WEBVTT
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I met a few people at the firehouse, and they said, hey, come to a drill.
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I'm like, all right, I'll check it out.
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It really was the act of going through the open door that changed my life in this moment.
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I really just felt like, let me be curious, let me see what's here,
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what it's like. And so going to those drills and seeing what firefighting was
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like, I guess it just planted a seed. Welcome to Second Calling,
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where we explore life purpose in the lives of professionals at inflection points.
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Today's guest is David Dachinger. David has had a fascinating career.
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He started off as a music composer and producer, being nominated for a Grammy.
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He became a firefighter, working his way up to being a lieutenant.
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And then he entered the mental health space, where he's written a book,
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and he also produces a podcast, helping first responders.
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In this episode, we talk about following unexpected openings.
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We talk about how things that happen in one chapter of life can be the seeds for the next chapter.
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And we talk about the discomfort that can happen when we follow what's most
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meaningful If you've built a life for yourself that's working pretty well But
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you find yourself increasingly curious about new directions in life that don't
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really fit with where you're at now,
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Well, this story is for you.
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Welcome, David. It's a pleasure to have you on the show Thanks,
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bradley. It's great to be here.
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So let's start with when you got out of college, you went to Purdue,
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it looks like, and you got into the music business, but you weren't a performer.
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Could you tell us about what you did?
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Absolutely. I can back up a little bit before that. I went to Purdue for a couple
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of years thinking I wanted to become an airline pilot, and.
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The courses I took were for aeronautical engineering. My brain does not really
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compute stuff like physics and algebra and calculus.
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So I was spending all my time playing music. And so I pivoted and I transferred
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to Berklee College of Music in Boston because I just knew that music was what
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I wanted to do with my life at that point. So.
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The first time I ever set foot in a recording studio was actually when I was
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leaving high school and I had a girlfriend and I wanted to leave her with something memorable.
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And I wrote a song for her and I wanted to back in those days,
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you know, we didn't have, you know, you couldn't just send it on like a,
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you know, as part of a email or message.
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I went to a recording studio where they actually cut the discs,
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and I had them cut a 45-rpm record disc from this song, which I gave to my girlfriend.
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When I set foot in that recording studio, it was like getting hit by a lightning bolt.
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I was like, I want to do this. I want to work in a recording studio. It was like magic.
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So that was my intent going to Berklee, was to come out and to become a recording
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engineer, which I did eventually.
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Getting through college and then starting to begin my professional journey.
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Okay, I had meant for this just to be sort of prologue to what we talked about
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later, but let's dig into this.
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This is really interesting, your experience at the recording studio.
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So you wanted to be an airline pilot, but that wasn't working out.
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So how did you, and then you were playing music on the side as sort of like
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that's what you found yourself doing.
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How did you know to switch to music full time? Like, what was that transition,
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like? Because that's a pretty big change. I mean, that's a conversation with
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your parents kind of change.
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Yeah, absolutely. It was not necessarily a pleasant one because my father worked
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for the airlines, and I think he saw me as pursuing that route.
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But when I decided to switch to music, I know he was not too happy.
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He didn't necessarily say it to my face, but I heard secondhand that he was not too overjoyed.
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But speaking of joy, that was really my joy, was music. It was not,
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you know, designing airplanes, although I still love aviation and I would still
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love to, you know, be a pilot.
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I just had to make some hard choices and music was my joy. I spent my spare
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moments going to the radio station at the college dorm and becoming a DJ,
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hearing records I'd never been exposed to and playing music in a band.
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And Berkeley, same scenario.
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We formed a band not long after we got there, played colleges and ski resorts
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all over New England, had a blast.
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You know, if we made like, you know, 50 or 100 bucks a week,
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we thought we were doing great.
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And so that was the beginning of this music journey, which, you know,
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I thought that was the be all end all.
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And it was fulfilling, but I think there's a certain self-centeredness about
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being a musician that doesn't necessarily fulfill the full purpose that I was looking for in life.
