Boehmcke's Human Condition

It is 2009. I am 25 years old and begrudgingly working at a nonprofit in midtown Manhattan full of unhappy people during the throes of the financial crisis. I have already been furloughed for one paycheck. I would work somewhere else if only I could get hired anywhere else.By far the best part of my job is the woman I am dating who sits 30 feet away from me. I spend a large portion of my day flirting with her on g-chat while I avoid asking people with no money to donate to a nonprofit they don’t even like.Dating at work means sometimes fighting at work. Because I am still an emotional child at this point, our fights are usually about not my general lack of commitment. Not a conversation that is best had at work. However, I am not good at compartmentalizing. Everything affects everything. And so this, g-chat fight eventually results in one of us saying “Do you want to take a walk?”Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-wrong-fit-rbmke-cmtt/

Try. It’s a very simple word. Three letters. One syllable. Small, but powerful. It’s the beginning of things. The decision. The first step. The commitment to an effort or a journey. It’s a word my parents said to me at the dinner table a thousand times. When confronted with a new food there was nothing I wanted to hear less than “just try it.” I did not want to try whatever “it” was. It is because of my knowledge of my own history, and the rapid approach of my wedding, that I am so focused on the word today. I know my future and my marriage will be largely shaped by our shared values, yes, but also my own effort. I want to be sure I always try. To read the original article click here: https://goodmenproject.com/marriage-2/looking-for-the-secret-to-marriage-rbmke-cmtt/

I spent a lot of time this weekend around the redwood trees in Northern California. I had visited them once when I was a kid but my tiny brain hadn’t seen enough in this life to comprehend them. As an adult, it was an absolutely fantastic experience I feel kind of giddy even thinking about.I thought standing closer to one, looking up at it would have it make more sense. So I did just that. It did not make more sense. It just made the whole experience trippy. Looking up I saw a trunk that was both massive and stoic. My eyes continued to the top section of the tree which swayed back and forth in the wind. How could it be both immoveable and yet, stoic? How could it do both?Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-skin-of-a-redwood-rbmke-cmtt/

It’s January of 2006. I have just graduated from college and I am sitting in the courtyard of a Hostel in Melbourne, Australia.The summer weather is perfect which means the courtyard is a cosmopolitan mix of young people drinking, smoking and sharing their nascent worldviews. I am at a table with 10 other people from around the world, including a girl I’ve just met from Minnesota named Betty (with whom I am trying to flirt) and a guy from Sydney who I’ll call Jake.We are talking about meeting new people and having authentic experiences and how it is so much easier to do when traveling abroad than in your own city. Jake says that’s why he hangs out at hostels, to have these unique experiences. He then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small black pouch which he holds up in front of us. He asks, “Do you know what this is?”Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/uncategorized/do-i-really-want-to-be-here-rbmke-cmtt/

By the time I got to Wyoming I was feeling a little overwhelmed.Whenever I get that feeling, I itch for a grand adventure, something big and different and far away that will allow me to temporarily escape everything familiar to me. I want to be in a place where I don’t know anything or anybody with no ability for technological distraction. A place where I can truly let my mind wander.A week hiking in the Grand Tetons was going to be everything I wanted and needed. I spent months preparing. I obsessed over my gear. I trained regularly despite an injury. And by the time I arrived in Jackson Hole with my buddy Rug (nickname, not real name), I was hoping all my pre-planning would pay off physically, and the trip would help me escape mentally.Here is what I learned:Click here to read the original article: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/3-lessons-from-hiking-the-grand-tetons-rmbke-cmtt/

I had a pretty significant realization recently while sitting in the dentist’s chair. It is not a place I usually experience great moments of clarity. Generally, I sit in the dentist chair with my ankles crossed and my hands folded across my stomach, white-knuckling it like I am about to be shot out of a cannon.But even in that pose, I had a moment of clarity.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-stories-we-tell-ourselves-rbmke-cmtt/

