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Calvin Tilokee 0:09
Hello and welcome to midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin here as always with the homie Mikko, bringing that flavors here on a weekly basis coming to you live on YouTube and Facebook, send in some comments if they’re good. Let’s go respond to the show. This should be more in today’s episode is called mind games and we’re talking about mental health. And we have a special guest, Chris sweat from the depths of darkness to the light of success podcast. Joining us in the man cave all the way from Canada. We’ve got your favorite segments Chris Rock quote of the week. I don’t know that shit. I don’t like that jerk. And as always get off my lawn. But first, how was the week homie?

Mikko Miller 0:53
You know what, I just got back from Vegas last night. I know you were there as well. So I know we both hit up Vegas, but for two very different reasons. You know, mine was more of a bowling nature. Yours was more business trip ish. Nature. I guess you could say personal?

Calvin Tilokee 1:12
Yeah. How’s the tournament? How’d you do?

Mikko Miller 1:15
You know what I won’t know until probably end of July. August. I didn’t go that great. I didn’t bow that bad. I’m like, somewhere in between. So

Calvin Tilokee 1:24
so so for the audience. What’s, uh, what’s not so great. Not so bad score for Mikko? Yeah, let’s

Mikko Miller 1:30
see what people think I should be scoring before I tell you what my average is. And maybe we’ll do that next week. I’ll tell you guys what my average is. And see if people say hey, if you build the ad, he’d be good. You know, then people think you know, my average would be like, around 100 if I will look at that’d be good. Or if I bowled 250s and then you guys thought my average would like 220s. And you guys think I’m great. So we’ll see based on this face this body.

Calvin Tilokee 1:59
I mean, he definitely got a bowlers body. You know me? Yeah, those bodies.

Mikko Miller 2:03
Yeah, you know, that’s a shame, right? What the fuck? You know, it ain’t.

Calvin Tilokee 2:12
It ain’t a sumo body. But it ain’t a swimmer’s body. Somewhere in between. Right, moderately athletic.

Mikko Miller 2:20
We got a dad dad bod. athletically dad bod, I guess.

Calvin Tilokee 2:24
Right. Athletic dadbod where you know we were going to do something on weekends, but be gonna be icing up from at least Monday to Wednesday afterwards.

Mikko Miller 2:32
Oh, let me tell you I bowled nine games. I didn’t feel it. I bought Saturday morning. And then we took a break. Then we bowled six games on Sunday. I got to tell you, man, my knees my back. my abs are what’s left of them. My chest, my arm. All sore. All sorts. It’s crazy. It’s fucking bowling.

Calvin Tilokee 2:56
Yeah. See? That’s what I’m saying. Jesus Christ.

Dude, I went for like a short jog this morning. And I’m almost embarrassed to tell the story. But I went for a walk. And I was like, I was jog back. Right. And it really wasn’t that long, maybe three blocks, something like that. But I’m like, I’m just starting to get back into it. I went to the bathroom later in the day, and I bent down to put the toilet seat back down.

Mikko Miller 3:29
You got a cramp?

Calvin Tilokee 3:30
Yeah, my back like froze up for a second. So I had to like stop that second because I know if I went further that shit would have this duck.

Mikko Miller 3:39
Oh,

Calvin Tilokee 3:40
damn, man. I just three blocks like you remember, we used to just be balling all day. I don’t have to worry about none of that shit,

Mikko Miller 3:48
man. I’m long gone. I sneeze and I get a cramp on my rib.

Calvin Tilokee 3:53
Yo, I have to moderate my sneezes man. Like I can’t You can’t just sneeze at this age. You got to like, brace yourself before you die so you don’t pull.

Mikko Miller 4:04
God damn shame.

Calvin Tilokee 4:07
I’m telling you, man. Yeah. So you kids out there who think it’s sweet right now? Like take care of your body, man. Like Don’t be playing ball all day. And then don’t stretch. You know? Cuz that’s where I fucked up. Like, we I didn’t do any of that stuff.

Mikko Miller 4:20
And I’m never stretched out. So never stretched in cotton. No, not before last stretch. No.

Calvin Tilokee 4:27
No, it was just get out there and ball. Now. I’m paying for it. So all you kids out there make sure that take care yourself, man stretch foam roll limber up. Because Yeah, years from now, that shouldn’t gonna be cool.

Mikko Miller 4:47
It’s so goddamn true. Like people think it’s funny, but it’s so goddamn true.

Calvin Tilokee 4:51
Yes, it’s just the facts, man. It’s just facts. But um, yeah, before we get into it. I finished setting up my Man Cave here. In this case, I finally got my little loveseat I got an ottoman like, I’m good to go. And my wife said it looks like a dorm room. And and then I joke with her. I was like, all I need is a blacklight. And she’s like, what? Yeah. So I had to explain to her. So, yeah, she wasn’t sure she didn’t know it was called that. Oh, no, that’s okay. Oh, but when I explained that she was like, Okay. So I told her, like, Hey, I got to get the blacklight. And I was like, in college, you know, I had we had all the empty liquor bottles. I take the highlighter out. So for y’all, again, your kids listening. If you got a black line in your dorm room, what do you do? Your empty liquor bottles, don’t throw them out, fill it up in water, take out the middle of a highlighter, put it in the water, let it sit there for you know, an hour or so. Take it out. And then the black light glows. So I had Yeah, I had these all over the room. But you remember your artwork?

Mikko Miller 5:56
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So again, for you kids that don’t know a tide. If you take it and use it as a paint and paint your walls but tide during the day. It’s virtually invisible. Right. But when you turn the black lights on actually comes to life. It glows. So yeah, that’s it

Calvin Tilokee 6:16
right there. Yeah. So so the homie is very, very talented with his fingers. And he painted this on a wall in tide. So yep, I’m sure I’m sure it’s still there. Because it’s not like they’re washing the walls. I don’t think anybody’s gonna wash the walls. And great thing about it is you don’t see it during the day. You can’t see it unless there’s a black light on. So I’m pretty sure 20 years later, that should still sit in that cluster five on the walls.

Mikko Miller 6:50
there if you go to the shore and you stay in close to five. Upstairs, take a photo of it. I send you 100 bucks.

Calvin Tilokee 6:59
Yeah, for you. Take a photo tag. I’ll send it in 50 each 58

Mikko Miller 7:05
I’ll Venmo cash app, PayPal zelle. Whatever. I’d love to see that. That’d be awesome.

Calvin Tilokee 7:15
Hell yeah. All right. But let’s let’s get into it. We got a special guest tonight come into the man cave, my buddy Chris Swiech. This week we’re talking about mental health. Mental health is always important, but I think it’s become even more so during the pandemic and a lot more in the in the public conversation, which is great because it’s always been a taboo topic. And Chris’s podcast is all about that. So please welcome to the man cave, Chris Swiech. Hey, guys,

Chris Swiech 7:44
how’s it going? You know, and what rhymes with Swick? Guys? That’s what my son used to say to me all the time. You know, he’s like, they make fun of my name. They make fun of our last name. What rhymes with Swick?

Calvin Tilokee 7:58
It’d be like sem Mama.

Chris Swiech 8:04
No, but I truly appreciate you guys have me on the show, man. It’s an honor. You know, and nice to be on the other side of the mic in a sense, and not asking the questions and having the questions asked to me. No.

Calvin Tilokee 8:16
Yeah, yeah, that’s good, man. It’s always Yeah, it’s always interesting when you get you get that opportunity. So I’m happy to have you here. You know, just for so those of you who may not know Chris and I are both in a we’ll call it like Instagram engagement group for our podcast. So as I said, a bunch of other people in there. That why are you so obsessed? That’s how we you know, we met them as well who’ve been on the show with us about a month ago.

Chris Swiech 8:42
Those guys are great. I love Why are you so upset the fucking reels and things those two together? Hilarious.

Calvin Tilokee 8:49
They’re hysterical. They there’s they’re they came in and taught a man gave up their wild.

Mikko Miller 8:54
Oh, yeah. Well,

Calvin Tilokee 8:55
yeah, that that was a good time. We got to have them back on again. Very soon. For sure. That was a good time. Um, but yeah, I actually meant to mention that may is mental health awareness month. So Chris, and I’ve been planning this for a little while. And thanks again for your patience as I trekked all the way across across the country east to west. But tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to start your podcast?

Chris Swiech 9:22
Well, so you know, I’m Chris Swiech, like he had already mentioned, you know, I am the host of the podcast from the depths of darkness to the light of success. And at the end of the day, I just believe, you know, I say it over and over again. But I believe Everyone’s story is valuable. It doesn’t matter what walk of life you come from, you know, everyone deserves to have a voice and a platform to share it. And that’s why I created my platform, and it was more I had plans, you know, to do it a different way. But you know, those plans fell apart and that’s okay, such as life. But when the pandemic hit, I decided, you know, I’m just gonna give her and just do it. I had no fucking clue how to do podcasts. I didn’t have much money, you know, put together at the time, you know, I was just new into recovery, you know, and all that those types of things. So, a couple of my mentors had said, Chris, well, what’s it matter if you ask, you know, 10 friends to borrow 50 bucks each or just start a crowd fund. So that’s what I did just to get the mic, headphones and a few other things, a streaming camera, and a couple other things I needed in a way I went off to the races. But like I had mentioned earlier, before we hopped on the live here, you know, my me and my ADHD. So I was all over the fucking map for a while. Just scattered everywhere during the beginning of the pandemic. I wasn’t working. So I was just recording and going gung ho. And if y’all don’t know about people with addictions, well, I just, I just sort of, uh, just recuperate and just, you know, take on another addiction, which happened to be a podcast now, and other types of things. So I just had to get some time management in there. But here we are, you know, I’m 65 episodes in now. This Yeah. Today was 60, Episode 65.

Calvin Tilokee 11:05
And it’s awesome. Dude,

Chris Swiech 11:07
the reason I got into podcasting, those because I really wanted to start sharing my story as well. That was the whole plan. And it was gonna be based literally just around mental health and addictions, but I was like, You know what? Everyone’s story is valuable. It doesn’t matter if they have mental health problems, addictions, eating disorders, or whatever fucking, your story is, it matters to me. So I just I have everyone on the show. Now. It’s not just about mental health. You know, it is. I do ask mental health questions, but I haven’t every walk of life on this show. You know, I’ve had everyone from former crip gang members, people that have served life in prison, you know, athletes, artists, musicians, people that are having you know, autoimmune diseases, you name eating disorders, models, fuck my own brother.

Calvin Tilokee 11:55
Right. Okay. Okay, now which which one of those categories does your brother fall into? model he.

Chris Swiech 12:02
No, he suffered framings he’s on the west coast, so they probably do have those out there. You never know what kind of fetish is there on the west coast. Fuck some of the documentaries I’ve been watching lately.

Mikko Miller 12:22
We love it strange.

Calvin Tilokee 12:26
was warm. I hate people feed me out all the time. You got the fucking place to be man.

Mikko Miller 12:32
Can’t help but have one.

Calvin Tilokee 12:34
Exactly came go to Target like damn, she wants to just

Chris Swiech 12:38
but yeah, no, I just started. Like, I started the show, though to you know, share my story. And that’s when I started. Like, rearrange my, my Instagram account. And I just started, you know, going not going to town like oversaturated. But I wanted to share my story, my struggles. You know what it was like living with an addiction to drugs. You know, it wasn’t. It wasn’t easy, either. You know, 25 plus years of it. You know, since I was an early, early team before I was, I think it was 11 or 12. By the time I started using drugs and alcohol and stuff. But the first sip of booze actually, I think it was a little earlier because me and my brother had stole a bottle from the church and fucking a bottle of wine. We’re altar boy.

Calvin Tilokee 13:24
I mean, you got it from church. That can’t be too bad. I mean, God can’t be too mad about that. I mean, at least was black one. Yeah, it was

Mikko Miller 13:32
the holy juice. It was.

Chris Swiech 13:33
It was okay.

It was the blood of Jesus Christ. Right.

Mikko Miller 13:38
Right. Right. Yeah.

Calvin Tilokee 13:39
I mean, there’s not as not even alcohol anymore. Yes, right. Bi. So, if you want to get into it, tell us a little bit more about what things you struggle with in the past.