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Oh, interesting. I mean, I suppose as a musician, your success,
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if hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people are
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looking at you, listening to you share what comes from within you.
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So it would have to be very self-focused.
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It is i mean it can require a lot of practice um a lot of uh you know you're
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on stage right you're in the spotlight your um,
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people are you know giving you adulation or um applause you know they're they're
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cheering you on and so that can be really
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gratifying for the ego but at the end of the day um you know i think my bigger
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purpose was to impact people in a different way but,
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But, you know, music has always been a beautiful part of my life, and it's morphed in.
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The way I've been able to make a living doing it.
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I went from playing in bands to becoming a recording engineer,
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making records, mixing records, and that led to some great opportunities to travel and meet people.
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And when the music business started changing, I found myself at an inflection point there.
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It was really starting to lean more heavily towards rap and hip-hop,
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which was definitely not my thing.
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And so I had to recalibrate and come up with a new plan.
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And kind of a, I don't know, kind of like a chance thing happened.
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I was in a recording studio in Madison Avenue working on an advertisement,
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and I saw a magazine article which mentioned a guy that I went to high school with who had a music,
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production company that supplied music for tv sports and i thought well i should
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look up this guy rob and see what he's up to and that kind of began my journey
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as a composer for television music,
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okay so you've had magic happen a couple times for you in recording studios um.
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I can't stop thinking about it. When you went into the recording studio the
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first time, you said it was like a bolt of magic.
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Before that, had you thought of music mainly in terms of performance and less
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in recording? Or what was the big aha of walking into the studio? you?
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Great question. I had always tinkered with this recording thing.
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One of the greatest gifts I got was an old tape recorder. And I would love nothing
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more than to just play piano into it or sing songs into it.
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I would make movies with an eight millimeter camera. And so all this creative
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audio video stuff was one of my great passions in life.
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And so I was doing it on a pretty rudimentary level.
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Walking into the studio now, you're looking at a place that is completely designed
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and set up to record music.
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It's got an amazing recording console, multi-track tape machines,
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a control room, which is isolated from the studio, a studio which has got great,
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you know, kind of wood on the walls and fabrics and,
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isolation for the drums versus the piano.
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They are truly magical places where, you know, music goes from an idea or a
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rough demo and becomes a polished, finished product.
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And that can be a long, tedious process, but it really brought together those
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elements that I was tinkering with in my earlier days to, like, it's all here.
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You know, this is the workshop. This is the place where everything comes together
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and you create incredible music mixes, you know, records, what songs come to
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life in this recording studio.
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Interesting. So there's two themes I want to highlight. One,
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this was something you'd always been interested in, you'd toyed with,
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almost like on an ad hoc basis.
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And then you saw it all together and it hit.
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It's pretty common when people get into purpose that it's not binary.
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It's not like no interest, no interest, no interest, suddenly complete interest.
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Rather, it does seem like they kind of poke at it, prod at it,
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play with it, and then sort of almost give it permission to become a bigger
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part of their life or something happens where it does.
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And then seeing it all happen, like an experience, that's a really important idea because,
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We can imagine what things are like, but sometimes we have a more visceral response
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to an experience. We get into something, and it goes both ways.
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The person I interviewed for the previous episode talked about an experience
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at her work where she got into it and almost had an out-of-body experience,
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but in the other direction of, yeah, I can't do this anymore. I'm done.
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It doesn't always happen that way, but when it does, it can be very telling.
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Okay, I have to ask, did your high school girlfriend like the record you cut for her?
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She did very much. I mean, it was, you know, dedicated to her,
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like her name was in the title and it was very personal.
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So, you know, unfortunately, we didn't, our relationship didn't really last
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past my going away to college. But I felt like that was, you know,
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a very appropriate way to give her something that she could think,
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you know, remember me by.
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That's so classy. I think when I went to college, my goodbye was like,
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OK, yeah, well, I'll see you. And like, maybe I'll see you at Christmas.
