Chuck Yates Needs A Job

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0:58 Now we think I know she

1:07 Hey everybody, welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job, the podcast. This is kind of cool. This is I think my first international podcast. So as we branch out here at ChuckJob, I'm honored to have on

1:22 Tabitha Lazley as our guest. Hey Tabitha, how are you?

1:28 I'm good. So Tabitha, I'm going to kind of set up this story a little bit, but I want you to take it over really quickly because I want to hear your take on it. So Tabitha is in London. She's a

1:46 journalist. She decides to go to the North Sea interview offshore workers, kind of the premises. What happens when the girls aren't there? So she's going to kind of create a book or an article or

2:03 a research piece, whatever you of content about offshore workers, their psyche, what's going on. She flies to Northern Scotland. She starts interviewing people. And then Holy cow, you go all

2:21 sex in the city on us and shit gets real. So take it over. Tell us about the book. And let me say this real quick. The book's name is Sea State - Well, the book is really about failure, I think

2:34 I mean, it was a failed project. I was actually qualified to go offshore myself. In Britain, we have a course we have to do. You probably have something equivalent in America, the Boseat, which

2:45 is an insurance thing, where you basically get trained, what to do with your helicopter crashes, what to do with your uniburning building, that sort of thing. So I'd done all of that. And by

2:55 this time I got out there, the industry was going through recession. It was just off the crash of 2014

3:03 So I failed to. you know, execute my original project. And I really think I failed to find out what men were like, no women around because I was around. So there was a kind of shrewd, dingery

3:14 effect of the observer

3:17 influencing the outcome. So the book is about failure of all sorts really. It's about a failed affair that never quite gets off the ground. It's about the failure of me to kind of make any, sort

3:31 of put down any roots in London, make any impact on my field And I sort of return back to the wheel, which is where I'm from, with my tail between my legs and take a job working in a chicken shop

3:44 in a refinery town. And that's it, basically. And I think it's important to say that embedded in the book is the ghost of the book that it could have been. And I think it was Alan Bennett who said

3:55 that every book is stalked by the ghost of its original idea, paraphrasing, but, and there is sort of

4:04 echoes of the original book in

4:07 there. There's this exerts from the transcripts at the beginning of each chapter. So

4:11 this is sort of shadow book, almost embedded in the actual book. So I'm going to make us go salacious first, and we'll handle that. But then there's a lot of serious stuff I want to unpack about

4:22 the book. But salacious first, I mean, what, the first guy you meet, you wind up having a tour to fair with? Yeah, and I think it was really important to say that he was the first. Originally,

4:33 I think in one draft of the book, it got changed sort of in the editing process. But

4:39 in the, in the first draft of the book, we actually had the number interview

4:44 next to each chapter. So, you know, one, nine, 42, because I wanted to make the point that had he been number nine or number 42 or number 56 or 78, that affair wouldn't have happened It was

4:57 because he was the first, he was almost the first man I'd spoken to. after leaving this relationship I leave at the beginning of the book and I think that when a man is nice to you after you've had

5:08 you know a really rotten relationship that has a very powerful effect and often women can get into you know really

5:19 I don't know really

5:23 sort of on wise situations if they if they if they come out relationship like that and they don't take any time on that own you know you're sort of low hanging fruit for predatory people I would say

5:36 and that's why I have made the point in every interview since that he was the first person pretty much that I spoke to. Okay that's interesting because I read the book and yeah you're coming off the

5:49 bad relationship in London I I think part of doing the book and you tell me otherwise was just I got to get the hell out of here I mean and I understand that I went through a divorced several years

6:03 ago. And I moved back to my small hometown that I grew up in just so I could hang out with people that I knew before I was 18. So I get that. So I think part of, I'm gonna go write this book and

6:14 quit my job, go do it. Was definitely gotta get the hell out of here. This relationship's horrible. 'Cause the thing I did not get from the book when I was reading it and see, I'm a God-fearing

6:28 Texan So it's just horrific to me that I would actually agree with the New York Times, but their review of your book said, What did you see in this caden guy? I mean, we don't get it. And that's

