Speaker 1: Everybody is Bill Courtney with an army, normal folks. Shop
Speaker 1: Talk number fifty nine. Welcome into the shop.
Speaker 2: Hey, Alex, does anyone have any interesting numbers for fifty nine?
Speaker 2: What do you mean, like any football players or remember
Speaker 2: we talking about this trying to come up with numbers?
Speaker 1: Heines, fifty seven, Yeah, fifty nine. I can't even think
Speaker 1: of a famous fifty nine any player or anything else, So,
Speaker 1: you know, not really a good lead in Alex. Thanks, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: I got nothing, you know, It's just okay.
Speaker 2: People can start suggesting, Oh, coming one's coming up. You
Speaker 2: got sixty we'll say that.
Speaker 1: We'll say that, we'll remind him at the end of
Speaker 1: the episode. Wait, what what does the number sixty three, four, five,
Speaker 1: six and seven? Maybe that's right, okay, everybody, Shop Talk
Speaker 1: number fifty nine is a is a second part. If
Speaker 1: you listen last week's Shop Talt number fifty eight. This
Speaker 1: is the second week that we are featuring the writing
Speaker 1: of an army member named Eric Blacksmith. Eric has a
Speaker 1: substack titled some Assembly Required, and the second piece is
Speaker 1: titled the fifty year Old Version not Virgin. Fifty year
Speaker 1: Old Virgin was a funny movie. This is the fifty
Speaker 1: year old version. Some assembly required.
Speaker 2: It was a family appropriate show bill.
Speaker 1: That's a PG movie that came out.
Speaker 2: It was not a FIG movie thirteen or something. There's
Speaker 2: some lines in there I remember that we cannot say
Speaker 2: on the air that are hilarious.
Speaker 1: What we can't know? Oh okay, So Eric has a
Speaker 1: substack titled some assimily required. The second piece. Last week
Speaker 1: we featured and Eric read for us, narrated for us,
Speaker 1: for all the fifty year old men who This week
Speaker 1: we're doing the fifty year old version. Eric recorded a
Speaker 1: performance of this, and we'll hear it right after these
Speaker 1: grief messages from our general sponsors. Everybody Shop Talk fifty nine,
Speaker 1: we are back with Eric Loxmo and his narration from
Speaker 1: his substacks Some assembly required, the fifty year old version.
Speaker 1: And now here's Eric Boxmo performing the fifty year old version.
Speaker 3: More than fifteen thousand people read a spontaneous essay I
Speaker 3: wrote one afternoon. The title of it was for all
Speaker 3: the fifty year old men who got dot done. It
Speaker 3: was a letter, a kind of tribute, a collection of
Speaker 3: thoughts for the boys like me who were told grow up,
Speaker 3: be a man, get over it, stop crying. Stop daydreaming,
Speaker 3: make mom proud, be the hero and fight back, and
Speaker 3: above all, never show your true self. And what happened
Speaker 3: next surprise me. The responses flooded in emails, texts, comments, stories.
Speaker 3: I didn't expect, emotions I didn't see coming. It was
Speaker 3: clear there's a deep hunger out there, a silent ache,
Speaker 3: a longing to know. Am I the only man who
Speaker 3: feels this way? And it got me thinking, what do
Speaker 3: I wish someone had taught me when I was twenty,
Speaker 3: or thirty or forty. Yes, I could have avoided some
Speaker 3: hard falls, some broken relationships, some wasted energy, and a
Speaker 3: whole lot of unnecessary striving. But here I am, at fifty,
Speaker 3: a bit wrinkled, scarred, certainly grateful because along the way
Speaker 3: I gained wisdom, deep friendships, and a deeper resolve to
Speaker 3: live all in and all out until I crossed that
Speaker 3: finish line. So I put together a bit of a
Speaker 3: field guide. A map isn't comprehensive, but it's a start
Speaker 3: some lessons and learnings for the version of me I'm
Speaker 3: still learning to become, and maybe for the version of
Speaker 3: you you're becoming two. This is the fifty year old version.
Speaker 3: Here's a few to think about on the topics of
Speaker 3: life and art and politics and purpose. Do not despise
Speaker 3: as small. The sacred usually starts there. You're a steward,
Speaker 3: not the star. Return things better than you found them.