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Like, that was it. like so.
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Kudos for that. Okay, so you're a record producer, or I'm sorry,
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you're in the music business as a producer and an engineer.
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And you saw a magazine article that enabled you to get into sports and other types of this work.
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What were some of your favorite moments of that, of that kind of phase of your
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life or that part of your career?
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So this was an interesting transition. So I went from I wanted to go from recording
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and mixing records to writing music for television.
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And, you know, it was not like, you know, going from first gear to sixth gear.
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It was definitely like a, you know, a stepped up process.
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For a few years, I was writing music for what you would call talk shows like
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Sally, Jesse, Raphael. I think I had some music on Jerry Springer and Maury Povich.
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And so I was building up a catalog and getting to I was learning the ropes of
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that part of the business, which is very different from working in a recording studio.
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So over those first years, I cannot say I was proud of the shows that I was
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getting my music on, but it was
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a means to an end, like necessary steps to get to where I wanted to go.
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So when I finally fully connected with Rob, who was selling music to television
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networks, I at least got some experience.
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I started to understand music publishing, royalties, and some of the business
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aspects of music. Because music, as much fun as it is to create,
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you really have to be very well versed in the business in order to actually make money.
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So I learned those pieces. And finally, when I started working with Rob,
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we were able to play some music with ABC Sports. And eventually we built a huge
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catalog with CBS Sports. And the moments that...
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I'm so proud of are hearing my music as part of the Masters golf tournament
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and hearing my music in the Super Bowl and actually recording an orchestra,
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conducting my music with a live orchestra in a studio in New York City,
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which was a piece that we wrote for the Masters.
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And we brought in the sportscaster, Jim Nance, who is the voice of the Masters, essentially.
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We decided to dedicate that piece to his father, who had recently passed away.
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So we had Jim there. We had his mother there.
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We shot video and presented him with a plaque and a signed copy of the score.
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And so that was a moment that I'm super proud of, that I'm like,
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you know, I never in my wildest dreams that I think I'd be writing music for
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the Masters, let alone, you know, hanging out with someone like Jim Nance.
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That's wonderful. You were gifted at packaging music in meaningful ways,
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you know, between your girlfriend and Jim Nance and his father. Interesting.
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Okay, so typically with somebody's career, as you've just described,
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the end game goes something like this. I've done it for 40 years.
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I am now retiring. I'm an honored figure in the field.
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It's been my life, and now I'm going to play the grandkids.
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But you sort of took a left turn somewhere here in the middle.
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And in your LinkedIn description, it shows Lieutenant Firefighter.
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Now, how did – tell us about that shift. Did you – were you drawn to it?
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Was there something you were trying to get away from?
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What happened? So this is going to be another interesting story.
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After living in New York City for a better part of 20 years,
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our daughter was getting older, and it was time to move out to the burbs,
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get her into a school for kindergarten.
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And the house that we chose to move to was next to a firehouse.
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Now, I had no previous experience, no connection with fire departments,
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really was not on my radar any way, shape, or form.
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And I'm thinking, hey, these guys are going to be going out.
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I hope they're not making a lot of noise, you know, running their sirens and air horns and radios.
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That was what I went into this with.
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Fast forward a little bit, I was invited to a barbecue at the firehouse,
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went over, met some guys, and we didn't know people in this town.
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We were pretty much, you know, moving there with no prior social connections.
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So met a few people at the firehouse. They said, hey, come to a drill.
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I'm like, all right, I'll check it out.
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It really was the act of going through the open door that changed my life in this moment.
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Really just felt like, let me be curious. Let me see what's here, what it's like.
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And so going to those drills and seeing what firefighting was like,
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I guess it just planted a seed.
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I started to think, hey, this isn't too bad. Maybe I'll keep coming back.
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And I did. I joined the volunteer fire department there, did that for about
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eight years, loved it, continued to write music.
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But as this moved forward, I'm like, I want to take this further.