6:40 what I was sitting there thinking too, the whole time I'm reading it, I'm like, nice guy, but really I'm gonna go mess around with married man and all those issues and ex-wives and all that sort

6:51 of stuff that you were kind of dealing with. But I didn't feel that you loved the guy Well, I think that's a, it is a good point and it's a point that a lot. people have made since the book was

7:02 published. And it's why I put that first relationship, the relationship that I left in, 'cause I thought the context was really necessary to understand, you know, when you've been in a terrible

7:12 relationship for years and years and years, you'll take what you can get. And I think the thing about Caden was, he always had no personality. So if you think about falling in love as, you know,

7:24 it's just a process where you project your shit onto, you know, the first person you meet and not exactly the first person you meet, but you will project your shit onto the next person you're with.

7:35 And the relationship will last once you find out the real them, you can live with them, but then very often you can't, because there is a huge gulf between the real person and this template upon

7:47 whom you've projected or your issues. And the thing about Caden is, because he almost had no personality of his own. He was very, very easy to project onto, but it did present a technical

7:57 challenge with the book, is it was like, how do I - how do I make this person who has no personality see an appealing? And obviously I didn't manage because

8:10 so many people have said since he has bought what did you see in him? We can't see what you saw in him. So it is another of the book's failures - But I don't know that I necessarily view it as a

8:19 failure because at the end of the day, it made me more interested in the story You know, it's kind of like I wanted to do this podcast. I wanted to talk to you because I was kind of like she

8:33 obviously had something intense going on. You don't deal with an ex-wife or a wife flaming you every day unless there's something intense there. I just didn't think it was him, you know - I think

8:46 it was just like you say, the need to escape, the need to find a kind of chute to get out of London my whole life, which really wasn't working anymore you know, he was just a kind of, I think he

8:59 was kind of conduit. into a new type of life because I was really, really eager to get away from my own life. And he sort of presented a way out - Gotcha. No, that's, you know, that, I mean,

9:12 my running joke is I've spent more on therapy than the gross national product of a third world country. You know, I kind of went through the, the separation and the divorce. And yeah, I had like

9:23 12 different therapists and read every Brene Brown book and all that. But I think one of the things that always stuck with me, is one of my therapists said, Hey Chuck, the grass is never greener.

9:35 You know, you and Kim had a great marriage for a long time, but you broke up. Guess what? You're gonna have the same problems with the next relationship unless we fix you. You know, so don't sit

9:47 there and think, you know, it was Kim's fault. You gotta look inside and go, okay, what's wrong with me? Peel back the onion and start working on that stuff or you're gonna repeat it.

9:60 I almost did feel like reading the book that you were doing some of that in the relationship with him. So it's interesting to hear you say, He's a blank canvas. I could project on him my art. But

10:14 it did feel like you were painting a new you on him. Did I get that right from the book - Yeah, I think a lot of the time, I think a lot of people harbor the kind of secret wish to move somewhere

10:27 where they know no one I don't think that's unusual to want to do that to just pack your shit up and go and go somewhere where nobody knows your name and start again. But of course, wherever you go

10:37 there, you are, you haul your problems with you. And I did feel for the first few weeks, I was an Abadine, Oh, look, I'm a completely new person. I've got some new flats. And I've got, you

10:47 know, because the housing situation in Abadine is completely different from the one in London. You know, it was really a buyer's market up there because everybody was clearing out because of

10:58 the recession.