Do you miss it?That is the question my fiancé and I kept asking each other about New York. We never raised it out of the blue. It was usually prompted by some other conversation we were already having. A memory we were reliving. A movie about the city. An article we both read. I’d ask her cautiously because I already knew the way she felt. I worried if I asked too often or in the wrong way I would make her sad. But still, I’d ask, hoping the gravity of the city had somehow dissipated.But where you live and where you come from is hard not to think about. It is built into the way we perceive the world and process new experiences. And I was so very worried about that, about comparing every element of where we are to where we were. I didn’t want where we came from to stunt our ability to build a new life.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/missing-where-youre-from-rbmke-cmtt/

By the time I got to college, I knew almost nothing about alcohol or how we people socialized around it. The first time my roommates said they were going to a fraternity party I responded:Are we invited? Why would a fraternity invite more guys to a party?Unsurprisingly, I didn’t go to that party. Frankly, I was intimidated by how eager everybody was to get drunk. Sure I was excited to be at college, but I was still a human. The people on my floor seemed like howler monkeys recently released from a decade in solitary confinement. Did I really want to start drinking with these people?I probably could have made friends if I drank with them, but that almost seemed too easy. And in my convoluted brain, that felt wrong. I am exceptional at making things more difficult for myself. And then I got mono. I couldn’t kiss, couldn’t drink. Not exactly a whizzbang start to the greatest years of my life.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/learning-to-drink-the-college-years-rbmke-cmtt/

The comedian Kumail Nanjiani was on Ellen recently talking about the plot of his latest movie “Stuber.” In discussing the dynamic between the two main characters of the movie (who have opposing views of the value of anger) he said something which resonated.The only emotion that men feel comfortable expressing, in general, is anger. We’ve been told that’s the only manly emotion there is. Sadness isn’t manly, fear isn’t considered manly, even joy can be turned into anger… And I felt for many many years I wasn’t in touch with those emotions. I only felt comfortable showing anger.I don’t think he is alone in those sentiments.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/why-are-men-so-angry-2-rbmke-cmtt/

I am writing this on my birthday.As of today, I am now officially in my late 30s. Which, as we all know… means absolutely nothing. Sure there are the science things that happen like losing two percent of my muscle mass every year, but that’s been happening for six-years already. I’m talking about what “Late 30s” signifies.It’s as arbitrary as it was when I was in my mid-30s or late teens. What is fascinating is our obsession with age. I don’t know if it is the same all around the world, or just here in America but it never seems like anybody feels the right age. We brag about being older than others, or younger, not feeling our age, or really feeling our age.I’m guilty of all of it. A lot of us are.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/what-does-a-birthday-mean-rbmke-cmtt/

When I was seven years old, and my sister was ten, my mother went back to work.But it wasn’t like she hadn’t been working. In addition to being a phenomenal mother who was home with us every day since birth, she had also worked from home. She typed, she did resumes, she hustled from the comfort of our home office.Eventually, she and our neighbor bought a Printing franchise 2 miles from our house.I’m not sure my sister and I saw a big difference in our lives in the beginning. Dad still left for work before we got up. Mom was still there to get us ready for school, make sure we ate breakfast, and paste down our cowlicks with hairspray. But now after we left for school, she left for work.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/when-mom-went-back-to-work-rbmke-cmtt/

My fiance and I had only been engaged for three weeks before people started asking us where we were going to get married. Of course, we had no idea, but one particular person seemed concerned.We had no desire to rush the planning. We were still so excited to just be engaged. But that is what has been so fascinating about wedding planning. Everybody has a point of view. Married people. Unmarried people. Divorced people. And if you’re not sure what your point of view is, people will sniff you out like a coyote on a juice cleanse and impose their thoughts on you.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/wedding-planning-according-to-other-people-rbmke-cmtt/

The humidity in Phoenix hit 40% this week. And while that isn’t very high as percentages go, when the temperature hits 110, the air begins to feel like dishwater that has been wrung out of a washcloth. It’s a feeling that was very frequent in my childhood when summer covered our town with its sweaty palms leaving me with nothing to do but wander listlessly around my own house.We didn’t have central air conditioning growing up, but I had an air conditioner in the wall above my bed. Some nights, father in all his benevolence would say to me: Turn your air conditioner and tell your sister she can sleep in your room tonight.It was a feeling of sheer joy.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-cold-basement-of-my-youth-rbmke-cmtt/