Chris Swiech 13:53
So I was I was abused, molested at you know, it was nine or 10 years old by a family friend the same age. But that’s what sort of started started everything. And you know, I can’t and it took me a long time I was 25 years before I even came out about it, you know, and that was what I just pushing that. It wasn’t just that, but that was the the core reason of it sort of thing that I started using drugs and alcohol was to suppress that those feelings, you know, and I just wanted to bury them and no one needed to know about this. But also it wasn’t doing me any good as well. You know, and that’s when I started sort of acting out in school. And it started with just marijuana and drinking. But then I you know, it progressed and progressed. I was on medication for ADHD. So I was on Ritalin, but I had found out after that, you know, it was a cheap man’s cocaine. Yeah, and you can you could use it that way and stuff like that and then just progressed further and further and to, you know, hard street drugs and, you know, in and out rehab once or once it was in my early 20s, that, you know, didn’t work out. I had had a child in my early 20s, and then broke them relationship fell apart. And I was clean for a little while during that time and just went back out for another 10 years, basically, until my mid to late 30s. Here.

Mikko Miller 15:20
Wow,

Chris Swiech 15:20
wow. But I but I but I think I’ve always wanted to, I’ve always been a people pleaser, in a sense, but in a bad way, but I know I want to help people. And that’s why I, you know, share these other people’s stories and share my story and just want to put myself out there. Because, you know, even if it helps one person, you know, at the end of the day, you’ve done, I feel you’ve done a good job, if you’ve helped one person, you know, either get off the drugs or, you know, hit someone’s nerve and, you know, woke them up.

Calvin Tilokee 15:52
Right? No, absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think, you know, it’s all about just reaching anybody, you know, you never know when that person is going to be ready to hear that message or who you may impact. So give me a lot of a lot of props for for doing what you’re doing, man. No, I

Chris Swiech 16:10
appreciate it. Thank you, man.

Mikko Miller 16:12
And being so open about it, that’s that’s the beautiful thing about like being open about it, you can kind of like put it to the past and move forward. Because a lot of people have a hard time admitting not just for themselves, but everybody else that, you know, they’ve abused drugs or been molested and things like that. So props to you, man. That’s great.

Chris Swiech 16:31
Thank you. Yeah, no, like, at the end of the day, you got to do it for yourself. And so many times, I tried to get clean. I wasn’t doing it for the right reasons. This time, I’m doing it for myself, yes, I have other things that I can lose along the way. Like, my kids, I probably won’t see them for a long time. If I go back home using I won’t have a partner, and things like that. But you know, I’m grateful for my partner that I’m with today that stuck by my side, my last relapse held my hand, you know, basically picked me up. But if it wasn’t for her, I honestly would be dead in a ditch probably or in a morgue somewhere, you know, meeting her in jail or something. But, you know, kudos to her Megan, for just helping me out and holding my hand along the way and pushing me to be a better version of myself as please, man.

Calvin Tilokee 17:13
So a question just that little story you just told, because I’ve heard a lot of women in the past someone I’ve known personally, who got a divorce because her husband was an alcoholic. And she said that, you know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t her place to have to fix him. And I’ve heard that a lot from from women, just just in general saying that, you know, it’s not their responsibility to fix their spouse or to fix the man and empowering sense like empowerment for women. Like it’s not your responsibility, which I have mixed feelings about. I mean, I don’t think the responsibility necessarily, you know, to fix another human being, but I do think if you if you’re married to somebody, right, that’s for better or for worse. I think you do have to walk that journey with them and try to help them somehow. So give me a little bit more about how that worked out for you and your wife. You know, why did she decide to stick around? Well, I

Chris Swiech 18:10
haven’t put a ring on it yet. Oh, geez, now you’re gonna go home.

Mikko Miller 18:18
Oh, yeah,

Chris Swiech 18:19
I know, it’s it’s all good. No one’s got you in trouble. No, no. When we get chirped all the time by buddies on Facebook or whatever, and I make a post with her and I just do it. You know, the today was actually a funny one. Some guy put a just Nike symbol and it said, but it was with a ring. He just keeps telling me just to do it. But

Calvin Tilokee 18:42
yeah, but I’m gonna listen to this and be like, yeah, Chris. She could be what happens right now. Yeah.

Chris Swiech 18:52
But it takes us but I think it’s there somewhere

Calvin Tilokee 19:03
on like panels over here.

Mikko Miller 19:04
Yeah, exactly. So so

Chris Swiech 19:06
well, she saw through like my addiction because the addiction or that monster that’s inside someone you know that suffering from addiction because addiction is a disease. I don’t give a fuck when anyone says it’s not something I was born with, or nothing. It’s a disease. But there’s a whole different person when they’re not on drugs, like I’m a totally different person when I’m high on whatever whatever. It’s cocaine crack, whatever the hell it is. I’m a totally different human being, you know, I caused a lot of destruction and stuff, but she saw through that and saw an awesome human being, you know, on the other side, I was struggling and it took a while like it was hell for the first few months. You know, especially coming off the dope sick if anyone doesn’t know what that is, is fucking hell on and it’s worse than being on the drugs to be quite honest, coming off them, you know, just withdrawing and stuff but She saw that pain and helped me through that pain. You know, she never, she never judged. That’s the thing that you’re going to be there as someone’s sounding board. And that’s what she was for me just my sounding board to let me get all this shit off my chest, this shit, this baggage I’ve been carrying for so many years. And she allowed me to do that though. And I felt safe doing that she gave me that safe place to do that. But you can’t always you know, you can’t go over and over again. I don’t think there’s another second chance for me though. Like that was that was my chance. You know what I mean? Like if I go relapse again, I, I like I said before, I lose a lot, like not just, I lose my dignity, but I also lose my partner, my kids, you know, the list goes on. Probably my job because I couldn’t fucking hold a job. For if my life depended on me. Like, I was just jumping from job to job, like for a long time to be straight up and honest, man, I’m an open book. And today, I have an amazing job in a career that I enjoy. Like I was saying before to Mikko like in sales, and I just thoroughly enjoy it. You know, like you said, sales isn’t for everyone, but I just found my calling, I guess.

Mikko Miller 21:05
Yeah, that’s good. Now. Can I just chime in real quick with like, a quick question, did you have to go through like a, like a rehab facility? Or was this more of just like a counselor when you when your girlfriend is kind of like, fighting this battle?

Chris Swiech 21:18
No, actually. So I originally was signed up for, like a rehab center. So that was looking around Ontario. In Canada, I don’t know if it’s a little different. In the States, there is private ones here where you can pay to go to and get in a lot quicker, where there’s also paid ones through the government, but you got to go on a waiting list. And those waiting lists are long. But I was willing to fly like, basically to the top end of Ontario in the province. I live in more than the biggest province in Canada. But it’s a it was like it’s a 24 hour drive, or the two and a half three hour flight, basically. Okay, not even, and sign up to go in there. Whatever shot down at the door, oh, you’re not local. It’s just there’s politics. You know what I mean? So the system’s fucked in a way to, and I’m not putting it down. There’s, there’s Awesome, awesome rehab centers here. You know, I’ve been to one before amazing. Another one, all the medication you’re on is a controlled substance, you have to be right off it. It’s like, well, I can’t come my ADHD medication actually helps me focus. And if I wasn’t on this shit, I wouldn’t be doing as good at work as I am, you know. So I was like, Well, I’m not coming off that you don’t want to see me off it. That’s just me. You know, maybe hopefully down the road, maybe I get other things under control and stuff. I’d love to get off. And that’s the only one I’m on now. You know, I’m off the antidepressants and any psychotic pills that I was on as well. But I don’t suggest anyone coming cold turkey have any psychotic pills like I did. I highly suggest seeking help from your doctor to do that though. I did the bass backwards and just did it quit cold turkey. What was not the right thing to do, though?

Calvin Tilokee 22:58
I can imagine.

Chris Swiech 22:59
Yeah. But no, I did this one I did it literally all myself. Like I Sir, I, I had the same phone number for 20 years. So I was like, Well, some fucking changes need to happen. So I started with my phone number. Because all of my so called friends, acquaintances, whatever you want to call them, you know, had this number, but they weren’t the right people that should be having this number. So I started there and deleted my whole phone sort of kept the numbers that I knew I wanted and could have without having any problems. And started from scratch with a whole new phone number and gave the phone number to the people that needed it surrounded my self with people. like minded individuals like myself, the wire that I was going to record na meetings, nerd contacts anonymous meetings for quite some time. But like everyone else, we had a pandemic cert sort of shut down by that, like I hear in the meetings, you know, it’s not just about going to meetings, it’s about the work you put in outside the meetings outside those rooms and stuff like that. And that’s, you know, everyday you just got to put the work in and stuff like that. It’s hard. I still, I’m doing therapy today still, you know, we do therapy as well. And I’m not ashamed to say that either because I’m open about that too. And it’s it’s good for you though, like it helps peel back those layers. For anyone that thinks therapy stupid. You’re fucking wrong. No, I’m

Calvin Tilokee 24:18
glad you brought that up because

Chris Swiech 24:21
like he thinks therapy is great.

Calvin Tilokee 24:24
Oh, okay. I got

Chris Swiech 24:30
his therapy

Calvin Tilokee 24:36
you know, whoever Katie West therapist is I don’t think we want to go to that person. You know, I you know, cardi looked like the kind of guy who just like his therapists like is like the Cookie Crisp dude. Like he was just talking to the cereal box that morning. And he got a good idea of like, yeah, therapy, you know, but I’m glad you brought that up because I started a couple of months ago, and I want to get into that, but we actually have our first ever question from the audience. Oh, word which is excited. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we’re gonna read it out for obviously the people who are just on audio. The question is, do you feel one can be successful at overcoming addiction without outside support? being your spouse, your friends, etc? And to that, how do you actually do it for yourself and not for your family? Or kids?

Chris Swiech 25:28
Yeah, I think they, you know, they can be successful without the outside help and support. But if you don’t go, I feel that if you just like, if you’re just doing it on your own, without the help of anyone, there’s a really high chance you’re going to go back out, because you’re not surrounding yourself with the people like yourself that are trying to get clean or have clean time. And stuff like that. You got to, it’s all about people, places and things like you have to take out all those aspects and change your whole scenery. It’s not about a geographical change. I tried the geographic geographical change by myself. It didn’t fucking work. I’ll tell you that. Because you can find drugs anywhere in the world, right?

Calvin Tilokee 26:13
Yeah, I guess.

Chris Swiech 26:14
But you know, and I do it for myself, because I have to learn to love myself before I can show love to all these other people around me that I’ve heard and stuff like that. If I don’t love myself, How the fuck am I supposed to show them love?

Mikko Miller 26:27
Right? It’s true. Yeah, you know, my dad was a chronic chain smoker. I mean, I’m talking about a shoe closet full of cool mentals a closet full like cartons and cartons and cartons, and he would smoke cartons. And growing up, it was a running joke in my family that every photo that my dad took from like his late teens till he, I believe he was like 35, when he quit, he had a cigarette in his hand in every frickin photo. So he was just addicted to smoking cigarettes, he always had to smoke. But it goes to show that, you know, it also depends on individual because he went cold turkey, we bought a house in Maryland, my mom said, You’re not gonna smoke in the house. You know, secondhand smoke was becoming big, a lot of, you know, research and development about like how secondhand smoke can cause like lung cancer to your children, you know, over like the course or like the years of you smoking. So my dad just one day decided to just stop smoking. And he was able to do that. But that’s rare, you know. So it’s also on the individual too. But I agree with Chris, if you don’t surround yourself with good people, and the people that are like wanting you to succeed and overcome the addiction, you’re going to fail almost every time. Because you can find drugs everywhere you turn everywhere you go, someone’s doing it. So you’ll find it anywhere.

Chris Swiech 27:42
No, it’s so true. Like at the end of the day, like you have to do it for yourself. Because there’s no one else you don’t I mean, you’re your number one supporter, you’re your number one fan. I have tons of supporters out there behind my back, you know, and everyone, but I have to be my number one fan and every day.