11:00 And so, and it was so weird to me that I could get up there and for 800 pounds a month, I could have a whole flat to myself, whereas in London, you know, there was massive housing crisis going on

11:09 at the time and 800 pounds a month will barely buy your box room in a shared house. So my situation felt really different. And, you know, I didn't have to go into work. I'd sort of divested

11:20 myself with all the last forms of authority. I didn't have a boss anymore. I didn't have a boyfriend anymore. It was really freeing. But then after a few weeks, you know, I think the effect of

11:30 sort of newness of the situation sort of wore off. And I started noticing that actually all the same things were happening again - Yeah, I've talked about it a bunch on the podcast, which is kind

11:39 of weird for an oil and gas podcast, but, you know, kind of at its core, when we feel bad about ourselves, our bad behavior, all that, I think Bernage at Brown got it right. She attributes it

11:53 all to ultimately your shame that you're feeling is

11:59 you feel unworthy of love and easy for bad relationships, etc. to put you in that spot. And it leads to, I'm gonna go having a fair with a married man. I'm gonna go do a lot of drugs. I'm gonna

12:13 go somewhere, try to reinvent myself and the like, the thing that Brene Brown says, and I've come to believe and I'm gonna throw it out as a statement, but critique it, giving your own

12:28 experiences, you know, at the end of the day, shame hates words. The only way to get rid of the shame your feeling is to share it. And that's your best friend, it's your priest, it's a

12:40 therapist,

12:42 it's something. But at least that's kind of Brene's take on how we get past things like that, is actually sharing, talking it through, etc. And so I wonder what you think about that, kind of

12:54 given what you went through So I think it's really interesting that you have. picked up on the word shame

13:02 because

13:04 when this book was optioned they initially contracted this brilliant scriptwriter called Jen Micah who I think out of anyone I've ever spoken to about the book had the best understanding of it and I

13:15 remember saying to her we went up back up to Aberdeen because she'd never been there and I remember saying to her you know about my father who has died since the events of the book and saying to her

13:27 he was the most shame-filled person I ever knew and he wanted everybody to feel ashamed too because he was full of shame and the book was a kind of repudiation of that because it was it's a really

13:38 shameless act to go in and write up those things and she said that's so weird because I think the book is all about shame I think it's full of shame I think it's one of the most shame-filled books

13:47 I've ever read it's about a person who is full of shame and can't get past it so it's interesting that that you settle on that word and I do think Renee Brown has got some really interesting ideas,

14:01 although I would say that I think that with Brene, it's like, it's kind of like, it's only really applicable to people who have money and choices, how kind of brand of, I don't even know what

14:13 you'd call her sort of theories. It's almost like, you know, I guess kind of, I don't know, what would you call it - Oh, that's like it, you know, I hadn't thought through, I hadn't really

14:26 thought through the, you need money to be able to implement what Brene's saying.

14:34 And maybe, you know, I'm one of those grossly over-simplifies everything and probably miss half the point on stuff, but

14:46 yeah, no, that's an interesting thought. I hadn't, I need to go think about that one in terms of, I'd ask you kind of what do you mean? 'Cause I would have said at it's very core what Brene

14:57 Brown's saying is, Hey, go tell somebody. Once you tell somebody and you hear the words, me too, 'cause 99 of the time, the person you choose to tell is one of your most trusted folks on the

15:10 planet, they're gonna support you. I mean, you know, and so they come back and say, Me too, that's kind of like half the battle. What do you think in terms of taking money? What does that mean

15:23 to you - I don't think it costs anything to be vulnerable and to share your problems. I think that bit of Brene's work is free. But I just think a lot of our ideas about work, about management,

15:37 they

15:39 are applicable only if you are on a solid footing in the world already. You know, if you've got the job with healthcare, if you've got pension, if you've got benefits, you know, then you can

15:50 start. I guess sort of, it's like Maslow's hierarchy of need, isn't it? You kind of need to be halfway up it already to apply a lot of Renee Brown's ideas about work, about honesty.

16:03 Whereas, I mean, I think until you've got those bases covered, you can't really, sort of her ideas about honesty, it's like, if you're a poor person, you probably don't have the room to

16:17 maneuver, to be sort of radically honest with people in your life Do you see what I mean? It's just, you know, you're gonna be making, if you're poor, you have to make compromises every single

16:27 day. You can only sort of embrace this radically honest and uncompromising life,

16:33 if you're halfway up Maslow's triangle already, if you've already got a house, a pension, a secure income, that's all I mean. It's sort of, it's therapy for people who are solidly middle class

16:44 already, I would say - Okay, this is interesting 'cause I made a Twitter thread. call it a week ago, six days ago, something like that, where I basically said, Hey, oil and gas guys, now is

16:59 not the time to spike the football and run around and say, I told you so. We're going to be making a lot of money here at 130 oil. Let's show empathy, because people in America truly are suffering.