After my early interactions with alcohol, I didn’t drink. Didn’t even try. I wasn’t interested. There were kids my age sneaking booze from their parents’ liquor cabinets or getting drunk on weekends, but it wasn’t of interest to me. I just didn’t get it.In hindsight, there was a lot I didn’t get. There was the high school I knew which involved sports, plays, and community service, and the high school of teenage rebellion I wasn’t even aware of; A Shadow High School.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/learning-to-drink-the-high-school-years-rbmke-cmtt/

I have tried several times to tell this story.Each time I have failed. My stilted attempts are those of somebody working to extract meaning from an experience he is still struggling to understand. While I remember the events that transpired and the order in which they took place, when I try to convey why I care so much about what happened, I stumble. Part of that is because the story itself is incomplete.And yet this story occupies a heavily annotated space in my memory. It wasn’t horrible or traumatic, hilarious or unbelievable. It is, in some ways, just another abandoned subplot from a time full of unclear endings. But, because I still wish to understand it, I find myself here, once again, trying to turn an ellipsis into a period.And while this story takes place in Florence, Italy, it really starts with Jerry.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/a-memory-i-still-dont-understand-rbmke-cmtt/

I remember the first time I heard myself on camera. I was in high school and I was just coming out the other side of a pubescent voice change. The pitch of my voice was nasally, much different than what I heard in my head. Like a dented flugelhorn covered in wax paper. Is this what everybody else heard? God. It was terrible.Most of the time we don’t really hear the sound of our own voice. While performers like singers and actors must work with and take great care of their voices, the rest of us very much take our voices for granted. Which is strange, considering our voices and words are how we communicate with the world around us.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/your-own-voice-the-instrument-you-barely-hear-rbmke-cmtt/

My senior year of high school I found out on a Sunday night in October that a wonderful teacher of mine had passed away. I remember being in the bathroom of my house, feeling confused, and trying, unsuccessfully, to cry. I knew I was sad and yet it felt like the appropriate grief circuits weren’t firing.Five years later, in my first months out of college, I was again feeling overwhelmed, this time with a kind of inadvertent gumbo of sadness, longing, and loneliness. While I had broken up with my college girlfriend months before I felt like I was struggling more with the fallout as time went on. These events happened years ago, but they were formative for me in how I understand pain, loss, and grief, specifically, how I deal with them. The after effects of significant life events are not unlike those of culture shock.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/why-are-we-so-afraid-of-therapy-rbmke-cmtt/

Whistler, Canada is full of good looking, laid back residents used to the somewhat more gregarious nature of American tourists barreling through their mountain wonderland. And yet, the server who came to our table of five guys seemed genuinely shocked for another reason.Seriously? A bachelor party? You don’t look like any of the other bachelor parties that come through here.It was meant as a compliment. We looked around at each other and laughed. But it got me thinking about the modern bachelor party.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-modern-bachelor-party-rbmke-cmtt/

When I look at the number, it seems ridiculous: 339 notes in 11 different notebooks.Those are the statistics of my account on the digital note taking platform Evernote. Over 100 of those notes are recipes, half of which I’ve never made. Nearly 30 are for the business I owned. There are 47 in a folder just called “Randomness.”It is all some iteration of trying to remember prompted by a deep fear of forgetting.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-fear-of-forgetting-rbmke-cmtt/

The cowboy. The loner. The Alpha. The rugged individual. Our culture’s immediate memory serves up no less than 100 years of masculine stereotypes reinforcing the idea no man should need the support or community of other men.It manifests in the way we raise our boys, teach them, and train them to be around other boys. This sets the foundation for how they grow up, and the men they become. It is why today a third of American men feel lonely.So what the h*ll are we supposed to do?Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/how-do-you-make-friends-as-an-adult-part-3-rbmke-cmtt/

Meeting my fiance dramatically shifted my world.The early months of our relationship were immersive. There was this unquenchable thirst for the other person. We were eager for all interactions as we tried to impress each other, presenting the best version of our own self-portrait.The pendulum slowly swung back from seclusion to immersion as we introduced each other to our respective circles. The couplehood we were starting to build was now something we wanted to share with other couples. We were social as individuals. And now as partners, we wanted to be social together.Living together in a new city, nearly all the friends we ever had are permanently out of town. And now in this wonderful city, with this beautiful apartment big enough to actually entertain we ask; how could we find other couples to be friends with?Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/how-do-you-make-friends-as-an-adult-part-2-rbmke-cmtt/