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And I started testing to become a career firefighter. Now, what's important
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in all this is that I found a level of purpose in doing that work that I had
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never experienced before in any other part of my life. Oh, really?
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Because it seems that with music, there's a lot of meaning in it in terms of self-expression.
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But you found like a different source of purpose or meaning with firefighting. Tell me about that.
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Yeah, music is beautiful that way. And you know it does impact people.
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But in some ways, it's an indirect impact, right? Unless you're standing in
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front of somebody playing a song and you see that it's reaching them emotionally.
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When you're writing music for television, it's a little bit removed.
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However, if you are on an ambulance or a fire truck and you're showing up to
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somebody's worst day and you are able to help them through part of that,
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even if it's holding their hand, helping them off the floor,
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making a phone call, getting them the help that they need,
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there's an immediate sense of purpose that in some ways is unparalleled.
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And so that was part of what really drew me into the fire profession that made
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me feel I'm all in with this. This is really a calling that I didn't realize I had.
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That makes sense when you explain it that way. I have a couple of friends who
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are firefighters or have been, and I'm always struck by how different their
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job is from so many other jobs in society.
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So if in my job as a sociologist i see a dead body as part of my work like my
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lecture's gone terribly wrong like something's gone bad,
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i just don't see a lot of dead bodies i don't see a lot of you know december
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body parts i don't see people bleeding i don't see people sobbing hysterically,
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and yet as a firefighter you wake up you have breakfast you go to the firehouse
00:17:13.880 --> 00:17:17.640
and you don't know what's going to happen that day and you and you have to be
00:17:17.640 --> 00:17:18.790
ready for almost anything,
00:17:19.910 --> 00:17:25.490
That is part of the that is part of the beauty of that job is if you embrace those kinds of things.
00:17:25.490 --> 00:17:29.400
Right. First, there's intense preparation. So you feel like you're somewhat
00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:32.410
prepared for whatever may come through. But then there's the uncertainty and
00:17:32.410 --> 00:17:35.100
the unknown of like, what's this day going to bring?
00:17:35.480 --> 00:17:39.260
And truly, you know, you cannot make up some of the things you will see out there.
00:17:40.740 --> 00:17:44.760
As you alluded to, some of them are pretty intense, traumatic scenes.
00:17:44.760 --> 00:17:48.360
But also there's some, you know, sometimes it borders on humor.
00:17:48.360 --> 00:17:52.250
It borders on, like, scratching your head, like, what was this person thinking?
00:17:53.230 --> 00:17:57.100
However, there's an incredible amount of problem solving, an incredible amount of creativity.
00:17:57.160 --> 00:18:00.700
And some of the people I worked with in the fire service are some of the most
00:18:00.700 --> 00:18:04.800
brilliant creative people I've ever met, which parallels the music world.
00:18:05.340 --> 00:18:09.300
You know, you're constantly sort of solving problems and making creative decisions
00:18:09.300 --> 00:18:12.840
to get a result similar in both worlds.
00:18:12.840 --> 00:18:17.340
There's, you know, there's improvising, there's, you know, coming together on
00:18:17.340 --> 00:18:22.810
a certain plateau of similar training, but then sometimes you have to leave
00:18:22.810 --> 00:18:26.280
that and work together as a team with that foundation.
00:18:27.160 --> 00:18:32.200
So as I thought about it more, there is a lot of parallels between music and
00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:34.360
emergency services. Okay.
00:18:35.240 --> 00:18:38.330
Tell me about the camaraderie at the firehouse, because it seems like that's
00:18:38.330 --> 00:18:40.120
something you wouldn't have as much with music.
00:18:40.120 --> 00:18:44.510
I mean, you had the people you worked with, but it seems that the firehouse
00:18:44.510 --> 00:18:49.800
is almost a hothouse for people connecting and forming teams and bonding.
00:18:50.180 --> 00:18:51.510
And that could be very meaningful.