17:12 There's a single mom out there struggling to fill her gas tank. I wrote this whole thread about it. Let's kill people with kindness, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, let's announce the program of we're

17:25 going to help poor people get gasoline for their cars, heat their homes this winter, even the winter is almost over but heat their homes, etc.

17:37 My whole reason for saying that is I just think we as an industry have been pretty obnoxious when we're doing well. When oil is 100 a barrel, we drive Lamborghini and What we've missed, I think,

17:53 is the higher energy prices generally put the rest of the world into recession. So people are suffering a lot while we're doing well. And instead of showing empathy for that historically, we'll go

18:06 get a Lamborghini and we'll put a bumper sticker on it that says freeze a Yankee, you know. And so I was trying to make that point, where I'm going with this is somebody last night on Twitter came

18:19 back and said, Hey Chuck, you're in no position to lecture us about compassion. You got to ride off in the sunset. Yeah, it's bad. You got fired, but come on Chuck, you're not gonna starve.

18:31 And they made the exact point you just made. And I'm gonna be sitting here probably all week thinking through, okay, was I really going through all that therapy? Was I really finding myself? Was

18:45 I really, I think, becoming a better person? I guess that's for others to say. Was it because I wasn't worried about whether I was gonna starve or not - Well, I mean, you know, I think for a

18:57 start in order to get therapy in hours and hours of therapy, you have to have like a, your base needs covered, don't you? I mean, you can't sprinkle all your money on therapy if you can't eat and

19:08 heat your home. But it's interesting what you say about oilmen not empathizing with people when times are good. So I think the exact opposite is also true because people love seeing their petrol

19:19 prices really low at the tanks. And they never think about what that means for oil workers. You know, in 2014, 15, the petrol here is really cheap and people were really pleased about it. And

19:29 they never thought, well, what does that mean for the people who are getting it out the ground? It means round and round and round of layoffs. It means whole towns in Scotland to the northeast of

19:39 England suffering because, you know, there are certain rigs in the North Sea are outposts of towns on land, you know, the whole. of the male population of certain towns will work on certain rigs.

19:52 So, you know, it's a two-way street. I think the two groups don't really think about each other - Yeah, no, I mean, that's definitely what we've seen and kind of layer on top of that, the folks

20:04 that are getting cheap gasoline and getting an Amazon package delivered to their house, right? 'Cause I guarantee you, all those Amazon delivery vans are not running around the last 10 years if oil

20:19 would have averaged 100 a barrel. The fact that oil averaged 45 or 50 a barrel is why I always jokingly say that Amazon should be paying the windfall profits tax and not the oil and gas business

20:32 'cause they're the ones that benefited from all the cheap oil.

20:37 But if you layer kind of on top of that, we're not thinking about each other. We're not thinking about each other's suffering. There is, I think, some justified bitterness from the oil and gas

20:48 community in terms of, hey, we do do a lot of good things, and y'all run around and say we're killing the planet, we're destroying the planet, yet at the same time, every single thing you're

20:59 using right now is made out of petroleum, you're running around having cheap gas in your car, et cetera. And so there is just a lot of pent up anger over on this side And I think part of my tweet

21:14 was, I was channeling my inner Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars in terms of just don't turn to the dark side, you know, use

21:25 the force, stay on the good side, don't turn to the dark side, 'cause our hate will consume us, and us spiking the football, and that's an American term, by the way, this thing we have called

21:37 football, the Tralee football, not that stuff y'all have over in England, We spike the football when we score a touchdown. But anyway, it's interesting to hear you say that because you're right.

21:51 I mean, it's almost like a relationship. Someone has to go first and do the right thing to change the behavior of the other side. And I hope in this period of prosperity that oil and gas is going

21:51 to have, I hope we actually choose to

21:54 do the

21:57 right thing, show empathy, be benevolent, and we're not going to win over all our critics,

22:12 but at least some. There's a big middle there that wouldn't necessarily hate us in the absence of other things.