The night before my first day of kindergarten I asked my mom how I was going to make friends at my new school. Here instructions were simple. Go up to somebody I wanted to be friends with and say “Hi, my name is Rich, what’s yours?”It seemed easy enough. So on the first day of kindergarten, as all the kids were getting settled before the first bell rang, I looked for somebody I wanted to be friends with. I saw a table where four girls were sitting and talking. I walked up to them and said: “Hi, my name is Rich, what’s yours?”Silence. No hello. No wave. Just four girls I didn’t know staring at me like I was an alien. Eventually, I just walked away. Making friends was going to be harder than I thought.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/how-do-you-make-friends-as-an-adult-part-1-rbmke-cmtt/

As I sat in the dentist chair listening to my new dentist explain the digital x-rays on the screen in front of me I knew what was about to happen. I would be given a series of options for a course of treatment going forward, and no matter what option I chose, the impact on my bank account would be significant.I wasn’t intentionally sitting with my arms crossed, trying to portray anger, but it was the default position I morph into whenever any dentist ever tells me how much it is going to cost to keep my teeth from falling out of my head.While I continued to nod along with his foretelling of my immediate dental future, I got lost in a wormhole when he said something else, almost in passing.Read the original article here:https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/dentists-yoga-mats-and-acceptance-rbmke-cmtt/

Whether it was camp or school or the first day at any of the jobs I started in my life, there is always that feeling within me, how do I prepare for an event that could be life changing? Perhaps it’s the wrong question. Maybe the event itself is not a catalyst, but a reflection, an indicator of a life already changed.Of course, it is not what I wear or how I look that determines how I start something, or how my experience transpires. But it is always interesting to reflect back on what I thought was important at the moment, what I missed, and what I gave too much attention to.Each of these beginnings was a very clear reflection of what I was looking for. Each piece of my life received the attention I hoped would sure me up against the insecurity of a future I wanted so badly to embrace, but could not control. It is never that simple.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/restarting-is-uncontrollable-rbmke-cmtt/

The first time I ever used any sort of airline miles I was 23 years old. After years of unintentionally flying on the same airline, I had accumulated over 50,000 miles, which, back then, was enough to get me a round trip ticket to the Mediterranean. I sat in the living room and booked my ticket over the phone. No computer in front of me, no website open. I spoke to the US Airways rep for nearly an hour as she patiently built my itinerary and answered dozens of my questions. Ultimately she booked me into Istanbul and out of Zagreb. Completely free. It was like magic. I didn’t know points were a game I could play and win.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/my-obsession-with-credit-card-points-rbmke-cmtt/

For the majority of my life, I have been saying, girls. Any female my age or younger was a girl. It wasn’t a deliberate act to denote girls vs women, youth vs adult. It was just what I had always done. Women were those females considerably older than me. Why? I’m not really sure.Generally, we do what we’ve always done. Girls was the term I used throughout high school and college. And while I probably should have stopped referring to my peers as girls at some time, I didn’t.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/when-girls-become-women-rbmke-cmtt/

Lyft drivers in Phoenix don’t understand why I moved here. Whenever I mention I am newly arrived in their city whatever banal conversation we were having is kicked up a notch by their heightened interest.Did you move here for work?It is the question they all ask me. As though that were the only possible reason anybody moves anywhere. I suppose it stands to reason. People in New York were often baffled I was moving to Phoenix. It makes sense people in Phoenix would be just as baffled I arrived.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/phoenix-is-hotter-than-your-imagination-rbmke-cmtt/

The first time I saw it I did a double take.Sitting in the courtyard of a bar downtown, while drinking and playing cards I turned to grab my beer and saw it out of the corner of my eye. A young woman was sucking on her phone. No, wait. She was holding a vape pen and her phone in the same hand. No, that wasn’t it either. The phone she was holding had a vape pen that was… part of the case?Yep.I tried not to stare but I kept looking over to confirm what I had seen. A phone case vape pen. Or a vape pen phone case. Had she bought it or made it herself? Either way, all I could think about was how we had finally figured out how to combine separate addictions into one. A single mega-addictive object.It was depressing.Read the original article here:https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/everything-all-the-time-always-rbmke-cmtt/