Calvin Tilokee 27:59
Yeah. And it’s almost like they say, you know, because you’re you’re setting a goal, right? And they say You’re not serious about about your goals until you tell somebody else, because that person can now hold you accountable. You’ve put it out there. So you got to deliver. So I think it’s it’s tied into that kind of a mindset as well. Yeah. So wanted to get into therapy, you mentioned therapy, which I think is, is great. And last week, I get off my loan segment was all about toxic masculinity. Right? And I’m really glad that you’re here talking about this, because I feel like a lot of people especially men, don’t want to go to therapy, would think that it’s it’s soft, or something like that. And admittedly, I started a couple of months before I moved, and it was mostly tied into my new business, right? So it’s a completely different mindset. I went from being an employee most of my life, to now working for myself. And the only best way I could describe is I felt stuck. I felt like I’d like there was so much more I could bring out of me that just wasn’t coming through, you know, I was capable of so much more and months prior, my wife had mentioned it to me casually say, Hey, have you ever thought about it like that now, and it was it wasn’t really that I didn’t think it was good. My issue was, I didn’t think my problems were big enough to need therapy. I always thought like, people who go to therapy are people who you know, like yourself, Chris, who were on drugs, you know, and had more quote unquote, serious problems. And that’s, I’m completely discounting myself, right. Like, you know, to me, it’s like, you have an issue. Yeah, if it’s important to you, it’s important. But my thing was, oh, my issues aren’t that big. I shouldn’t I don’t need therapy, I should need it. And then months passed, and I’m like, still in the same space. And I finally asked her the question I said, Hey, you know, what, can you give me the number and she’s then she starts talking By talking about and I got really quiet. Because I got emotional, I actually started crying because I finally admitted to myself that I needed I needed the help, and was brave enough to open my mouth and say it. And just getting over that hurdle might have been the hardest thing about therapy, because it was finally like, you know what, I need the help. And I got to do it. So that’s where I started. I know your reasons were a little bit different. But can you you know, tell us a bit about what you’ve learned through through therapy?

Chris Swiech 30:32
Well, I have learned quite a bit like whether, you know, I’m still working like, I’ve only started about probably two maybe going on three months ago, we go back, you know, we started couples therapy, to sort of rekindle re spark that relationship. But the worst thing for me like I as an addict, we’re all selfish fucking people, it was about worried about me, and the drugs like I didn’t have. And still to this day, I have a hard time with empathy. I’m being straight up and fucking honest with him. And you know, it takes guts to say I’ll admit, like, I’m the worst with empathy. So I’m learning communication, trying to be more empathetic, like, I go to the library, and I’ll get books out and be reading them like on how to be more empathetic in the world, you know, how to be more present, just have more self awareness. So what I have learned a little bit, the circle of control, you know, you can only control your actions and reactions, you can’t control everyone else around you. Yeah, setting up boundaries, those types of things. Um, lots of these things. And even with family members, I’ve set up some boundaries and stuff like that, too, just that I have to have my own mental sanity. And what else like communications II key one, how to how to deal how to basically be a father, you know, like, because for so many years, I was, uh, I was there for my kids meant, like, physically, but mentally, I wasn’t checked in a lot of the time. Because I was using or abusing, you know, or whatever. You know what I mean? So, presently, I wasn’t there for a lot of it, you know, mentally, but today I am and I’m grateful that I can do that. And I can, you know, My son will call me up or my daughter, I have no problem. We can go get ice cream. You know, I’m deaf bullshit. Make up a bullshit story because I need my money for my drugs. You know, I was that selfish that I would rather go get drugs than get them an ice cream. I’ll be honest.

Calvin Tilokee 32:31
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, this is real, real talk, man. And, you know, again, really glad that you’re, that you’re sharing all this stuff, because a lot of people wouldn’t be brave enough to do it and talk about these things. So I guess a question for you. Like, have you? Have you adopted any new habits during the pandemic, like has any of this changed for you since the pandemic?

Chris Swiech 33:00
Well, I have like, the beginning of the pandemic, like that’s when I started my new career. Well, that got put on a halt really quick. And then I had the whole summer last all last summer, I started the podcast, and doing all that. So I did form some new habits like I do, I have been getting back into the gyms were opened up, now they’re fucking closed, and they’re opened up, then they closed again. So my partner Megan started working out at home and got a nutrition coach and stuff like that. She pushed me to get back into the gym, she bought me a gym membership for my birthday last year, and got to use it a handful of times. And then like I said, Everything got shut down. Then we started going again, you got to shut down. But she started these home workouts. So I get up every morning and I’ve been working out on her schedule sort of thing. So that started in the last couple of weeks now back into I was hard to do it from home and other you know, I’m trying to well I got a fucking cut this one out those smoking that’s killing everyone, where you were just saying that but that’s, that’s like the last thing and it is hard, you know, but but I have other habits. I’ve been picking up on reading again, I love reading I got back into reading over the last year. And I’m just not reading garbage though either like but now I’ve learned that if I want to keep this knowledge that I’m reading in the books, I have to go back so like doing one thing at a time on the plate and practicing fucking patience. That was one of my that’s one of my words for this year being patient patients all around whether it’s with my kids, my partner, or with my ADHD, like I said, I I sometimes fill up my plate so much and don’t know which way to go and just start picking on the whole thing. So I tried to finish you know, one project at a time or one book at a time and not going and getting a whole stack of books like this now.

Calvin Tilokee 34:51
Right? I do. I do. Gotta go back to what you said at the top of your answer there about your girlfriend getting you a gym membership. That’s what I’m getting. That only a female could get a male look like the other way around. Hey, baby, happy birthday. Happy birthday. Here’s a jacquelene membership.

Chris Swiech 35:12
Well, I did show interest and I wanted to get back into the gym but it is your right there though let’s shit if we went and bought anything to do with working out for him.

Calvin Tilokee 35:21
I used to be even even if my wife was saying, Hey, you know want to work out and not and I buy her a fucking gym membership, bro. Yeah, that would be problems that would be proud.

Mikko Miller 35:37
Yeah, it’s not a conversation, a lot of my house

Chris Swiech 35:40
and going to therapy that was a long time coming. Like, if anyone out there is listening. If you don’t like the therapist, you’re going to find a fucking another one, find one till you find one that fits with you. You don’t just have to pick the first one. I’m probably this is probably like my, and I can count I can’t even count on all my hands, my toes and fingers. Like how long it took me to find a good therapist. And I finally found a good one. But the reason was, it was everyone’s worried about money. They’re not fucking cheap. I’ll tell you that. They’re not cheap at all. 100 and 150. A session is not cheap, it does add up. But the kicker for this one was, she’s not worried about money. She’s worried about you know, helping the individuals that she’s helping. And it’s just you pay as you can. She’ll give you a little nudges an email saying Hey, your bills this big it’s but it’s basically instead of going to a bar, I got a tablet a therapist now. Right? But but for a good cut, you know what I mean? To sort of Wait, but I as long as you listen, though, you have to listen. And you know, don’t just leave the shit at the doors. You’re not it’s not gonna do any good. If you don’t practice what you’re listening, you’re learning at therapy there. I did that for a long time, too, and wondered why it didn’t help because I didn’t fucking listen.

Calvin Tilokee 36:53
Right? Right. But

Chris Swiech 36:54
you got to find out, though, you got to find the fit for you though, too.

Calvin Tilokee 36:57
So how does one do that? That was my question. How if a person was looking for to start therapy, how would you define the right therapist?

Chris Swiech 37:05
Well, depending on what you’re going through, like, there’s so many the internet’s endless, you know, the rabbit holes are endless on the internet, you can either find good shit, batshit, neutral shit, whatever. But do some research because there’s like apps out there for therapists now that I forget, I honestly can’t remember the exact one that this other therapist that we’re trying to get into. Sent me but it was basically like a list of directory of therapists that are assigned like that have registered for this app or whatever. And you can just sort of go through and see what they specialize in and send emails and it just happened to work out just perfect. And once she said, You know, this is the way I operate on the pay thing as well. I was like, This is awesome. Like, I don’t have to stress about money, every time I go, I don’t have to make sure I have that 150 we just pay it in chunks. When we have the money, you know what I mean? Is that’s one less thing to stress about. Every time you’re going into therapists office, I don’t have to stress about money. So I actually feel comfortable when I go in there. You know, I’m not worried about having to hand over $150 each time we do pay down the bill. But you know what I mean? I’m not,

Calvin Tilokee 38:14
I don’t have to strike. Again. It’s not like, you know, she’s she’s not like telling you the wrong shit. Because you haven’t paid you’re smoking in front of us. You know what, Chris? It really ain’t that bad. But he’s a beer on the way.

Chris Swiech 38:34
Yeah, but but just like, find one that fits for you. If then you can just be honest with them. If it’s not working for you just say hey, I don’t think we’re you know, you’re the right fit. I’m gonna go find another one or ask if they have someone they can recommend you to you know what I mean? Like, all right, but just because find one to the right fit comes along.

Mikko Miller 38:53
And, you know, you got to figure out if you like the type of therapist that likes to ask you a bunch of questions, and have you answered them, or the type of therapist that wants to just sit there and listen, and let you just vent out. Or the type of therapist that gives you books to read or activities to do or I mean, there’s, there’s so many different ways that therapists can go and you got to figure out what you’re comfortable with what you’re willing to do. And sometimes, even the ones you’re not comfortable with might be the best ones for you, because they push you out of that comfort zone, you know,

Chris Swiech 39:23
and that’s what that’s what I need is pushing out of that comfort zone, whether it’s in my career, or you know, my mental health and stuff like that, like me sharing all these things, like for the longest time, I would go to recovery meetings and just sit in the back like a fly on the wall and wouldn’t say shit, and wondered why I wasn’t you know, going anywhere and recoveries because I wasn’t getting anything off my chest either. I would just show up and sit down and say nothing, keep my mouth shut and then leave after the hour meeting sort of thing but I didn’t really get anything from it until I started sharing openly and honestly about what was going on with me. That’s when I started Getting stuff out of it, you know, because I was becoming more of a person as a whole. And just getting shut off my chest. And it’s nice when you get it off your chest too, huh?

Calvin Tilokee 40:11
Yeah, definitely. There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve talked about it and I think this podcast has been therapeutic because there’s a lot of shit. I get off my chest every week, you know, to me. So you’re doing this for a good six, seven months now. But yeah, I mean, you definitely discover a lot about yourself. I mean, we all I don’t care who you are, you’re all bringing something through from your childhood, you know, and these are things that you have to be aware of. And, you know, for me, changing the mindset from being an employee, to being a business owner is those are two different mindsets, right? I mean, I grew up where, in order for me to be able to drive the car to school, you have to get straight A’s. So that teaches you, you know, you got to put in the work in order to achieve the goal. And you know, I came home once with an 89. And it was like, a long ass compensation. And I’m like, yeah, I’m 1.0 like, What the fuck, you know? But yeah, that teaches you like, Listen, if you don’t hit it, you don’t hit it. You know? It’s like, the old analogy if you if a coke cost $1 and you put in 99 cents, guess what? Yeah. Oh, cool. Right, you know, no pun intended, Chris. We talked about

Chris Swiech 41:30
from my partner main, she said, stop swearing so much to me. I like to drop f bombs

Calvin Tilokee 41:35
around. Oh, man. I listen into the wrong, the wrong podcast, but that

Chris Swiech 41:43
there’s, she’s listening, right? It’s not me, honey.

Calvin Tilokee 41:47
Right, right.

Chris Swiech 41:50
It’s like, a mindfuck podcast.

Calvin Tilokee 41:58
Oh, all right. But we got to wrap up this segment with one final question. And I’m stealing it from something you asked one of your guests on your show. What is one thing you would change in the world? If there’s one thing I could change? You know, I’ve heard the answer. But it’s me as well. Just

Chris Swiech 42:16
people showing more love and compassion instead of all this fucking hate out there. You know, spread love, not hate. And the story. I like,

Calvin Tilokee 42:28
mother. But what about you Mikko? This, let’s go around the table on now.

Mikko Miller 42:32
It probably be the same Massa. But just to kind of give a different answers to not try to be a copycat and whatnot. Maybe the division between the ultra rich in the poor, shouldn’t be so drastic. When you have, you know, five to 10 people that can feed for 500 million people with a quarter of their salary. And you see the four or 500 million people struggling and starving. Like, it’s not right. I’m not saying the rich are obligated to feed the poor or the middle class or whatever. But if you have the means why not share it? Even just a little bit, Bezos can feed all of the hungry people in America, if he chose to do it, you know, or at least give them the opportunity or the business or the skill or the jobs to get them off their feet. You know, there’s ways to do it. And right, what $140 billion, or whatever it is that he’s worth? What are you gonna do with all that?