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23:06 What I'm hoping for in this boom period is for workers to learn the lesson of the industry which they never seem to, which is that it's a volatile commodity and

23:18 the volatility is mirrored by industry practices. You know, it's a higher and higher kind of industry. Just put some of your money away. Like every oil worker I know, as soon as they start hiring

23:27 again, like frishes away his money on nonsense. And then you know, the price drops again, and people start getting laid off again. And they have no savings. They have nothing to pay the tax bill

23:38 with. It seems to me that oil is such a short-sighted industry, and that culture trickles down. You know, the oil companies themselves are really short-sighted in the hiring practices and the

23:48 firing practices. And that makes the workers really short-sighted in terms of like the personal finance - So we have a town in Texas called Midland, and it's the heart of the Permian Basin. So

24:02 probably a decent parallel to Aberdeen, if you will. And very early in my career, 25 years ago, I was out there at the Petroleum Club having lunch, and I'm sitting at a table with nine guys that

24:15 they're collecting. their average age was probably 85. I mean, just all these old oil and gas guys been in the business the whole time. And I said that exact question. I'm like, hey, why don't

24:25 y'all save some money in the good times and then you'll have some in the bad times? And they were like, oh hell, it's a lot more fun to spend it. And those guys just sat there and said, you know,

24:39 that's about the time I lost my third company. And then I lost my fourth company. That was a great one. But I had a lot of fun I had two jets with the fifth one. And I just think, I think, so

24:51 that I came home and was like telling my parents going, holy shit, mom and dad, I have no idea who these people are. But I think where it comes from is you have to be the biggest optimist on the

25:03 planet to go spend whatever you spend drilling a well, right? Like an onshore well in West Texas will cost 10 million. So you're gonna go spend 10 million. And then you turn the tap on and you're

25:16 like, you turn the tap on and you're like, oh my God, let's see what we have now. So you spend all the money upfront and then you get the results back and they can be really crappy. So I think

25:27 there's some selection bias just in the industry of, you gotta be willing to kind of have that optimistic bent and an optimistic bent when you get 100, 000 bonus check, go buy a Lambo, you know?

25:41 I mean, it's

25:44 Definitely. And I think as well as this like feeling that, you know, they're working lives, you know, when you're doing a sort of two or three week rotation, they're working lives are so not fun

25:54 that they've somehow earned the right to spend all their money when they get back. But you know, it's their money at the end of the day. They're stealing from themselves. They're stealing from

26:02 their future selves. You know, I've got a friend who has worked in order for 20 years and he's getting divorced at the moment and we were out for a dream the other night he told me that at one point

26:12 he was earning 12, 000. pounds a month, which is, I don't know what that is in dollars, maybe like 17, 000

26:19 a month. I said, did you save any of it? He said, no, no, it was what I'd never heard to him to put any of that money away. Yeah. It's a cultural thing. One, I think there's one other point

26:31 to play into this. And I want to make sure I say this with the amount of love and reverence that I'm of the people in the oil field that I say this about Because I really do, I always tell people

26:44 oil and gas people, greatest people on the planet. They're the most generous giving planet. I mean, I don't think a charity in Houston, Texas went bust even though we went through minus 37 dollar

26:57 oil. I mean, people really do cut checks. But, you know, it's interesting and this is, this is a lot. Michael Patrick Smith, the, the author that introduced us, it's kind of his theory. So

27:08 I'm stealing a little bit The Marine Corps, particularly the Navy, seals. when they're looking for recruits, they actually go through and try to find people that had incredibly traumatic

27:21 childhoods because those people ran on adrenaline their whole life. So if you're gonna go in and have to shoot up the Taliban on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan, you're gonna have to run with

27:35 adrenaline. You're gonna have to be able to deal with it. And they found that childhood trauma folks do that I don't wanna equate it too much, but to some degree, there's some similarities in