Do you remember the exact age? Maybe it was the year you bought your home or the day you got married. It might have been the result of something traumatic like the loss of a family member or a joyful moment like the birth of a child. There is a finite amount of time in this world. Our attention is limited. We reach a certain point in our lives and additional effort either seems too hard or just not worth it.It is not at all uncommon.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/queer-eye-marie-kondo-and-the-stagnant-self-rbmke-cmtt/

How much longer can I do this? How much longer do I want to?Those are the questions I started asking myself last year regarding entrepreneurship. Was I passionate about continuing this strangely unstructured, personal/professional journey… or did I want out?The answer wasn’t as clear as I hoped it would be.Entrepreneurship has always felt to me like a massive crank that took herculean strength, and significant time to turn. It required consistent sustained effort which did not necessarily guarantee momentum. Stops and starts meant I was constantly starting the process over again. It was never easy.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/from-employee-to-entrepreneur-to-employee-rbmke-cmtt/

My neighbor Anthony wheeled the freshly painted black and yellow BMX bike towards me. “Careful,” he said as I reached for the handlebars. “The paint is still wet.”I was 10 and basically incapable of not touching anything. Feeling was believing. So, of course, I touched the frame leaving a tiny fingerprint where “RICHARD” had been hand painted in black on the yellow frame. In a parking lot near the mall, he had found the bike with the front wheel disconnected from the fork. Somebody had just left it. He brought it home, fixed it up, painted it, and gave it to me.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-gifts-we-do-not-know-we-give-rbmke-cmtt/

When I was 18 years old I had my brain mapped.It was the summer after my freshman year of college. I was somewhat beaten down after a rough transition to the autonomous mode of collegiate study. Focus and attention had always been a challenge for me, but I had generally been bright enough to get by. Failing calculus in my first semester was a massive recalibration. For the first time in my life, I had fallen behind and was struggling to catch up.My mother’s friend was a Counselor who employed the use of neurofeedback, a therapy where the recipient receives biofeedback illustrating and (hopefully) improving brain activity. I didn’t love the idea of having my brain mapped or changed. It seemed like a biological rewiring which would fundamentally change who I was. With no real collegiate focus or passion outside of a general desire to be somebody, my extraverted (read: attention seeking) personality felt like the entire essence of who I was. Possibly having it changed seemed catastrophic.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-fear-of-influence-rbmke-cmtt/

The word that keeps coming up over and over again is “fit.”It is the lynchpin of almost every email I receive when job searching. The autoresponders after I apply always say “If you are a good fit…” However, the rejection emails never directly say I’m not a good fit. To do so would be insulting and nobody wants that. Instead, the emails just say the company will be moving forward (i.e. away from me) with other people who are a better fit. Better becomes such a confusing and secretly relative word in the mouths of rejecting employers.And there is a lot of rejection. It makes searching, applying, and interviewing extremely unrewarding. There is no obvious silver lining to not being hired by a company. Some rejections I understand, but others I wish I knew why. Who was a better fit than me? Help me so I don’t waste my time applying to similar companies looking for a skillset I do not even know I don’t have.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/impressing-without-fitting-rbmke-cmtt/

For most of my life, I believed there was an otherness responsible for change. Life’s great leaps were not the result of some mental or behavioral shift but a direct result of experiences the universe laid before me. These were the elements with the power to change my core; enabling me to be the person I always wanted to or prohibiting me from dwelling in circles I no longer desired.And it’s preached to us, from an early age. In high school, we are told College will be the best years of your life. In college, we long for our own money to do spend as we wish. The horizon does not lack for promises. It is a purveyor of perpetual hope as well as a goal unattainable. As our physical bodies atrophy our wants exercise their daily metaphysical cardio.We are bodies at rest with minds in motion seeking the life that wants to live in us.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/this-is-how-it-works-rbmke-cmtt/

Driving across the country is a case study in disparities; a constant bombardment of contrasting ideas. What we’ve heard versus what we see. What we “know” versus what we experience. Preconceived notions and immediate realities. It is a field trip through news headlines.And while I didn’t anticipate doing so, I started thinking about racism over breakfast at a Waffle House in Montgomery, Alabama.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/cross-country-meditation-on-america-rbmke-cmtt/