Speaker 3: Weird is a virtue. Peculiar things point to purpose. Finish
Speaker 3: what you start. Starting is sexy. Finishing is sacred. You
Speaker 3: don't need permission begin anyway. Joy is in the process.
Speaker 3: Outcomes lie. The work doesn't walk in the un forced
Speaker 3: rhythms of grace. As it's been said, smallness is greater
Speaker 3: than bigness. Some of the greatest impact is unscalable. Contentment
Speaker 3: is revolutionary. Want what you already have, and trust. Trust
Speaker 3: is the bedrock for marriages, for media, for making. Without it,
Speaker 3: everything cracks in politics, So politics is downstream. Culture makes
Speaker 3: the weather principle of a party. Loyalty belongs to truth,
Speaker 3: not tribes. The middle space is mission ground that no
Speaker 3: fly zone is where change happens. Listen longer, talk slower.
Speaker 3: Persuasion starts with curiosity. Surprise people, especially your opponents. Try
Speaker 3: being more conservative than any conservative, and also more liberal
Speaker 3: than any liberal. Transcend the labels. Create before you criticize.
Speaker 3: We need more builders, not barkers. Proximity changes everything. Get
Speaker 3: close to the mess. Movements are named in retrospect. Just
Speaker 3: do the work, and humility is strength. I don't know
Speaker 3: is a leadership superpower In entertainment, the artist leads, the
Speaker 3: politician follows. Story shape hearts long before policies shape laws.
Speaker 3: Art should haunt. Don't answer everything, leave room for mystery,
Speaker 3: build soil, create environments where others flourish. Don't just entertain,
Speaker 3: make them better, like handle, aim higher. Question Mark stories
Speaker 3: are greater than period stories. Raise questions. Don't just preach.
Speaker 3: Create for the future, not for the charts or the likes,
Speaker 3: but for legacy. Don't chase the elites. Find your audience,
Speaker 3: serve them well. Popular doesn't mean profound, but sometimes it
Speaker 3: can be both. Hollywood isn't a town, it's a term.
Speaker 3: Make great work anywhere, and if you're on the inside,
Speaker 3: look with outside our eyes. Disrupt from within and on
Speaker 3: faith and purpose. Remember to redeem the time, redeem the dream.
Speaker 3: Don't waste the ache. You are a co creator. Make
Speaker 3: all things new. By making new things, art is vocation.
Speaker 3: Sweep your street like Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. Faith
Speaker 3: is found in the middle between the broken and the beautiful.
Speaker 3: Pray for the world, but move toward it. Love a
Speaker 3: yard from hell. Sacrifice is the strategy, always has been.
Speaker 3: Do it for the five, not the five hundred. You
Speaker 3: never know who's listening. Blessed are the outliers. They see
Speaker 3: what others miss. Trust the source. The river of culture
Speaker 3: still flows through God's land, and ponder knew what the
Speaker 3: Almighty can do. This is the fifty year old version,
Speaker 3: not the final word, just one voice, but maybe it's
Speaker 3: why you needed to hear today.
Speaker 1: So now on chop Talk for the second week, we
Speaker 1: have heard Eric's voice with poignant thoughts and ideas and encouragements.
Speaker 1: I think the one I loved the most, and again
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, is life's a mess, run to it or something?
Speaker 1: Is that what he said? What was it?
Speaker 2: Proximity changes everything. Get close to the messy stuff.
Speaker 1: Yes, proximity changes everything. Get close to the messy stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean that is actually how this podcast started. Really,
Speaker 1: look at the mess, someone else going to do about it.
Speaker 1: Get close to it and clean the mess.
Speaker 2: Not just a mess, a mess you're afraid of. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, you don't want your flat tire breaking down there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, but people don't like messes typically. I
Speaker 1: guess when I hear it, I'm thinking he titled.
Speaker 2: Do it Here's something funny. Sorry, what I'm the mess?
Speaker 2: If you will don't like it? Said? Do you know
Speaker 2: Pat Conroy random thoup, But I don't think we've talked
Speaker 2: about this on the podcast before. He's like a famous
Speaker 2: Southern writer, okay, and he's got like a really messed
Speaker 2: up family.