Calvin Tilokee 43:30
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’m more aligned with with what you just said, as far as I think you have to teach people. You know, you hear all these stories about people that get a ton of money, like they hit the lotto, and then they’re broke in two years. You know what I mean? I think you’ve run into a lot of that. But yeah, I agree with you. I think people are they say, you know, to whom much is given much as expected. You know, I think I think you should you should do with what you have,

Mikko Miller 43:56
but it’s true, you have the power to change the world. I mean, Elan Musk has the ability to change. We were talking about Dogecoin like, you know, two weeks ago last week, and he has the ability to you know, make the number so that thing fluctuate percentages and make people millionaires out of it, and you have that kind of power. Use it for something. know, something positive.

Calvin Tilokee 44:16
Cool. Well, for me, it would just be it’d be people just got to talk to each other man. Like, I’m so tired of this shit, where everybody’s so binary now. You know, like anybody could be like, I like midlife crisis podcast. Like, I fucking hated it. You know? It’s like everything. Everything’s got to be like, Oh, you know what? I think LeBron had a good game last night. Oh, so you say he better than Jordan. Yes, like

Mikko Miller 44:41
opposite ends of the spectrum. Right.

Calvin Tilokee 44:44
It’s like Calm down, you know, to be like, I just had an opinion on one thing like it, you know, life isn’t black and white. And people try to make it so all the time. And yeah, I can’t stand it. And it’s been a big part of what we do here on the show. We try to just kind of tackle things from all angles. You’re right. So

Mikko Miller 45:01
yeah, make fun of it. But if we can,

Calvin Tilokee 45:04
yeah, of course, I mean, I make fun every day.

Mikko Miller 45:11
You know, one little one little tidbit that every time like, we talked about therapy, and you know, speaking on therapy like that. That scene from half baked always comes to mind when you’d like you in here for some fucking marijuana,

Calvin Tilokee 45:28
marijuana

or something for coke?

Mikko Miller 45:36
I say see them?

Chris Swiech 45:51
Go watch that movie again. No.

Calvin Tilokee 45:55
Fantastic, perfect. All right, now it’s time to for us to get into the segments. And we got Chris hanging around with us in the man cave, so Mikko will let you set it off this week for I don’t like that.

Mikko Miller 46:12
I don’t like that joke. Mine’s actually not a physical person. My joke of the week is the city of Las Vegas. Here’s like, So recently, I’ve been to Vegas, like we all talked about. We’re in Vegas this past weekend and Las Vegas. for dollars. He’s Bowling for dollars. I was I really would literally they have removed the masking policy. If If you are vaccinated, you know, but the casinos won’t ask, they won’t ask you. They are honoring the, you know, timeless, foolproof tradition of the honor system. Basically, if you’re not wearing a mask, there’s the assumption that you’ve been vaccinated already. Therefore, you don’t need to wear it and you’re freely to walk around to casinos and frolic with the folks. And it’s like, yeah, it’s so goddamn stupid because no one’s going to tell you that they’ve been vaccinated, especially if they don’t believe in COVID to begin with, right? Like, right, I’m pretty sure Billy Joel Jim, Bob, whoever the fuck His name is. Who doesn’t believe in COVID is gonna come up to you and be 100% honest and tell you that? Hey, I haven’t been vaccinated. I can’t be this close to you. You know, I mean, like, Great policy, Las Vegas, you push back the country another five fucking years. Is it the COVID ice ages?

Calvin Tilokee 47:27
Literally? Yeah. You know, and California following suit was there to man. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s crazy. Is my thinking. While COVID is like, Oh, yeah. Go about to come back. Like Reggie Miller on the Knicks, and that fourth day was dead. And also

Mikko Miller 47:56
the weather gets like this. My COVID just pops up.

Calvin Tilokee 48:00
pop up.

Mikko Miller 48:05
Oh, what about you?

Calvin Tilokee 48:07
Alright, so I this one. This is a new one. This is a first for the show. My jerk this week is one of our fans. Who has been shouted out on the show before by the name of Nicole Gallagher. Um, oh, she

Mikko Miller 48:22
is using government. Okay.

Calvin Tilokee 48:24
Oh, yeah. I mean, we used it when she got the shout out. So that’s Don’t be you know. Hey. Good. Yay. Keep the we consistent on this show. Last week, Nicole decided to correct the grammar of one of my memes. And that is about the height of jerkiness. Okay, I was about as big of a jerk as you can fucking be. It’s a fucking meme. it to me, like literally, it’s a joke, right? There’s no place for grammar. And this is not the fucking shgs I’m not writing a thesis. I’m not on an interview. It’s a goddamn meme on Instagram. Get over yourself. Okay. Nicole, get a fucking life. Shit.

Mikko Miller 49:14
To come out of his mouth. I’m gonna be pressed.

Calvin Tilokee 49:20
You know? I mean, seriously. And you know what, you know what gets me to is if I did that to her. It’d be called mansplaining. Right? We got a whole term for that. That’s in the dictionary now because apparently, men are the only people who do this. Well, I got proof that it ain’t just men. Okay. Keep your goddamn opinion to yourself. Give us fucking social media. Now, if I do that shit at an interview. Feel free. Okay, but Nicole since I know you’re a good sport, and you know you’re the homie since but you think you’re so smart. come on the show live and we’ll do a grammar rodeo and a spelling bee and we’ll see what’s fucking smart. Since clean You think you just have this big brain? You’ve got to share all your knowledge with people, you know, share with the world.

Mikko Miller 50:09
Take the challenge. Take the invite. come on the show.

Chris Swiech 50:16
Just once. Just

Calvin Tilokee 50:18
once directly remind me that that clip and don’t be a menace that you won’t do my homework if you think you’re such a smartass.

love ya Nicole but that was that was a jerk move. All right, Chris, who’s

Chris Swiech 50:40
gonna drag this week? Well, my jerk he’s been going on for a long time. He needs to get the fuck out of the government in Ontario here. Doug Ford, who’s the premier, which would be equivalent to a governor of the states. Right? He needs to open up the goddamn golf courses. He’s a fucking jerk. We’re the only ones here like the whole country. We’re the only ones that can have golf courses open. Even in the States. I’m just talking about none with it.

Calvin Tilokee 51:08
Yeah, why is that? I mean, golf

Chris Swiech 51:10
is like apparently it’s not a social distancing sport.

Calvin Tilokee 51:14
It’s about the social distance. You got to be close to him off. I got a golf. He’s supposed to be

Chris Swiech 51:27
like his. He’s worse than his brother, his brother. You know? I shouldn’t say that. His brother is passed away. No, but his brother was awesome. Even though he was the mayor of Toronto. caught smoking crack on video. Do you remember that was Jeff but

Calvin Tilokee 51:42
Yeah, we do.

Chris Swiech 51:44
I think it made it all over the world. But that’s his brother, Doug. Doug for that. That’s his brother, the T. Who’s now running our goddamn province.

Calvin Tilokee 51:56
Smoked Okay, got this job back.

Mikko Miller 52:00
smoke crack daddy’s job back.

Calvin Tilokee 52:02
Get caught smoking crack at McDonald’s. You can’t get your job back. Trust me around the Happy Meals.

Chris Swiech 52:11
Well, the good thing. At least they won’t be eating it.

Calvin Tilokee 52:18
Because they got no teeth. Yeah. Get Oh, I love it. I love it. All right, now it’s time for. So this is our This is our trivia segment. Oh, and anytime we have a guest, the guest is automatically in the hot seat. So Mikko will be asking you a trivia question. If you know it, give us the correct response. And we will congratulate you on your big brain. If you do not know it, you got to look into the camera and say I don’t know that shit. keepin it real

Mikko Miller 53:05
crack up every time we do that shit. Alright, Chris. As we all know, it is the month of May. And it is, you know, mental health awareness month. So my question to you is, there are other types of awarenesses that are celebrated in May. Can you at least give me one more?

Chris Swiech 53:32
Cinco de Mayo

Calvin Tilokee 53:35
tequila awareness there?

Chris Swiech 53:44
Was there was I actually just saw one posted the other day on Instagram. Well, I’ll tell you right now, I don’t know that shit. Unless I get to go on Instagram and cheat.

Mikko Miller 54:01
There’s a few. Hold on, see if I can remember better sleep awareness. There’s family support awareness. And the other popular one was teenage pregnancy prevention. Awareness.

Chris Swiech 54:15
How do you prevent that?

Mikko Miller 54:20
Double strap.

Calvin Tilokee 54:28
Oh, boy. That’s bad. I love it. Love it.

Mikko Miller 54:33
Yeah, there’s, I guess every month has like, five, six

Chris Swiech 54:36
every week or every day of the week has one? No, I think Yeah. Is there?

Mikko Miller 54:40
Yeah. Probably.

Calvin Tilokee 54:43
Tons of social media holidays is like yeah, every week at least.

Mikko Miller 54:47
Yeah, that’s insane. That’s insane. But Okay.

Calvin Tilokee 54:52
Cool. Cool. All right. Well, now it is time for a favorite segment. Which is where we just complain about shit that old men complain about. So, let me go kick it off and Chris will let you go last you kind of get the vibe. Sounds good. Alright.

Mikko Miller 55:13
My get off my lawn this week is a personal favorite of mine. It’s guys and girls on Instagram or any type of social media who uses a picture and a post and uses hashtag booty gains and have no booty. That’s the games man. You should have seen it before. No, no, no. See, gains gains means you’ve gained something you went from, huh? To Hmm? Right. Like you’ve gained a little something.

If your back extends to your quads, or your quads go all the way up to your back. You don’t have a booty, right? And that’s okay. Keep working on your squat. Keep working on getting the booty. Just don’t go using hashtag booty gains. It’s one thing to have a healthy dose of self esteem. But be fucking honest with yourself. That is not a booty yet. That is just your back

Calvin Tilokee 56:30
and get off my feet to I don’t want to

Mikko Miller 56:32
see not against flats I’m not against any but don’t don’t don’t call it booty gains. Don’t Don’t do that right.

Calvin Tilokee 56:42
Yeah, have some that’s that’s like me going to the gym twice doing six setups and be like yo app gains for the summer. It is like, you got to have something to show first. Y’all wouldn’t like it if we did it. Yeah, right, right.

Mikko Miller 56:59
There was actually another one but it was like a little worse. It was a someone put gray sweat pants should be worn by men with penises versus weenies in acid like, Mike, like, holes in this. But I’ll tackle that next week. I can’t get on that one this week. I’ll talk next week.

Calvin Tilokee 57:23
Tune in next week is Mikko tackles weenus.

Alright, so mine is um, I’m selling, selling my house back east. Our condo that we moved out of right. So we got an offer right before we left. Within a week, we were in contract and everything. And everything’s going well. Now, I’ve never sold the house anything before. So maybe I’m going to say this get off my lawn of people and be like, Oh, that’s normal. I don’t know. But it’s all new to me. And the people are being fucking annoying. Right? So it was like, we leave, then they want to set an appointment. They want to come in and like measure things. Okay, fine. No big deal. We’re not living there anymore. Come in, measure, get your furniture, whatever, I don’t care. Right, then they want to set appointment to hear how loud the AC unit is. Why the fuck didn’t you do that? At the same time, though. Okay, let you rock with that too, then Oh, they want to come in and visit but they want to come at night to see what the garage looks like. We’re like, okay, timeout Hold, hold the fuck up. Right? You don’t need to come in the house to do that. Show up anytime you want. And look at the garage. Okay, you need to come in here for that. So we dealt with all of this shit. Most of that happened. Actually, before we left. The thing with the measuring happened afterwards. And we were like, nobody even asked us if they could do this, you know, but they set an appointment with our realtor, they did it like, whatever. Last week, when I’m in Vegas, I get a phone call from the building supervisor. And he’s like, hey, I want to go into your apartment. The person from the management company called something about the windows. Before I could even call him back. I saw that he went in because I get a notification when the keys go out. So I’m like, What the fuck? You’re just going in here. Without you know any permission, it should like what the fuck is going on? So I call back. I’m like, why is the building management company even involved in this? Turns out the buyer is like harassing everybody. Because when they went into the last time that we had tape on the windows, so they’re like, oh, what’s wrong with the window descend that that, uh, they’re supposed to be going through the realtor for that. And we could have just answered that question. You know, wonder why the fucking tapes on the window because there was drafted. That’s why and we moved in there. So that tastes been sitting there for 17 years. As soon as we move then we’re like, oh, there’s a draft we put some tape that’s it. Because I when I ended up speaking to the Building super. I’m like, do you think I would have lived in an apartment for 17 years when something’s wrong with the window and not told you? Yeah, no. Right. So get off my lawn with like this. You don’t get in and out privileges. This isn’t fucking valet parking when you buy it when I get the check for the condo, you could go in and out as many times as you want until then get the fuck out of my house.