27:49 that the oil field is tough. I mean, you can die at any moment. There's big equipment flying over your head at every given second. There's a lot of adrenaline out there. And at least what Michael

28:03 Patrick Smith said when he was out in the field for about a year is a lot of the folks out there had traumatic childhood. problems with their fathers, problems with their mothers, this event and

28:19 that. And so,

28:22 to some degree, when you've had childhood trauma, you're more willing as an adult to take risk, not consider consequences, et cetera. Did you get a sense for that? Any feel of that when you were

28:36 interviewing these guys - Yeah, definitely. I think it was several separate points that, first of all, certainly in Britain, a lot of people who work off shore have got a forces background. So

28:49 there's a great deal of crossover there anyway. People who've

28:54 worked in the forces are used to performing under pressure. They're used to rank structure and taking orders. And they're used to working in sort of far-flung locations and living in cramped

29:05 conditions and being away from their families for long periods of time So it's really a perfect kind of pipeline if you like. into the oil and gas industry. I also think it's really interesting,

29:17 though, I didn't know that about the Navy recruitment. But if you think about it, it's also a bit like gangs. Isn't it that they try and recruit people with traumatic childhoods because they've

29:28 got no loyalty. So their loyalty will be to the gang. And I'm sure that the same mechanism happens with people in the forces, that you will have more loyalty

29:37 to whichever arm of the forces you join, even if you've got nothing waiting for you at home. And that's why, as well, they will try and break your attachments at home a lot this time. And the men

29:50 will do that to each other, as well. I'm sure, certainly in

29:55 the British oil industry, there's this trope, Leroy. Leroy is

29:59 the man who hangs around at home waiting for you to go so he can have sex with your wife. And it's a bit like the kind of jolly calls that Marines used to do It's a means of kind of,

30:12 I think, breaking that attachment to home so your head will be at work because you

30:22 have needs to be at work in those conditions. You know, and I think with most, we were talking about this before we started recording the podcast, but I think most things energy business, we're

30:28 just 15 years behind the rest of the world on everything. Pick anything you want to talk about. We're generally behind, except latest and greatest technology that allows us to find more oil. We do

30:40 that really well, but at the end of the day, whether it's mental health type issues, anything else, you know, we're just way behind kind of the times, but I will say this, that's been one of

30:52 the things interesting about this podcast. I've talked a lot about mental health on it. We've had a lot of guests come on and get really real about things. One private equity investor came on,

31:03 talked about going through testicular cancer. Another investor came on, talked about just blowing up a hedge fund, not having it turn out like you like. and just was real and owned it, had

31:16 another oil and gas professional come on and talk about the really dark place he was in during the pandemic and the like. And

31:27 I think there's something that we need to do, but I don't know what it is to sit there with oil field folks so that they can share, get the benefits of some sort of therapy, if you will, just for

31:43 the better of everyone. And I think oil field is 15 years behind everyone. I think the pandemic has sped that up and I think, half the industry losing their job has kind of sped that up and people

31:56 are more willing to be real. But I think we need solutions there. I'm just not sure what they are I think one of the things would be really to look at the structure of the accommodation offshore. I

32:09 remember a trade union. official saying to me when I was up there that in the early 90s they put TVs in everybody's cabin. I mean now people will just have devices and he said that it looked like

32:24 they would be nice by doing that but actually it was a very deliberate corporate ploy to break up the men in the evenings. So they didn't get to sit and talk to each other and talk over problems and

32:35 maybe you know sort of in the company's mind sort of stark collective action. They split them all up and what that meant really was that mental health problems are sure spiraled because everybody was

32:47 just going back to their room at night and sitting by themselves and you know we're not made to do that. We're not made to you know each sort of retire to to our cave at night and not have any social

33:01 contact especially when you're in such an isolated environment anyway you know you're out in this structure in the middle of the sea, no land in sight. no home comforts, and then you just go back

33:12 to your cabin at the end of the night or at the end of the day or other, day, night, whatever shift you're working, and you don't talk to anyone, that's so bad for your mental health. But I

