is. You might do great with a book.
You might sell a lot of them, but it’s it’s just It it’s it’s not a reasonable win to achieve. The book is a tool to help market the rest of your business. You’re gonna write a book some of you and please do. You you you need to.
But, you know, don’t don’t think you’re gonna Stephen King it off the back of that. That’s that’s rare. Anyway, you’re going to work with software. You’re going to hire hire other third party services to help you do things.
That you think is gonna solve problems, and sometimes they will. But what’s gonna happen in the doing of whatever it is you’re putting together Things are not gonna be what you thought they are.
They’re not gonna mesh well with the things that already existed or they’re gonna they’re going to expose some other condition that needs to be solved that couldn’t be seen until you turn the new thing on.
And it’s gonna fuck up the whole plan and you’re gonna have to redo that part of it possibly to even include using the thing you just bought or you might have to rebuild half or all of your system.
Now that you see better what’s going on.
There’s a constant attacking the problem nibbling away at it, making some moves and then stepping back and getting feedback to see where you’re at and if you’re still right and if there’s a better way to go.
And every now and then, you’re gonna have to let go of pieces of your your plan, your dream, your project that it’s gonna become evident.
There are a problem. They either are outdated or something in use shifted to where this thing either no longer works or it doesn’t work the way you need it to work which is what happened to me.
When I wrote my book and used to be public about helping people fight bipolar.
I don’t help people fight bipolar directly anymore. I give away the system for doing it. And I’ll answer questions with examples from my life about how the the things I I promote help me. I won’t actually help anyone be bipolar.
I don’t want to for a number of reasons. And it’s just not I ain’t doing it. But If I hadn’t have taken that journey, I wouldn’t have become what I am now, which is helping other survivors of any type of trauma.
Take their story, turn it into a business so that both the world can find out about the story and benefit from it and you the creator, the storyteller can benefit for the work.
You need to get paid for the time and effort and expense you’re gonna lay out to share this story.
Even a church has a collection plate. Everything is a business. Everything has a bottom line. A war can stop because there’s no budget to keep fighting it.
Everything has a bottom line. Now you might be able to afford to just pay for things and not care and now you’re just you know you’re just running without truism Well, that’s great.
But then, you know, you and I aren’t gonna work together because I got nothing to add to that.
God speed, but, you know, you you don’t need me. And and that’s fine if that’s what makes you happy but that’s not why you’re listening to me.
And I personally in the telling of my story used it to show how I scaled up, how I now use it as a tool, the telling of my story is not It’s not the thing anymore.
It’s an item within the thing that helped bring the bigger thing to life.
I cannot wait to work with those of you that want to hit the ground running and get out your story big and loud to the world in every way possible in a sensible way in an affordable way And in a way that doesn’t turn you old before your time as well.
There is a way to do that. There is gonna be an expenditure, effort, and energy and an accumulation of stress that is unavoidable.
I haven’t heard of anybody that just sails swimmingly into their bright shiny golden coated future. It’s not a thing. But depending on how things pan out, you don’t have to stress and suffer for as long as others.
Hopefully, with what I’ve learned and what I share in this podcast and where you can see that I’ve been exposed to a lot pretty much entirely about my own hand and I’ve learned a lot of stuff the hard way.
And when you learn things the hard way, that’s when the lessons remain clear and crisp in your head and it allows you to direct others.
You’ll hear a lot of time you hear a lot of times where people say don’t make the mistakes I made and that you can hire me because this is what other people say.
Hire me because then I can keep you from making the mistakes I made. Okay. Potentially, but here I’m here to tell you.
Even with me helping you not make the mistakes I made, you’re gonna make some of them anyway because it’s it’s the part of the growth process of doing this. This. And you’ll make brand new mistakes I never even saw before.
And But I’ll be at your side to help recover and keep moving and make use of whatever whatever whatever bits are left after the initial bomb goes off, I’ll help you make use of whatever we find that’s still usable and still make sense and I’ll keep you going and I’ll keep you motivated the same way other people have done for me.
I’ll never shine you on. I’m never gonna sell you false bill of goods. I’m not gonna tell you this is gonna be easy when it ain’t.
I’m telling you to buck up and get ready for a very large fight about the only thing we really have a the only thing we might be able to mitigate is how bitter it does or does not get. And I’m good at that. I’m good at that.
I’m good at finding the silver linings. I do it all the time at my day job. It’s often just a matter of reframing. You look at the same thing. It’s it’s not that only 10 It’s how they put it. You know, it’s glass half full, half empty.
It’s it’s basically that. You can see the glasses, it’s already half of it’s gone or you can see it as there’s still half of it left. Anyway, that’s it. I’m tapped and I will talk to you guys soon. Oh, okay.
Yeah, let me add this. Please go to Apple Podcast and give me a great big fat huge 5 star review. Write something short and sweet. I need more and more people to find out about me. There’s some cool things happening in the background.
I’m I’m get I’m having people reach out to me to be a guest. And people want to be a guest on my show. That’s starting to pick up some steam and you guys will start hearing about you know you’ll see the direct results in this podcast.
As I build these things. I only get found when the machines are working in my favor. So that’s 1 way you can easily help me put the machines to work in my favor.
Go to Apple Podcasts and go to my find my site, punch in Ken Jensen, punch in bipolar action either 1 takes you to my site, scroll down and past the first handful episode.
You’ll see the review thing at the bottom. Give me a nice review.
If you’re not gonna give me 5 stars, I can’t worship. I’m not supposed to co worship, but don’t give me less than 5 stars. What the fuck does that? I wouldn’t do it to you. Alright, guys. Have a good week. Be well.