Mikko Miller 1:00:29
sound better?

Calvin Tilokee 1:00:31
Yeah, man The fuck? Shit. Oh my god. Damn, I was like, What if I was still living there?

Mikko Miller 1:00:38
And like the garage. Took me up. I want to see a garage from nighttime. That’s a weird ask request.

Calvin Tilokee 1:00:45
Yeah, it’s weird people anyway.

Chris Swiech 1:00:50
Oh, yes, Chris. So mine, you know, lately, and it’s been going going for a long, long time, but I’m seeing it pop up a lot and a lot more especially on you know, tick tock Instagram. Where are the fucking find all these filters these days? But why the hell do fucking women got to make their lips so fucking big? In real life, they aren’t that big. But you know what I mean? Like, just cut the filters out and get the fuck off my lawn with those lips. Because I know they’re not real.

Calvin Tilokee 1:01:33
Whichever, which you do. Yeah, you and Mikko got to get the social media get on this

Chris Swiech 1:01:41
other way to just one more though. But the other day I was like going through my feed and saw this woman. I’m not gonna shout out the name because I’m not doing that. But just in particular, I was like, No.

Calvin Tilokee 1:01:53
Is it one of the girls and why are you so obsessed? No, it was you could shout them out.

Mikko Miller 1:02:00
Would you say would you say she’s she? Well,

Chris Swiech 1:02:03
she’s one of the ones that does filters. But she has her daughter. I swear it’s probably no more than 10 years old and this skimpy bikini and her in a skimpy bikini posting pictures on social media. And you wonder why you get messages from creeps like that. When you post shit like that though. You don’t need to post it like that. I post shit about my kids. But, but you don’t I mean, that’s sensible. Like your daughter isn’t? I’m not looking. They’ve just popped up in my foot. What the fuck like, yeah, you’re just teaching them the wrong way. So Get the fuck off my lawn if you can’t dress them up properly.

Mikko Miller 1:02:39
Right. actually agree with that. I agree with that one a lot. A lot of child pedophile to go off on that kind of stuff. And you don’t want that. You don’t want that? No,

Calvin Tilokee 1:02:48
yeah. Yeah. This stuff is stuff, man. Lauren is on fire this week. Fuck off.

Chris Swiech 1:02:58
Gasoline make it bigger.

Calvin Tilokee 1:03:00
Exactly. sprinklers about to come on. Right now it’s time to wrap it up with the Chris Rock quote of the week.

Mikko Miller 1:03:13
Yay. Yay.

Calvin Tilokee 1:03:15
I’ll do a little intro here. Because when I was searching for see if he had any, any mental health quotes or anything like that? Come to find out. He um, he’s recently been diagnosed with a nonverbal learning disorder.

Chris Swiech 1:03:29
Yeah, I found that out today, too.

Calvin Tilokee 1:03:31
Yeah. And I just really quickly read what I what I found. That disorders means that in social situations, it can result in taking things too literally, or adopting an all or nothing approach. And the quote from Chris is all of these things are really great for writing jokes, that just not great for one on one relationships.

Chris Swiech 1:03:52
Probably not.

Calvin Tilokee 1:03:56
Shout out to Chris for for being open about that and sharing it and sharing his his struggle. So now it’s time for those great jokes that he’s written over the years. Chris, Chris would like to let you go first.

Mikko Miller 1:04:09
Okay, that’s good. Let’s hear it.

Chris Swiech 1:04:11
I’ll read the second one I found but I like this one. When I hear people talk about juggling or the sacrifices they make for their children. I look at them like they’re crazy. Because sacrifice infers that there was something better to than being with your children.

Calvin Tilokee 1:04:26
Exactly.

Mikko Miller 1:04:27
Yeah. That’s a good one. Really good one.

Chris Swiech 1:04:32
I got one more. Can I have one more? Okay.

I always end up broken down on the highway when I stood there trying to flag someone down. Nobody stopped. But when I pushed my own car, other drivers would get out and push me push with me. If you want help yourself. People like to see that.

Mikko Miller 1:04:50
Yeah, good one. Yeah, that that’s inspirational one right there.

Calvin Tilokee 1:04:57
Yeah.

Mikko Miller 1:04:58
I’m liking it. almost seemed like an asshole for mine.

Chris Swiech 1:05:05
Well, I could have went like other route, you know, down a rabbit hole with mental health.

Calvin Tilokee 1:05:10
I got Don’t worry, don’t worry, well, we’ll probably do that for you.

Mikko Miller 1:05:14
Yeah, we’re gonna go to mental health route too, but they were just, it just didn’t seem appropriate. So I went with relationships and how he talks about how they are hard to maintain, because you stop talking to one another right? And he goes, why do you stop talking? Because at some point, you’ve heard everything this person has to say, and it makes you sick to your stomach. You know what they’re gonna say before it even comes out of their mouth. And you just want to stab them in the back of the neck with a pencil. You can’t take that shit. No wonder like, Hey, remember the time? Yeah, remember the time? Hey, Did I ever tell you about Yeah, you told me about that time stop telling me the same shit over and over again. Why don’t you go get kidnapped and have some new shit happened to you?

I know the power especially when you like make you want to stab yourself in the back. pencil.

Calvin Tilokee 1:06:12
You don’t have to do should have to.

Mikko Miller 1:06:15
true though. It’s so true. Oh,

Calvin Tilokee 1:06:18
man. So I also got to know because I had one for the show. And then as we were going through and Chris was telling the story, remind me the other one. So I’ll go on my original first. I used to work in McDonald’s making minimum wage. You know what that means? When someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss is trying to say? Hey, if I can pay you less I would, but it’s against the law.

Oh man. Alright, then the other one I got real quick was when Chris was telling his story here. Drug dealers don’t sell drugs. Drug dealers offer drugs. Have you ever not thought about getting high in somebody so we’ll do some fucking drugs? Hell no.

Chris Swiech 1:07:12
It’s true. They don’t sell them they offer them too They offer a forum

Mikko Miller 1:07:16
that’s right right Chris Rock spits facts

Calvin Tilokee 1:07:23
Nobody sells drugs bad like I remember a time went to Vegas right I’m walking walking down the strip and we were going to like In and Out Burger or whatever so within the hour and a half I’m gonna tell you how should change we walk past them the first time there’s a girl fellas fellas wants to smoking so smooth not I’ll be good Okay cool. We go in and out burger and eat and come back this is maybe an hour tops on the way back your fellows want some coke or some coke oh my god Thank you so quick All right. Did I need to read they want they want the strongest

Mikko Miller 1:07:58
was got that paper. There was got that Monday.

Calvin Tilokee 1:08:02
You see get in and out burger man like Wayne go to fucking Gordon Ramsay.

Oh, man. All right, well, it’s time for the outros. As always, this is Calvin. You can find me on Instagram at Revparblems at scotch in a suitcase or at the G spot if you could find it.

Mikko Miller 1:08:27
And this is Mikko the Filipino you can find me on Instagram at Mikko underscore eats

Chris Swiech 1:08:35
and this is Chris you know you can find me over on Instagram that’s where I’m most active at depths of Darkside comm check me out.

Calvin Tilokee 1:08:43
And of course you can keep up with the show on Instagram at midlife crisis podcast. So thank you for joining us on another episode. Thank you to our live audience. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave us a review on iTunes and you may get a shout out live on air and speaking of being on air, you can become a part of the show by supporting us on Patreon. Yep, gotcha highlife members, you got your mid life members, you got your low life members. For as little as $5 a month you can get early access to episodes extended cuts featuring behind the scenes content, and the ability to send in your own audio for get off my lawn. So hit the link in the show notes to get a life. Keep up with us in between shows on Instagram at midlife crisis podcast and twitter at midlife pod show notes for this and all episodes available on midlife crisis podcast comm sign up for the mailing list and get a discount off the merge. Check out the shirts. Nice Tune in next week we will be chatting with serial female entrepreneurs, Jamie Heather and Alexa, have nowaday and reposit.co. I hope I said that right? But Tune in next week. We’ve got three female entrepreneurs, it is going to be dope. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll catch you on the Next one.

Chris Swiech 1:10:01
Take care everyone.

Mikko Miller 1:10:03
Take care. Let’s go

Calvin Tilokee 0:02
Hello and welcome to the midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin, also known as Revparblems on Instagram. I’m excited to do this talk show with my best friends from high school and college. Steven Mikko, what can you expect on this podcast? Well, I like to call it a talk show for Men of a Certain Age. We’re not quite old. But we’re the kind of guys that have to make sure we don’t miss our alcohol on a night out, you know, we’ll chat about current events, trending topics, and things that we just need to get on our soapbox about knowing us. We’ll be laughing the whole time. And ladies, don’t worry. If you ever wanted to know what your husband or boyfriend talks about in the man cave. Stick around. And now keep in mind, we’re old enough to remember when Parental Advisory stickers went on CDs. We don’t know what CDs are. You’re too young for this podcast. Speaking of which, make sure you have your headphones in. It’s NSFW as these kids say. We’ll be bringing that flavor to your weekly on your way to work while you’re shaving, or just sitting around wondering why you’re backwards. But let’s get this show on the road. Hello, and welcome to the midlife crisis podcast. I’m your host Calvin. Here as always with my boy Steven Mikko, bringing that flavor to you here on a weekly basis. We have a special treat for you this week. As we’ve uncovered and remastered our first ever podcast episode, you’ll hear us discuss our upbringing, how we propose to our wives, and the first ever get off my lawn. This show begins mid conversation with me talking about getting my ass whipped by my mom. Please enjoy. Oh, man. Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah, I remember once getting hit with a pain stir. Because I had told you before we moved from Brooklyn to to Westchester. So needless to say life was life is a little different in those two situations, right. So Brooklyn, we had the shower is like the shower doors that are on tracks. Yeah. So you get in the shower, or you close the door so you don’t have to think about it. We moved to Westchester, there’s curtains, the shower curtains. Were sometimes a curtain outside of the tub. Yeah, I’m like, Whoa, you know, I don’t know what to do with this. So I jump in the shower. But that plastic curtain was outside the tub. Hmm.

Steve 2:08
So what are on the floor?

Calvin Tilokee 2:10
Exactly? Yeah. I didn’t know why no. exit plan again.

I’m 12 I’m not exactly responsible for these type of things happening. Like now if that were to happen, like I have those shower curtains in my apartment now. But I know if I forget to do that. I’m had to clean it up afterwards.

Mikko Miller 2:27
Right. Right. Right, right.

Calvin Tilokee 2:29
So you start to remember these things. Also, the asked weapon I got for having the floral wet is probably what makes me Never forget to do that again, at this stage of life. But yeah, that was the paints 30 we got a lot of belts. You got a belt. I remember one time getting hit with a belt or trying to get hit. And it was like, I was jumping on my bed to try to get away. So my daddy was like that. Yeah. And I’m jumping it away. It was like, oh, Western. Jump. Right. Get out of the way. But a smack. So. Yeah, yeah, you know, but listen, we all turned out fine, I think. Yeah. Yes, we did. Yes, we did. So, you know, shout out to all our parents. For the tough love. Tough Love. It was all love.

Steve 3:15
It was love you my parents were never my friends.

Mikko Miller 3:19
I mean, we’re friends.

Steve 3:21
Until I was grown up. Exactly. Thank God. There were parents, not the kind of parents that want to be your friend. Yeah, they’ll be friends with a kid. Yeah.

Calvin Tilokee 3:33
Michael Jackson. That’s about it. Exactly.

Go have to edit a lot of shit.

Mikko Miller 3:45
If you if your daughter calls you, Mama, Mama, Mama. Pam. She goes. Why are you at the club? It’s Wednesday. Is it your birthday? Is it your birthday? Go home and take care of them. Kids. 20 robbed me in 10 years.

Calvin Tilokee 4:09
Oh, good. So, Steve, you mentioned that you live overseas for a while Mikko knows at some part of your upbringing. You grew up overseas as well.