00:18:52.440 --> 00:18:56.370
Absolutely. I mean, there is some connection where if you're in a band,
00:18:56.370 --> 00:19:00.160
say, you travel, you're spending a lot of time together. It's kind of like a
00:19:00.470 --> 00:19:02.160
dysfunctional family many times.
00:19:02.970 --> 00:19:07.710
But the firehouse, as you kind of pointed to, is a really special thing where
00:19:07.710 --> 00:19:12.270
you're literally living with people for at least 24 hours at a shot,
00:19:12.480 --> 00:19:15.870
eating, going on the calls, sleeping, working out,
00:19:16.670 --> 00:19:19.490
sitting around the kitchen table, solving the world's problems,
00:19:19.850 --> 00:19:21.930
giving each other financial advice.
00:19:22.350 --> 00:19:24.880
Marriage advice, nutritional advice.
00:19:25.560 --> 00:19:32.150
It builds bonds that during that stretch of time when you're part of the department are incredible.
00:19:32.530 --> 00:19:37.880
Those are people that will show up for you in your worst moment to support you and your family.
00:19:38.910 --> 00:19:44.400
They'll bust your chops, but they'll also give you a hug when you need it.
00:19:44.850 --> 00:19:49.620
And so it's a powerful thing. And it also makes it that much more difficult
00:19:49.940 --> 00:19:51.810
when you do leave the profession,
00:19:52.500 --> 00:19:57.390
to leave that behind it's it's you know it's a hard act to follow and um in
00:19:57.390 --> 00:20:01.720
some ways i'm still searching for that same tribe that i i left behind at the firehouse,
00:20:02.980 --> 00:20:06.840
yeah and you had to try that a lot of people won't ever find like after,
00:20:07.810 --> 00:20:14.540
for most of us once we leave our family of origin our intense constant connection
00:20:14.540 --> 00:20:19.220
with other people in our lives is over, except maybe, except for our nuclear family, of course.
00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:21.920
But, you know, we don't find it in work.
00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:26.960
With firefighting, were you in the station or the firehouse that was next to your house?
00:20:28.330 --> 00:20:32.210
Yeah, good question. I was a volunteer in that department, which is,
00:20:32.590 --> 00:20:36.480
it's called a combination department. So they were career members who lived
00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:39.420
in the firehouse and then us volunteers who showed up as needed.
00:20:39.800 --> 00:20:44.190
When I tested for and got hired as a career firefighter, then I was literally
00:20:44.190 --> 00:20:50.150
living at the firehouse, you know, with my crew and usually 24 hours at a time.
00:20:50.150 --> 00:20:54.550
Sometimes you'd work a double and be there for 48. I think one time I did three
00:20:54.550 --> 00:20:59.530
24-hour shifts back to back. So I was there 72 hours and as you can imagine
00:20:59.530 --> 00:21:01.110
at the end of that it was pretty toasted.
00:21:02.990 --> 00:21:07.890
Just the image, though, of being next door to your home for your work.
00:21:08.230 --> 00:21:12.640
I mean, you had a strangely integrated life. And I mean, I'm sure you heard
00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:16.450
thousands of jokes about your commute, you know, walking from the driveway over.
00:21:17.100 --> 00:21:24.270
But so once again, with firefighting, you had a place-based experience.
00:21:24.800 --> 00:21:28.800
With the recording studio, you walked in as like a bolt hit you.
00:21:29.380 --> 00:21:32.970
With firefighting it sounds like you walked in and you saw what they're doing
00:21:32.970 --> 00:21:37.600
because you're right next door and it aroused your curiosity sort of demystified
00:21:37.600 --> 00:21:39.620
it sort of made it possible,
00:21:40.260 --> 00:21:46.220
but in both cases you went into the situation without a strong interest in what
00:21:46.220 --> 00:21:48.910
the situation offered or at least.
00:21:50.230 --> 00:21:54.620
Certainly with firefighting you had some interest with recording but then And
00:21:54.880 --> 00:21:58.850
seeing it happen in place really solidified it for you.