How much time is left?The question plays on repeat in my head every time I am driving a car and using Google Maps. I wasn’t as concerned about the time remaining in my journey before the advent of GPS. But it isn’t the map itself prompting the question. It’s the timer on the bottom left corner of the screen telling me exactly how many minutes I have left in my trip.It is relevant information that causes unnecessary anxiety.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/striving-for-a-timeless-journey-rbmke-cmtt/

Gillette’s recent ad “The Best Men Can Be” has garnered millions of views and as many opinions at this point. Much has been said supporting and denouncing Gillette’s decision to make the video. But those aren’t the elements of the discussion I find most fascinating. I’m interested in what this entire exchange says about the way we state our beliefs and talk about, well… anything.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/social-justice-2/gillette-qualifiers-and-the-public-stance-rbmke-cmtt/

Book Report: The Way of the Superior ManI recently finished reading David Deida’s “The Way of the Superior Man.” Normally I would resist reading anything suggesting a singular behavior, certainly one that results in superiority. But with a 4.4 rating from over 300 reviews on Amazon, I felt the book must have something to offer. It also seemed like the perfect kickoff for my course of self-directed study on masculinity.The book posits every person, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, has masculine and feminine energy. And it is the job of men to harness the power of their masculine energy.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/arts/book-report-the-way-of-the-superior-man-by-david-deida-rbmke-cmtt/

Many of my closest friends have begun reproducing which means our social calendar has seen an influx of birthdays for people newly arrived on the planet. Since we don’t have children, and I haven’t had a lot of interactions with tiny humans throughout my life, I’m not quite sure how to buy gifts for them.Babies grow so fast that clothes seem incredibly temporary and I don’t know really know anything about toys. I know play is fundamental for the development of children but I don’t know which toys foster the right kind of play. I also want to buy something more meaningful that will nurture mental and emotional development.Hence books.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/feminism-and-mindfulness-for-toddlers-rmbke-cmtt/

My fiance and I are in the process of packing up our apartment to move across the country. I haven’t moved homes since I was 24 years old and living with my parents. That was 11 years ago and I have accumulated an absurd amount of things in the meanwhile. Parsing through it all has meant trying to figure out why I held on to any of this stuff, to begin with.When my fiance moved in two years ago we quickly merged stuff, got rid of stuff, and bought more stuff together. As time passed I began to feel stifled in our cozy apartment. I wondered daily what we could get rid of. There was no way we needed everything in it. I wanted fewer things, more space. Not a larger footprint necessarily, just distance between items.And then we decided to move.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/a-life-in-boxes-rbmke-cmtt/

When it comes to technology, I vary a little bit in terms of where I fall on the spectrum. While I’m not a Luddite I do appreciate the tactile nature of things like pens and paper over emails and texts. And while I’m not an early adopter I do see the value of the technologies and tools that actually make my life easier and more enjoyable.Two years ago my sister gifted me an Amazon Echo for the house. Mainly it’s a great speaker. It’s also a lot easier to tell echo to stop, skip or change the volume than it is to walk over to my computer every time.And largely it has been a wonderful shift. It is a tool with specific functions we use deliberately. The exact opposite of the seven different screens we have in our home. Click here to read the original article: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-disconnected-home-rbmke-cmtt/

When I was 27 the startup I worked for brought in a “financial advisor” to meet with employees. A bunch of tech 20 somethings in flip-flops and shorts sat in a conference room with this suit for 15 minutes each so he could guide us on our 401K contributions.His disposition made me feel like a kid who had forgotten to hand in his homework. The way he reacted to my questions made it seem like I was asking him about the long-term earning potential for my stockpile of magic beans.Clearly, my investment strategy was lacking. But I still had time… right? Today, eight years later, I’m still wondering if I have time.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/mid-30s-investing-anxieties-rmbke-cmtt/

About 7 years ago I did my first year-end review. Visiting my parents in South Carolina for the Christmas holiday, and somewhat unsatisfied with how my previous year had transpired, I found myself wanting something more than my standard set of incredibly vague handwritten resolutions. Every year just after Christmas I sit in the recliner on my parents’ porch under a heavy blanket and stare into the pitch black silence of the Carolina night. It is there where my brain and body are finally able to come down from whatever heightened and distracted state I have allowed myself to enter.December consistently finds me contemplating ways to purge, organize, eliminate and restart.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/a-review-of-year-end-reviews-rbmke-cmtt/