33:20 think that was quite a deliberate tactic on behalf of the companies. They don't want people to, I don't think they want people to sort of

33:32 function as a team, because functioning as a team means that they might unionize, that they might strike. And that's not good from the company's perspective - Yeah, no, and again, that points to

33:47 oil and gas being 15, 20 years behind everyone else. I think when you look at the technology folks, and we can talk all day about the evils of Facebook or Google or Twitter, but at least

33:59 cultural-wise, they have figured out the mental health of our employees matter. People today don't have this. big, huge brick wall. Here's my personal life. Here's my work life. Never the two

34:15 shall meet. I mean, people in this world who grew up on Instagram or Facebook and just live their lives out loud are searching for fulfillment on the emotional level wherever they go. And that

34:29 includes work. And if you're not addressing it there, guess what? They're not going to want to work there. And, you know, oil's been such a boom and bust. We had this down cycle where we we got

34:43 rid of a lot of people. My hope is that on this cycle on the way up as we start hiring folks, we actually take that into consideration of, okay, we're going to pay somebody a salary, but we're

34:56 also going to make it a great place to be. So they're going to want to be here because I will say this, the conservatives in the United States say. The reason we don't have more people working

35:08 today is because of the government was paying them pandemic checks. I think there's some truth to that, but I also think there's a lot more truth to the fact that people just reexamined life. You

35:20 went through the pandemic. It's a shit show. I'm example number one. I told my parents three days ago, I'd rather move back in with y'all before I get another job because workin sucks. Yeah, it

35:31 does. I completely agree. And I think a lot of people have come around to that way of thinking they like not having to commute. They like not having to force themselves out of bed at seven in the

35:39 morning and try and make themselves look presentable before sitting down to work. And also, I think the jig is up for companies who insist that you've got to be a desk to do your work or desk in

35:50 their building. Now that we've all been forced to work from home, there is no excuse for companies to force you back into the office. So I think it's been a reassessment for everybody really. And

35:57 I think it's a good thing. Yeah I think ultimately it'll wind up being a good thing too.

36:06 I think we'll have mixed emotions 10 years from now. We'll look back and we're gonna kick ourselves for what we did for our children. I mean, we scared the shit out of our kids for really no reason.

36:20 I mean, a pandemic, yes, it's bad, but it really was isolated in terms of who affected, who got affected by it. It was unfortunately elderly people and overweight people that wind up suffering

36:34 the brunt for it And to put our kids through what we did, we're gonna kick ourselves. But then I think on the flip side too, is we're gonna realize that, hey, during that period, I texted Chuck

36:45 and Chuck was there for me and Chuck and I have a new bond that we never had before. And then hopefully our companies see that and they become more proactive about setting the stage for stuff - I

36:57 think as well, we don't remember that a lot of ideas about work are actually grounded in religion. There's nothing. you know, morally superior about working hard. Not really, I mean, we think

37:08 there is because we're from a purerating culture, but I'm right, I'm very lazy. You know, I will try and get away with doing the least I can to get the same result every day. And I don't think

37:18 there's anything wrong with that - Yeah, now I, kind of the same way I say the same thing about the pandemic is I figured out I like the toys, but I don't need the toys. I can tell you that,

37:30 you know, if you walked in and said, Hey, here goes high paying, but high stress job and you can go get a private jet. I'd be like, Nah, I'm gonna go back and make my podcast. You know, so -

37:41 And I think a lot of people are coming round to that way of thinking that actually, there's no point breaking your back to work in any field. If you're not well enough to enjoy the fruits of your

37:51 labor, you know, if you're making yourself ill by accruing all this stuff, what's the point - Yeah - So give us the biggest kind of I'm going to say biggest, but also unexpected sort of thing you

38:07 learned from right in the book. What was kind of, I mean, I'm going to the cliche and I'm sure it's true. It was very therapeutic for you, put you in a much better place, et cetera. Something

38:20 beyond that that popped out from right in the book. I think probably the thing I learned that has been most useful is I think everybody tends to apply narrative principles to their lives, but right,

38:34 it's more especially. So you're always looking for a reason why things have happened. And I was always like, Oh, well, this awful thing happened. But then it led me to this or it led me to that.