Mikko Miller 4:18
Yeah, I’m born in the Philippines. Stayed so I was five. My dad joined the military at a later age in his life, stationed in Germany, lived there for seven years. Went back to the Philippines for a year. Went back to Germany for another three and then the rest of my life. I lived in Maryland where I went for high school and college. So that’s army brat. army brat been all over traveled all over Europe. He took advantage of it. And yeah, Maryland is kind of like my, my formative years was in Germany, but a lot of things that I remember was from Maryland, obviously middle school, high school, college. That’s what really like you know, grew went up in the military environment, you’re sheltered on if you guys know we’re in the army base, like, months and days at a time, we don’t venture out as much into the community. So we live with a lot of army brat and a lot of people in the military. But once we came to Maryland, it was like free for all you know, it’s like public school letting go to private school went to public school and it’s like, awesome. This is what it’s like, you know, not everyone’s so well behaved in in the military, your kids misbehave, the parents get punished, the soldier gets punished. Oh, good. So you don’t behave you know, if you’re out past curfew, you don’t get punished. Your dad gets punished and you know, your IDs could be revoked. Lose rank, there’s a lot of things that can happen to you don’t do that shit. You know, so when in Maryland, it was like, Oh, it’s like a free for all. Like, that’s my newfound freedom. And that’s kind of like what I do. I did a lot of growing up in Maryland.

Calvin Tilokee 5:51
Wow. That’s cool. That’s interesting. Interesting. And that’s one of the things I’d say about college and like those years, you know, that’s where you do least for me, that’s where I did my growing up. Really? It’s where you want to become an adult. Yeah, you got to take care of yourself. Clean a bank account?

Mikko Miller 6:13
Yep. Spending you got to spend budget, you know, 2999 for a week, nothing in the last few months, but you might ramen and you know, dollar hams and juices and you know, you don’t buy a mountain dew you buy a What’s that? A lion? mountain lion? What?

Calvin Tilokee 6:31
Cuz Yeah, the local supermarket was called food line. So they’re, they’re at home brand or whatever you want to call it. Their their white label brand was called mountain lion. Yeah. Yeah, it was a tiger and again.

Oh, man, those are good ties. Yeah, good time. So where did you live in Germany?

Mikko Miller 7:02
I lived in a place called schweinfurth. For the first tour duty. I mean, actually, no. freeburg was the first tour of duty. And then the second one was schweinfurth feet, but it was about two hours away from Frankfurt. schweinfurth was about an hour away from Frankfurt. It’s, it’s close to like the worst Berg I don’t know if you guys know that. But if you know Dirk Novitsky I think he’s coming to worse Burg area. So it’s close to where he grew up.

Calvin Tilokee 7:26
Okay. Yeah, I’ve been to Germany one time, went to Boston, Boston. Yes, as I showed where I got engaged. And then we went to Frankfurt for a few days, I think I was there for a week until it I think three or four days in Boston, Boston, then a couple in Frankfurt. And then back home.

Mikko Miller 7:45
Did you guys do those public baths in Boston, Boston, that’s what they’re known for. Right?

Calvin Tilokee 7:50
Well, the hotel we stayed at, had some of that water at the hotel. So the hotel pool and the hot tub had this water. So Boston, Boston is known for these natural thermal bats that just come out of the earth. Similar to I think we have some similar things in Yellowstone here in this country, and Canada has places like that. So that whole town is known for that. And it’s Historically, the kaisers are the kings of Germany would go to this area for vacation to relax and this was their, you know, vacations button or the better way to say it, but like a spa destination, basically. And they have these big public houses where you go in and all the water in the pools and everything is this natural thermal mineral water that’s supposed to be really good for you, you can drink it and it’s supposed to have a lot of health benefits. But mostly you swim in it and just it’s good for your skin and to seep into your pores and all that stuff. So that’s what Mikko is talking about. But this hotel we stayed at which is now a Radisson It was called the what’s called a bottle shut off. That’s that was so sick doesn’t take man

Mikko Miller 9:01
that silly me? Yeah.

Calvin Tilokee 9:06
Yeah, this hotel had that running right into the into the property. So they had one of these pools where you could swim from inside outside user of the park. They had a nice little park behind it. So obviously you don’t forget that because that’s that’s where I got engaged that that was a good memories there.

Mikko Miller 9:24
How’d you do it?

Calvin Tilokee 9:27
Oh, that’s it. I have that question on the list. So we Yeah, we will go through that. That was as most things with my relationship as you probably would expect. If anybody he already knows me, it didn’t go according to plan. You know, this. There’s we Anna and I joke that we, you know, we don’t do anything romantic like this traditional romance. It’s just when we try to do things like that things. It just doesn’t work out. It’s and it started from the beginning, I would say so. I went and my wife Parents are Russian. So I needed I went I was very traditional. I wrote a letter to her sister who was bilingual. So she translated the letter for me to give to her parents and get permission, and which I did. So then I went to propose, but that night, we all we all went out to dinner. And my father in law ruin the surprise, because he starts grilling me at dinner, about like, why do you want to marry her and listen, and he doesn’t speak English. So he’s really me through her younger sister, who was maybe about 17 at the time.

Mikko Miller 10:35
Oh, damn.

Calvin Tilokee 10:37
So he starts asking me, so obviously, my wife couldn’t understand that the translation and everything and he sounds good to me like, Well, why do you love her and listen, and why do you want to get married to her? I’m like, how do you answer that question? Like, seriously? How do you answer why do you love this person? Oh, I love her because she’s five foot seven. And I love it cuz I love her. Like who she is. Right? Like, how do you explain something like that? And, anyway, the worst mistake, as if that wasn’t bad enough. I must have been nervous. not thinking straight. Whatever. My dumb ass decides to order curry.

Unknown Speaker 11:12
In German.

Calvin Tilokee 11:15
Oh, not not London. Yeah. Not India. Not even New York City. I’m in Germany. I’m in Barton, Barton, Germany, and I was like, the curry shrimp. Sounds good. So I get this curry shrimp. We go back to the hotel. And I’m like,

Unknown Speaker 11:36
running right through you.

Calvin Tilokee 11:37
Yes. Like, this is gonna be a long night. But I decide. That’s the night like the mood is right? to propose to my girl. That one that night. I figured, yeah, this is the time to do it. All the stars are aligning.

Mikko Miller 11:56
I just couldn’t wait. Oh, my God is talking to me. But

Calvin Tilokee 11:59
like, baby, something my gut was just talking to me just spoke to me that night and said, now’s the time to do it. But in all seriousness, I just couldn’t wait any more. Like I was excited to do it. So my vision was to slip it on her finger while we were sleeping. And then She’d wake up in the morning. And it’d be like the movies where she’s like, oh, teary eyed and I get down on one knee and belay Baby, you know, you want this for the rest of your life. You know, and all that stuff. I like how you put your shoulders into that one. Oh, yeah, you got to you got. You got to romance it

Mikko Miller 12:39
yet.

Calvin Tilokee 12:40
So I got the ring in the in the box under the bed. I grab it. And I’m trying to move like real quiet and slow. So I grab it, got it in my hand. She’s not moving. And I finally like slip it on her finger and then like, turn around. And I wait. And wait. Maybe 30 seconds goes by. And then all of a sudden she says you want to say something. And this is when I discovered my wife is a light sleeper. Because I kept getting up and out of bed. And then she felt me put it on her finger. She’s like, you’re gonna say something. So nice. I’m sure I stutter. I’m like, I wasn’t expecting this, right? Oh, yeah, baby, you want to? I love you and you want to like, marry me? I honestly can’t remember what I said. I can’t remember it for the life of me What? What came out after that? But she said yes. And we’re still married after 13 years. So that’s most important.

Mikko Miller 13:44
The rest is history. The rest is history.

Calvin Tilokee 13:45
That’s it. But that pretty much set the tone for our relationship. Anytime we try to do some romantic. That’s pretty much how it goes. So that’s me, I’ll get used to see.

Steve 13:59
That’s a fantastic story. Oh my god, I can just hear her saying that. So. So when. So when I asked Maria to marry me. I did the same thing. I was very traditional asked Marie’s Dad, you know, talk to her mom. I didn’t talk to her sister. And then Marie was taken me to Niagara Falls for my birthday. And so like a day before we leave, she comes down with mana. She’s like, you know, I still want to do it. I still want to take you you’ll drive most of the way. But I’ll, I’ll take it. So um, so we’re going up there and I didn’t want to propose to her on my birthday. So I waited until like, 11 o’clock. We’re both kind of up still. She’s getting kind of tired. I go, hey, what if we went for a walk? And I’m dragging this poor woman around until it’s like after just after midnight. So I don’t propose on my birthday.

Mikko Miller 15:00
Yeah,

Steve 15:02
exactly. And walking around the falls and we’re heading over towards the falls. And as we’re walking, I’m like, I’m holding her tight. And I noticed that there’s a couple ahead of us and they’re full on banging it out on the park that I’m passing them to what I have proposed to my wife, but this romantic, romantic moment. And so

Calvin Tilokee 15:28
romantic butts on the planet.

Steve 15:29
These guys, they they were full on boning. There’s, I mean, in to this day, she’ll say,

Mikko Miller 15:36
I never noticed I never noticed. I don’t either.

Steve 15:40
I don’t either. And so, you know, right when we got there, I looked at my watch was about five past or so. And I dropped to one knee. I asked her I held my hand up and I remember the face she made still to this day. And she her ass was up after that. It was she was calling everybody probably went probably went to bed at like two or three in the morning that night. Yeah, yeah. Had to i, whoever those two people are there forever etched in my memory as you know, as whatever, whatever was going on. It was very passionate. And there was a mon, so pretty clear. What was shaken.

Calvin Tilokee 16:20
You know, you know, we all go to Niagara Falls for for different reasons. So how long have you guys been married now?

Steve 16:28
16 years. 16 years this past July? 13.

Calvin Tilokee 16:32
Nice. Yeah. Wow. I have a feeling those three people to light there.

Mikko Miller 16:38
Yeah. This is good.

Calvin Tilokee 16:43
Yeah, yeah, we’ll make sure that edited. Because as long as you got the gift on the third. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I did that for the first few years of my marriage. Sure. Like I forgot exactly what date you got married. You think it’s a seven but I used to say the sixth? All the time. And then she she’d be looking because people would ask and she’d look at me. I’m like, What? At least I remember. We got anniversary. I mean, I’m doing remember they married.

Mikko Miller 17:13
Exactly. Anyway. Exactly.

Calvin Tilokee 17:16
So but you Mikko you gotta you gotta top those stories.

Mikko Miller 17:20
Unfortunately, I can’t. Mine’s just boring compared to you guys. I don’t have any interesting stories like you guys. We first off, I got laid off at work as I saved up for a ring. And as I saved up for the trip, you know, we live in California. We planned on a three week trip back east. She’s never been so I was gonna take it to like DC, Baltimore, and then up to New York health care pros in New York Times Square. But then I got laid off, but we still went on with a trip. You know, I took my money. We went onto the trip. You go to Times Square. Where you go eat lunch with my mom. My mom brought her sisters along because they all knew cat didn’t know. And just in the middle of Times Square, you know, I try to time it where the camera was right on us, you know, in that big O screen and dropped to one knee? I timed it perfectly. I dropped to one knee. Everyone’s looking and she said yes. I had my aunt, you know with a camera to record a moment. And she was so caught up by the moment. The proposal wasn’t even what I remembered. My aunt was supposed to be recording. And she got so caught up in the moment you put the camera down and got people’s feet. Oh, I love you. If you hear this, sorry.

Calvin Tilokee 18:34
Oh, man, you know what was so And how long have you been married now?

Mikko Miller 18:39
Only five years guys. So I started started kind of late.

Calvin Tilokee 18:43
Dude, that’s that’s that’s still a long time for most people. And I think what would I tell people once you get past the five years, you said like the warranty is expired? Yeah, neither one of you could return it at this point. So you Good.

Mikko Miller 18:57
Good. And as far as anniversaries go, I keep it to the month. It’s June. So that’s the you guys

Calvin Tilokee 19:06
that I see. Yeah, that’s a Yeah, I got set up the same way. Because our our anniversary is April 7, seven. Yeah. My wife’s birthday is the 27th Okay, okay, so April is just shot for me Gosh, like for life like so. It’s the same April I could just get a gift to gifts in the mid week of April and probably be good. There you go. Probably not. I’m probably gonna have to edit that out. But I don’t think that I don’t think it’s gonna work. So she Oh, she got me to early birthday guess but misty and crispy.