In February of 2018, Kareem Hunt, then a Kansas City Chiefs running back, assaulted a woman in the hallway of his residence. The event, which was captured by the building’s security cameras, shows Kareem knocking a woman over, pushing, and finally kicking her in an altercation which involved other individuals trying to restrain him. That video, released by TMZ Sports, did not emerge until just recently.Last week, after 10 months of non-action and 11 active games for the Chiefs, Kareem Hunt was let go. He subsequently requested an interview with ESPN’s Lisa Salters where he could apologize.Except he didn’t really.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/social-justice-2/kareem-hunt-violence-against-women-and-the-non-apology-rbmke-cmtt/

The first alcoholic drink I remember having was communion wine at church. Walking down the thin red carpet in the cathedral with my hands folded in front of me I would review the appropriate procedure over and over in my head. Listen. Reply. Sip. Return to seat.From then on there weren’t many other drinking experiences. Strange considering how much time I spent behind a bar as a child.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/learning-to-drink-the-early-years-rbmke-cmtt/

When I was 20 years old I lived in Europe for 5 months. Smartphones did not exist. Travel review sites were still in their infancy. Where I went and what I did was dependent on my guidebook and recommendations from people I knew or met.Traveling by myself was a crash course in forming connections disconnected from any sort of structure or support. No clubs. No mutual friends. Just strangers starting from scratch.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-pre-reviewed-vacation-rbmke-cmtt/

About a year ago several different people recommended a book to me called “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.”It was a not so subtle hint I was, perhaps, giving too many fucks. The careful distribution of fucks has never been my forte`. I have always cared too much about what people think with regards to, well... almost everything in my life. And it has taken a negative toll on my mind and my heart. Perhaps it was time to learn this subtle art which somebody had written a not so subtle book about. I bought the audiobook.But even before I started listening to it, I kept thinking over and over again: how?Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/the-subtle-art-of-learning-from-other-people-rbmke-cmtt/

As I was switching out the summer clothes in my closet for the winter ones under my bed I found myself creating a rather large pile to donate. This didn’t really surprise me considering my relationship with clothing hasn’t always been, shall we say, a good fit.Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/clothes-make-the-man-who-makes-himself-rbmke-cmtt/

Hannah Gadsby’s special “Nanette” is not the Netflix comedy special you put on to zone out and have a laugh. No, Nanette is something much bigger and (at the risk of sounding incredibly pretentious) far more important. Knowing that going in will help you stay patient and realize, for as funny as the special is, the point is not the laughs. Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/nanette-a-case-study-in-empathy/

Several times a day I receive an email from a site called Help A Reporter Out or HARO. It is a site journalists use to find sources for their stories. As a subject matter expert, it is a great way to find opportunities to share your expertise. The majority of the articles I see being written are about fashion or sex. “Real Men who have waxed their testicles” or “Men in their 30s willing to talk about their foot fetishes.” Cheating, erections, and male anatomy are in heavy rotation. Here is the problem: The biggest issues facing men today have nothing to do with fashion or sexual performance. With all that is happening in the world right now, there has never been a better time to take a closer look at men. To celebrate the way they are evolving as fathers, partners, and friends. To dive deep into the hearts and minds of those struggling with myriad issues to help them change. Read the original article here:https://goodmenproject.com/guy-talk/are-we-all-missing-the-point-rbmke-cmtt/

Almost two months ago I proposed to my girlfriend. And while I was excited to plan this moment for the woman I loved the most, once I realized how much work was ahead of me, I became obsessed with the logistics.I wanted the ring to feel as unique and special to her as she is to me. I wanted to take her away to a place specific to our relationship, the exact spot to reflect the gravitas of the moment. There were so many details to figure out, in secret, without accidentally ruining the surprise.It wasn’t until all the moving pieces were locked down, I could even begin to think about what I wanted to say. Read the original article here: https://goodmenproject.com/marriage-2/proposing-marriage-before-and-after-rbmke-cmtt/