38:44 And I was always trying to impose a narrative structure on my life. Doing this book taught me not to do that. You can only make sense of things afterwards

38:58 that life is just a.

39:06 a series of random sequences. And yeah, and there's no inherent meaning to them. It's a bit depressing. I mean, that's sort of wrong from writing the book, but you can try and force it into a

39:12 narrative shape if you want, but you know, it won't hold - You know how I look at

39:20 that? 'Cause I, no, I feel exactly what you're saying there. The way I look at it is when you start off your life, your kiddo, probably up to call it 35 or 40. And I think this is what you just

39:34 said and what you're going through is up until that point, your life is a biography. It's about you, but you're not writing it. Your teachers are writing it, your parents are writing it, your

39:46 boss is writing it. And then at about age 35 or 40, one day your boss says something and you tell your boss to kiss off you tell your boss to jump in a lake and the end of the world does not happen.

40:00 You don't get fired and you realize you have some sort of power. And every day that goes by, you have a little bit more power, a little bit more power, and it converts into an autobiography. Then

40:12 you figure out your writing this and the struggle of the responsibilities you took and the way you have to live your life in the biography phase and transforming that into the autobiography phase

40:28 That's the middle life, mid-life crisis, that's whatever. And that's kind of the struggle we all have to go through at that point. Yeah, I completely agree. And I think as well, like a flip

40:39 side of that is getting older and more confident means that you lose confidence in other people. I no longer trust anybody to do anything, especially with my work, with my writing, and horrible to

40:51 work with and horrible to edit, because as I've grown older and become more confident and more convinced that I'm good at my craft, that people don't know what they're doing anymore. You know,

41:03 the more you lose faith in the ability of others. So yeah, I've become increasingly horrible to work with. I think I'll probably have no career again in about five years because it will have just

41:13 become impossible. That's cool. I like being unemployed. Come sit on the couch with me. It'll be fun. The

41:21 thing I've relished moving into this role in my life, and I never thought I would, because I was always the young guy, right? I was always the youngest managing partner in a meeting or whatever.

41:33 And now that I'm the old guy and I'm hanging out here at Digital Wildcatters, where everybody is 30 years old, Colin or Jake or one of the guys will run in and say, we're going to do this. And

41:43 I'll say, no, you're not. And they'll go, well, why not? And I said, because I tried it in '07 and it didn't work. I forgot and tried it in '11. It didn't work then And oh, by the way, just

41:53 for good measure, I screwed it up in '19. And here's why it fails. And those guys are always like. Oh, okay, I get it. I've actually kind of relished me in the old guy 'cause this volume of

42:05 fuck ups that I've done throughout my life actually have value to people. So it's

42:13 kind of been fun becoming the old guy - Yeah, I think it's one of the very few benefits of getting older -

42:19 Maybe the only one. Peying early in the morning is the worst one. I will say that -

42:25 Tabitha, you were great coming on, tell people, tell people where they can get the book, make the pitch for that - Well, the book is available at all good bookstores. It's also available on

42:39 Amazon. I think it's more available in bike hostel bookstores. They told me that they were sending most of them to New York and Los Angeles, but they're awesome in Dallas. Are you based in Dallas

42:51 - I'm in Houston. Those were actually fighting words That's uh, yeah, I was about to say Dang it, we were getting along so well. Oh, well - I just sent a few down to Texas because I thought my

43:05 interest people down there, possibly they're in Houston. Am I - Yeah, exactly - Well, maybe there's an even split, but I did ask for them to be sent down to Texas, but you know, there is always

43:17 Amazon as well. If you're desperate - So the book is called Sea State. It's Tabitha Lazley, although that's L-A-S-L-E-Y, correct? And you were great to come on. I really appreciate our

43:32 discussion. I enjoyed it. And anytime you want to come to Texas, have a book signing, have an event, we'd love to host you - Yeah, remember that.