Mikko Miller 19:43
Lovely Anna.

Calvin Tilokee 19:45
It was funny. It was funny is that none of us has a normal proposal story.

Mikko Miller 19:50
No,

Calvin Tilokee 19:51
you know, nothing goes the way you expected in the movies.

Mikko Miller 19:56
I wish it did. You know like I said like I had planned out the timing, you know? thing, but it just, it just didn’t work out that way. Like I think more people will either focused on the big screen or on us to actually be recording. So now when I’m like wanting to view how I did it, whatever is like I have to go off a memory like with everyone else. Yeah.

Calvin Tilokee 20:16
That’s probably for the best. Probably maybe. I mean, we were just talking about this recently, because the hotel where we met, just closed for good. Because of Yeah, because of COVID. You know, I guess they’ve been they’ve been closed for some time and financially realized that it just wasn’t going to make sense. So they’ve closed for good. And that hotel, which is the the Hilton writedown, or the Hilton Westchester is it later became known was Yeah, it’s completely, completely closed. They just closed it last week.

Mikko Miller 20:49
And

Calvin Tilokee 20:50
on top of that, where we got married, we got married in Hawaii, on Molokai, which is the smallest Hawaiian island. They won’t keep going, right? Yeah, it was called the Molokai ranch that that hotel closed down about a year after we got married. So we were joking the other days, like, you know, if we ever want to go back to our monumental places, like they just don’t exist. I’m not sure if that’s what that’s supposed to mean. But we can’t go back to where we got married. And we can’t go back to where we got met. Neither one of these places exist anymore. It’s not money, right?

Mikko Miller 21:28
That’s small, apocalyptic. Sheer. Yeah.

Steve 21:31
I got to monetize that somehow.

Mikko Miller 21:34
You got it. Right. Exactly.

Calvin Tilokee 21:37
Exactly. So speaking of COVID, since that’s kind of come up in you know, the impact on that particular hotel? How is how has that been for you guys? and I, we didn’t even touch on what we all do for a living at this point. Not that it necessarily matters. But if you want people to know, but how has it impacted? your work life? Have you developed any new habits during this time? What’s up?

Mikko Miller 22:02
I’ll tackle it on let’s see, well, I work for a large HMO health care provider. So we never shut down. My department that I have have 51 people that I’m in charge of, we never shut down. So as the whole country went into lockdown, we stayed open, obviously, we handle like medical records and things like that. So we were considered essential employees. Yeah, so we stayed open, and we’re still open. Now, as certain departments and certain facilities have are shut down and go through like, you know, intermittent shutdowns and intermittent closings, we remained open. We try to stay diligent with, you know, social distancing, and wearing masks and gloves and try to, you know, space each other out as much as we can. But it’s rough because you don’t know what these people do. Even me, they don’t know what I do outside of work at work, we try to be safe, you know, but outside of work, people can take off mask and go wherever the heck they want to do but at work to have this. You know, like a policy where you keep your mask on you stay away, you don’t sneeze in front of other people. But it doesn’t mean you’re not bringing it in. So, but as far as habits that I’ve developed, doing COVID my wife and I, I think you’ve developed the habit of enjoying Uber Eats. food delivery is like, awesome. It’s like, I don’t know why it wasn’t invented before. But that’s kind of like a habit. Not necessarily a good habit that we develop. But you know, we love Postmates Uber Eats us want to sponsor us. Let’s definitely use your services like every day, almost every day. Yeah.

Calvin Tilokee 23:45
Hey, nothing wrong with that, man.

Mikko Miller 23:46
Got he

Calvin Tilokee 23:47
got restaurants gotta make money.

Mikko Miller 23:50
That’s true. That’s true. Everything’s takeout nowadays, so.

Calvin Tilokee 23:53
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve 23:56
So, I, so I worked for a software company, and I work with, you know, pretty large. I consultants, so that software to pretty large companies, and I’ve always worked out in my house. So you know, when COVID hit, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a big deal for me. workwise um, you know, from my day to day, I mean, it disrupted a lot of my customers and I’ve had to work through that but the only thing that the only thing that’s changed for me from a work life balances. Now I have my daughter and my wife with me all the time. And prior to us moving in to this house where we are now we were doing this out of you know, small to small two bedroom and it was got hairy a couple times but you know, all in all, now that we’re in this house, it’s it’s a lot easier that we can just kind of spread out. Yeah. But from a you know, how it’s you know, a funny way in which it’s in which it’s impacting us is that we are, you’re more, you’re a lot more careful about who you go with, who you see, you know, you’re very upfront about asking them what they do, you know, what they, you know, what do you do? What do you not what you do, but what you what I meant to say was? Um, have you come in contact with or are you wearing a mask? You know, we’re much more diligent about that stuff. And we’ve, you know, a few times we’ve invited some people over then they’ve been they’ve had to back out because they, you know, came in contact with someone, nom and, and we’ve even said, hey, look, I I saw my, you know, I saw so and so yesterday, I’m not, you know, I don’t know what their situation is. Enough. So I’m going to kind of keep to myself for the next two weeks. And I will say I Well, we don’t do a micos food delivery. We do. I have. I have come to really enjoy wine from Costco. And I have zero shaman in in in saying that I really enjoy it.

Calvin Tilokee 26:13
Nice.

Steve 26:13
So, you know, you know, shoot every, you know, every other night. It’s what kind of wine from Costco Do you want to pop? And that’s, that’s what’s changed with us right now. What

Calvin Tilokee 26:25
kind of wine Do you get at Costco?

Steve 26:27
So, if I, if I point the camera off to my right, you’ll see that there is a name of a vo ha no walbeck and Alexander Valley cab, and I’ll tell you what. It’s so damn good. I mean, it’s just, it’s crazy. Nice. And, and I’ve actually I mean, I like wine I’ve had. I’ve had very, very good wine. I just I know what I like and I know what I’m willing to pay for it. And for the price it’s can’t be

Calvin Tilokee 27:05
Yeah, yeah. I know. A big thing out here is people go to Trader Joe’s for wine. Apparently they have they have cheap wine. It’s supposed to be pretty good. That’s that’s a spot for the for the young kids. Yeah, I don’t do wine anymore. I’ve discovered that me and wine do not agree. How come? I think is the sulfites. Okay, I believe that’s what it is. That messes me up. And Funny enough, I discovered this. When we went to Napa Valley went to wine country last year. And you going around and doing different tastings all day. And I just realized by the end of the day, like I just felt really rundown and weird every single day. And then so I thought I’d have more water, like do a little tasting have more water and I read Okay, maybe with wine, I just need to hydrate more than I do when I drink other types of alcohol. But it’s still, I just wouldn’t feel right. So I think it was our anniversary last year. So we went with the Napa Valley in March. And again, April is our anniversary. So then for our anniversary, we went out and we went to john George, which is like fancy, you know, fine dining. And it was my wife and I think we split two bottles of wine. So I didn’t feel drunk. I just felt very full, like a balloon just like completely, like I was about to pop. And I get home and I’m like, Oh man, I just got to take a shower. I’ll go straight to bed. And I lay there for a while and then realize you know, something got happening. Something is this is not going to work out well. And the best way I could describe it is if you took a full stuff that burrito like from Chipotle, I like to ask and fill it as packet as tight as possible. And then just squeeze it in the middle. It was coming out. That’s Yeah, yeah. And so we’re gonna call episode one. cow’s gastrointestinal issues.

I thought maybe it was something I ate. Yeah, so Oh, man. You know, I had fog rot at night. And I was like, maybe the food was just too rich because I just feel really, really heavy. until October of last year, we went to Barcelona and I had a couple of glasses of Kava, it really wasn’t a lot. And the exact same thing happened. And I said it’s wine. It has to be wine like it just doesn’t agree with me. Now I could drink whiskey all night and be fun. I can drink a lot of different types of alcohol but wine for some reason. It just doesn’t. Doesn’t vibe anymore. So there’s that okay. It’s nothing to do with Coke. By just as far as me with COVID, as you guys know, I’ve worked in hospitality and have for almost 20 years, spent most of that time doing revenue management for hotels. And my the hotel I was at around mid March started to feel the impact of COVID. And you could see people starting to really cancel. And eventually, at first, it was just, Hey, you guys can start working from home because, you know, it’s safer. So we started working from home from about the middle of March, and then late April, my hotel closed. And then it hasn’t reopened to my knowledge. And this is since April. And I don’t know what the impact of that’s going to be market wise and everything. But as far as us haven’t been home since mid March, and just in an apartment for you know, four plus months, we’ve learned to appreciate getting outside. I think that’s been the most important thing. Yeah, what we would do is just kind of end our day with with a walk around the neighborhood. And eventually, it’s all in all is about three miles, but we’d make sure five 530 end of the day, hey, let’s pack up, go for a walk, come back, if we have to work we have to work when we come back, because it was really crazy in the beginning for both of us. But yeah, we really got into walking and we’ve started hiking on the weekends. Now, I had to pay a fresh Tim’s that I never wore, because I go to work like Well, you can’t wait Tim’s to work, right. So now they’re hiking boots, I wear those to go hiking, you know, we’ve done quite a few trails around and discovered things that we didn’t even know, existed around here. So that’s been really good. And I think it really started to appreciate getting out in nature and how much better you feel when you do that. Yeah, just just being out around the trees and fresh air and just walking around for an hour or so every day really, really helps. And that’s been I think the main thing that made them for us is exercise. And I’ve finally got consistent with exercising my gym has been doing virtual classes throughout the whole time. So I’ve been my working out, throw a little yoga mat down in my bedroom and knock out some high intensity workout for you know, 45 minutes. And it’s it’s been the mental effects of that that have had been more most important. You know, I’ve not really changing or losing weight or anything like that. But mentally I realized very early on, if I didn’t work out or go for a walk, I was in a foul mood. I just didn’t feel good. So I’ve realized now the importance people talk about the endorphins and working out makes you feel good and gives you energy now I know what they’re actually talking about, because it really is helped change their mindset. So I’d say that’s the biggest thing for me.

Steve 32:50
That’s fantastic. You know, one of the upsides for me being here is, you know, our daughter’s not going to daycare. And so I get to snipe, you know, a ton of time with her. And and it’s it’s one of the bright spots of the whole thing for me at least.

Calvin Tilokee 33:06
Yeah, well, that’s good. I mean, you get to spend a lot of time with her. Yeah, time you may not otherwise have been able to get.

Steve 33:13
And it’s time that she spends with a stranger who, you know, really spends more time, you know, with her than I do. You know, when when she would go to daycare, right? I hear walking around upstairs, I think she’s going to be a surprise.

Calvin Tilokee 33:30
Surprise, surprise.

Steve 33:33
Yeah. Whenever she surprises me at work, I always just refer refer to her as my intern.

Mikko Miller 33:39
So,

Steve 33:40
I have found that, you know, people have been a lot more accommodating, not accommodating, but just

Mikko Miller 33:47
were something maybe what’s that receptive, now

Steve 33:51
receptive and understanding their overall just more understanding that you know, you’re working from home. So if the dogs barking in the background or some kid, you know, if your interns got to have sliced bananas, you know, you just got to do with

Calvin Tilokee 34:08
the peanut butter.

Mikko Miller 34:09
Yeah, and that’s what I tried some a wife, my wife works from home. She’s a nurse. She used to work in floors, but now she’s working from home. And so it’s a big adjustment for her. So for the first I think four months of COVID I think she went out once and you know, I still go out to work. I still you know, outside so like I don’t feel the effects the same way she does, but she did say the same thing. It’s like going out exactly what Calvin said. Being able to just go out and walk around catch them. sunrays, actually like elevates her mood and the fact that you know, just to be able to just catch fresh air I guess I take advantage of I didn’t realize how much of a disadvantage It was hard to work from home because I mean, you got it easy. You wake up, you know, go straight to work. But just the simple fact of being able to go outside and catch some fresh air and you know see other people and talk to other people intermingle with other people. Like, I just failed to realize that early on that, you know, she probably misses that stuff because you know, she was a bedside nurse for like damn near 20 years. And then now she’s working in it’s like, they do like a telehealth. So it’s all, you know, telephonic. So she does that from home. 24 seven, pretty much.