Speaker 1: That's it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So if he's given this book talk, it might have
Speaker 2: been for his book great Santini. I'm not a Pat
Speaker 2: Conter expert, but I've heard this story. And someone comes
Speaker 2: up to him after his talk and says, man, your
Speaker 2: family is messed up, And he says, how far do
Speaker 2: we got to go down your family tree to find
Speaker 2: I find I? So it's it all?
Speaker 1: Yeah, none of us.
Speaker 2: We all got mess Oh.
Speaker 1: It's life is messy. It is the other thing I
Speaker 1: think I find interesting listening to it is as I
Speaker 1: hear him well, as you read it hard copy, and
Speaker 1: then as you hear him narrate it and put his
Speaker 1: voice to the words he wrote. The title the fifty
Speaker 1: year old version is interesting because what is the perspective
Speaker 1: of all of those things from a thirty year old version,
Speaker 1: you know. And the point is, I think, one, we
Speaker 1: continue to gain wisdom, but two we continue to gain scars.
Speaker 1: We simultaneously gain wisdom, oftentimes through many of the mistakes
Speaker 1: we made are the things that have beaten us up.
Speaker 1: So the fifty year old version is an appropriate and
Speaker 1: interesting title. And I think somewhere in there he you know,
Speaker 1: he's talking party before party before politic or something like that, but.
Speaker 2: Basically, principal over party.
Speaker 1: Principal over party, and don't be something conservative and don't
Speaker 1: be something liberal. What was that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, be more conservative than conservatives and more liberal than liberals.
Speaker 2: Transcend labels, Transcend labels. That was the bottom line, the
Speaker 2: transcend labels. And I think for an army of normal
Speaker 2: folks to be a successful movement, we will have all
Speaker 2: of us have got to transcend labels and dive into
Speaker 2: the mess. And I think that's what I got the
Speaker 2: most out of his words from what about You? That
Speaker 2: was all good. I don't have anything specific to say
Speaker 2: besides head of just a random thought of people want
Speaker 2: to do this too. Maybe some of the listeners want
Speaker 2: to reflect on their lives. That's interesting to hear, but
Speaker 2: then their wisdom that they can share with us and
Speaker 2: maybe we can feature too.
Speaker 1: Absolutely love to hear about it. So once again, shop
Speaker 1: Talk number fifty nine is Eric Loxmo's the fifty year
Speaker 1: old version from his substack caddled substack, titled some as
Speaker 1: Simply Required. Eric, really appreciate you taking the time to
Speaker 1: narrate that for us so that we could share it
Speaker 1: on shop Talk. Guys, if you enjoyed this episode, please
Speaker 1: rate review it. Join the army at normal Folks dot us.
Speaker 1: If you have ideas for shop talks, email me at
Speaker 1: Bill at normal Folks dot us or Alex at army
Speaker 1: at Normal Folks. What army it? Normal Folks got us
Speaker 1: and normal Folks to us. One other thing that is
Speaker 1: shop Talk number fifty nine, meaning we'll be picking up sixty.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I looked up fifty nine. Well, it's really
Speaker 2: not much. I looked at the Internet while you're doing
Speaker 2: that officially, it's just yeah. The only thing really could
Speaker 2: come up with is there's some song called the fifty
Speaker 2: nine Street Bridge. It might have been Simon Garfocal or something.
Speaker 2: I put my computer down, but it did remind me
Speaker 2: of fifty ninth Street the beginning of Central Park.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess so that's the most the most.
Speaker 2: Like kind of thing I can think of, is I
Speaker 2: love the entrance of Central Park there on fifty nine Street.
Speaker 1: So y'all, Alex has really hung up on the numbers
Speaker 1: of shop Talk, having an interesting little side note about
Speaker 1: the number. So please email me something to do with
Speaker 1: sixty nine through seventy so I can say it. I'm
Speaker 1: shop Talk, so our producer here.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking up on it. I don't even believe
Speaker 2: in horoscopes or any of that weird stuff. I just
Speaker 2: thought this could be fun.
Speaker 1: Just say it is fun. Yeah, it's fun. So y'all,
Speaker 1: y'all said it? Okay, Bill, Courtney, Army and normal folks.
Speaker 1: That's shop Talk funder fifty nine. We asked you to
Speaker 1: do all the stuff you're supposed to do, So I
Speaker 1: guess that's it, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Until next time, do it can.
Speaker 1: Until next time, do what you can. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.