Steve 35:22
Seven.

Mikko Miller 35:23
I’m not really but you know, her shifts are long, but you know, he gets up early to prepare and then afterwards he does like the notes and stuff. So she’s just home all day. Then I come home and it’s like, dinner. big piece of chicken, you know. Give me a lot of Chris Rock references. Oh, yeah. Great. Yeah.

Steve 35:45
It’s fair to reference that.

Calvin Tilokee 35:46
That one that was a good one. Yeah, that’s it. They didn’t kiss me who’s Chris Rock? Is he like, Kevin Hart? Doesn’t? You know what?

Mikko Miller 35:54
Let’s not start that discussion, man.

Calvin Tilokee 35:55
What do I know? We got a couple minutes left.

Steve 36:00
If you don’t know who Chris Rock is crawl out from under your rock and go see anything by Chris Rock.

Mikko Miller 36:08
Bigger, blacker bringing the pain what’s the new one? What’s the newest? tambourine? tambourine there’s one more before that though. The one that you saw one. Did you watch one carbon?

Calvin Tilokee 36:23
Chris I saw him live he would think he was filming tambourine.

Mikko Miller 36:27
What was the tambourine? Yeah,

Calvin Tilokee 36:28
yeah, that’s what he was doing that with he was funny still funny as hell man. He’s he’s not bring the pain funny, like back in those days. I mean, that is to me is the ultimate like Chris Rock is my favorite. He’s my favorite comedian. I don’t think he’s the best right now. I think Chappelle is by far the best comedian

Chappelle is the best to his his jokes and the way he brings socio economic things together and does it in a way where it’s not really offensive unless you’re just one of those people who gets offended by things. But level he does it Yeah, he does it in such a smooth way that he’s he’s a next level genius. But Chris Rock is just my favorite. This is somebody his delivery and his type of jokes that had always jive with me like he’s always been hilarious.

Mikko Miller 37:17
Yeah, it’s his face. It’s his hands is ready can tell his jokes. Sorry, Chris.

Calvin Tilokee 37:25
I seem you should have killed it. But

Steve 37:31
I like jelly.

Mikko Miller 37:34
Prefer syrup.

Steve 37:35
I don’t think I need to go much more into that one.

Calvin Tilokee 37:42
That was a good segue into our final segment. For tonight. We’re going to start off with something called Get off my lawn. When you young whippersnappers think you got everything figured out. And y’all just need to get off my lawn with that stuff. Oh, so I want to start I’ll start this one. Because I just get tired of people today. Especially these kids that think they invented everything. They think that what they like, has to be the best, like nothing existed before. They started paying attention to stuff. You know, like Drake is the greatest rapper of all time. Don’t get me started. Don’t get me started because we’re going to lose all day for another day.

Mikko Miller 38:23
Because no, yeah. No,

Calvin Tilokee 38:26
you know, LeBron James, best basketball player to ever have existed. Really?

Mikko Miller 38:31
Oh, touchy subject right there. touchy? Oh, no.

Calvin Tilokee 38:36
I mean, we got we got somebody from Ohio on eso. Oh, man, you may have something to say. But

Steve 38:43
you can’t compare their different players they had. It’s just different. It’s like saying Tiger Woods. And jack Nicklaus. You know, from a golf standpoint, you know, there’s just more technology available now that that makes them better athletes, but I think putting the two of them up against each other in their prime.

Mikko Miller 39:01
I don’t know.

Steve 39:04
I’d say Jordan would take him in his prime in his like, UNC days. I think he would he would take LeBron.

Calvin Tilokee 39:11
Let’s see the thing with that is I don’t think it’s not. It’s not a one on one type of thing. Because I know, I know. It’s, well, yeah, I mean, it’s their greatness as to what they’ve accomplished in the game. But, I mean, LeBron is what six nine, like 280, or whatever. I mean, he’s a linebacker, I mean, physically, yes, he’s way more gifted than Jordan. If this was any other player you were talking about who was Jordan sighs you’d say LeBron to take them. But just because of Jordans mentality. I think that’s what separates him from everyone else who’s ever played that sport, and probably most other sports, if you’ve watched the last dance, and you still think LeBron is better. And it’s not even a discussion to you that we can have a conversation like we I mean, as committed As Jordan was to being the best basketball player ever, that’s all he was focused on. Yeah, you know, he did. I just didn’t think about anything else. By comparison, LeBron is involved in a lot of different things, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I’m not saying it’s bad. But Jordan never focus on anything else. But basketball, which is what made him so damn good. And he elevated teams to levels that have never been been seen before. You know, LeBron talks about, you know, people talk about LeBron playing with, you know, boobie Gibson and those guys and bring it up to the finals, which is a ridiculous accomplishment. Yeah, when you think about it, but he never created a Pippin. like nobody thinks Scottie Pippen was going to be top 50 player of all time without Jordan, right? Like, that would have never happened. You know, LeBron hasn’t done that. For anybody, the guys he’s won with have already been stars. Good point, you know, true, true, true. But that’s me, I’m out. I’m gonna go back into house and I let these kids do what they got doing wrong, because my other one

Mikko Miller 41:06
I’m just gonna chime in on that real quick, just real quick chime in on that. I think the closest and this is, I think me and not just because I live in LA, the closest that someone has ever come to that type of killer mentality, in my opinion has always been Kobe Bryant. He may not have been as gifted, he may not have elevated his teams to the level that Michael did, but that mentality of I’m just gonna kill you every single night. I think Kobe had that Kobe had that in them. And, you know, LeBron, Kobe, Mike, I wish I would have a shirt where they’re all three of them were like on like holding each other. I wish it would have wore that shirt. But mentality wise, I think Michael Colby were like, a&b, in my opinion, that’s just, you know,

Calvin Tilokee 41:50
I agree. And I’ll just jump on that point real quick. There’s a book I listened to a couple years ago called relentless by Tim Grover, who was the trainer for he also trained Coby and Wade, and if you listen to that book, he talks about the mentalities of all of these different guys, and how there’s, there’s different levels to it. And he he specifically says that lebrons not quite there. He’s not quite on that level. This is not an insult. Right. I think that’s what people get, get. get it twisted resale. He’s not the greatest of all time, then they get offended. Like you’re somehow insulting LeBron James, to say that he’s not the greatest human being to ever be good in that profession is not an insult. He’s in the conversation. Right? But isn’t we’re not saying Brian is garbage by any means. But to Mikko point about the mentality like that thing, where Jordan was just not going to lose six and o in the finals. He just was not having it. He just was not having any any slack in front from from his teammates, and take take with LeBron and that famous meme now when jr Smith, right with J. Smith wasn’t paying attention to the clock or whatever, that would have never been allowed to do that. That’s not going to happen. You know, you get into a fistfight, like you did with Steve Kerr. But listen to that book, if I would suggest anybody, it’s there’s a great book period for, for your mentality and just how to go about being great at anything. But this is somebody who’s trained some of the greatest basketball players we’ve known. And I think you should take his word for it. Yet, I’ll leave it at that. But yeah, back back to back to you.

Mikko Miller 43:37
on mine, as far as this generation goes, and, you know, I’ve grown accustomed to a lot of millennials living in California and having that type of mindset and that sense of entitlement. I think it kind of piggybacks off of your point, a lot of the millennials that I come across have this sense of entitlement where they just, they felt like everything is deserving. For them, they deserve everything. And, you know, we’ve gone through, I’m pretty sure all three of us, you know, hard work being beat our parent, not beat but you know, being disciplined by our parents, and having to work for what we’ve got and not been given everything that we’ve had. And these people just expect, you know, the whole world of people that come across in the workplace that feel like, Oh, my sick time is my time. You know, it’s for me whenever I want to use it, you know, I’m going to call out and not come to work and give you a call five minutes before my shift and think it’s okay. Because it’s, you know, it’s my right, it’s my time off and it’s like, how do you grew up with that mentality of just thinking everything was meant for you and you’re supposed to take advantage of everything because it’s there. In I think that’s just one of the things that I just can’t stand from millennials and people consider us moving because we’re like, kinda like in between that town that border. Yeah. Yeah, but do you Young uns that come across and just feel like everything is should be there and it belongs to them. And all these rights are for them, and they have to take advantage of it just like, if you can see me just just to see that it’s not work, work for it, show me some respect work for and respect you, but don’t expect things to be given to you.

Calvin Tilokee 45:19
Right? I hear that man.

Steve 45:23
So, you know, in what I prepared for this was was, you know, something similar to what Mikko saying, you know, I work with a lot of younger people who are coming into my profession. And you, it’s easy to say, Oh, he’s, you know, he does, he does this for a living, it’s, it’s, it looks super easy. And then, you know, he, he gets a lot of accolades, or, you know, someone gets accolades, not saying I get accolades, but someone gets accolades. And then oh, I want to go do that. That That just seems, seems easy.

Mikko Miller 46:02
And,

Steve 46:04
you know, I’ve had, I’ve had a couple of people contact me about jobs, and they’re asking me all these questions about these jobs. And I’m like, dude, you are not qualified whatsoever to do this job. Why are you trying to skip steps? A, B, C, D, E, F, go right down the alphabet. You know, to everyone’s point here, you need to put in work. And yeah, that’s so I’m, I’m, I’m really over that. It’s something I would like to see. Just more. Yeah, just more hard work, work put in and then you can always tell when someone’s coming at you. Who has some bike by by, you know, luck or whatever. They’re in a, somewhat of a position similar to you. And they’re like, you didn’t put in any work? Man, you just you just got here. Rather you bump you up in fire you. I’m going to get off my soapbox. I can go on a pretty long tangent of that one. But I see that enough. And it’s a Yeah.

Calvin Tilokee 47:06
Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, we definitely sound like, you know, middle aged men. So yeah, I think I think we’ve, we’ve hit home, the theme of the podcast and Episode One was definitely, yeah, I’m sure we’ll we’ll touch on that topic as we move forward, because that’s something I’ve seen quite a bit of. And I’ve also seen it from people older than us. And that’s the thing. So we’re not here to bash millennials. You know, I think that I think that they get a bad rap. I think and I’ll say this story really quick, as we’re wrapping up, but I went to a conference a few years ago, and they talk about how the millennials are really broken up into two different categories. And the older ones like us, like we’re kind of on the very tail end, depending on what study you look at. But like the the 30, fives and up, Millennials have more of older school mentality of you still need to work for it. It’s the younger half. And of course, this is generalizations, that doesn’t mean anybody under 35 doesn’t work for stuff, but they’re the ones that more had this mentality of Hey, just show up and do it. But I remember a hotel I was working at was taken over a change management companies. And this woman who was 40 at the time, and this is seven years ago, woman’s gonna be close to 50. Now what and she had two kids at the time, was complaining because the new management company made a mistake, and she lost half an hour of PTO time. Half an hour. She went on a rant about this. I was like, are you? Are you serious right now? Oh, and the new companies are giving us Presidents Day Off. We used to have presidents they really would have fuck celebrates Presidents Day,

Mikko Miller 48:48
what do you do? Buy a mattress? What are you so excited by Presidents Day for?

Calvin Tilokee 48:53
Give me a break?

Mikko Miller 48:55
Yeah.

Calvin Tilokee 48:56
So you do see that? Kind of across the board with, you know, the age brackets, but I’m sure we’ll talk about that a lot, because I think we have that in common. And that’s going to be something that we discuss. So I think that’s a great place to wrap up for episode one. Thank you for taking that trip down memory lane with us. We can’t believe it’s been over six months since we recorded that episode. And as you can tell, we were pretty amazing right out of the gate. Since then, we’ve seen over 2000 downloads and that’s thanks to all of you guys. So thank you for your support. And there’s lots more where that came from. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please leave us a review on iTunes and you make it a shout out live on air. Speaking of being on air, you can become part of the show by supporting us on Patreon. You’re gotcha highlights members, you got your mid-life members and you got your low-life members. For as little as $5 a month you can get early access to episodes, extended cuts featuring behind-the-scenes content, and the ability to send in your own audio for get off my lawn. Hit the link in our show notes to get a life keep up with us in between shows on Instagram at midlife crisis podcast, show notes for this, and all episodes are available on midlife crisis podcast comm where you can sign up for our mailing list and get a discount off the merchandise. Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll catch you on the next one.

Mikko Miller 50:16
Let’s go