00:21:59.890 --> 00:22:03.500
Yeah, and that's an interesting point because with music, since I had grown
00:22:03.500 --> 00:22:07.840
up with it and it was part of my life, that wasn't a stretch,
00:22:07.840 --> 00:22:10.790
right? That really felt like a natural extension of what I'd done.
00:22:11.230 --> 00:22:15.370
Firefighting came out of nowhere, right? And I constantly had this conversation
00:22:15.370 --> 00:22:19.080
with myself, even when I got to the point of testing for promotion.
00:22:19.080 --> 00:22:21.950
Like, do I belong here? Is this really who I am?
00:22:21.950 --> 00:22:25.760
Like, how do I justify? How do I live up to the expectations,
00:22:25.760 --> 00:22:30.660
not only my own expectations, but the expectation of all these people that I'm
00:22:30.660 --> 00:22:34.210
going to be working with, that I'm good enough to be one of them?
00:22:34.350 --> 00:22:39.430
It took a lot to talk myself off the ledge a few times, to give myself,
00:22:39.430 --> 00:22:40.690
boost my own confidence.
00:22:41.410 --> 00:22:45.340
Because I remember when they were offering testing for lieutenant,
00:22:45.820 --> 00:22:48.840
I said to a couple of guys on my shift, including the captain,
00:22:48.840 --> 00:22:51.890
like, you know, I don't really think that's me. And they were like...
00:22:52.940 --> 00:22:56.170
Do it, you know, do it, even if you do it for a couple of years,
00:22:56.170 --> 00:22:58.060
and someone else will move into the position.
00:22:58.480 --> 00:23:02.060
They showed faith in me and, you know, kind of seeing something in me that I
00:23:02.060 --> 00:23:06.290
didn't see in myself. So that I took that, made a leap of faith and said,
00:23:06.290 --> 00:23:12.080
Okay, I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to commit to this process of testing and see what happens.
00:23:12.380 --> 00:23:16.610
So sounds like the big payoffs for being a firefighter for you were a,
00:23:16.920 --> 00:23:20.150
like the direct opportunities to help people.
00:23:20.430 --> 00:23:25.040
Somebody's day is better or life has changed because you interacted with them.
00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:30.860
And also the connection with the other firefighters.
00:23:31.610 --> 00:23:35.610
I will say now that I'm thinking about it, the firefighters that I've known
00:23:35.780 --> 00:23:40.330
tended to be pretty well socially adjusted. They're very comfortable interacting with each other.
00:23:40.680 --> 00:23:44.720
And maybe people who aren't comfortable with that don't select themselves into
00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:48.040
that situation, or if they try to, they're not allowed into it.
00:23:48.510 --> 00:23:51.580
But I would say that firefighters tend to be, at least the ones I've known,
00:23:51.580 --> 00:23:53.250
have been well-adjusted socially.
00:23:54.480 --> 00:23:59.400
Yeah, they tend to be very gregarious, outgoing people. Not to say that you
00:23:59.400 --> 00:24:05.570
can't be somewhat kind of an introverted person and still have a good career.
00:24:05.950 --> 00:24:10.170
I would say I kind of straddle the line. I can be extroverted and introverted,
00:24:10.170 --> 00:24:15.270
but certainly there was people I worked with who were way more extroverted than me.
00:24:15.270 --> 00:24:21.240
And it is part of, I think, part of the persona of a firefighter is to be that,
00:24:21.730 --> 00:24:28.360
extroverted, very gregarious, humorous. You know, humor is a big part of the job.
00:24:28.920 --> 00:24:30.730
Chop busting is a big part of the job.
00:24:31.300 --> 00:24:36.200
But laughing is a big part of the job. And I think that's partially a coping
00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:38.150
mechanism, but partially, you know,
00:24:38.730 --> 00:24:43.220
we're, again, being together with your fellow firefighters, having done these
00:24:43.220 --> 00:24:48.070
crazy calls all day long, sometimes that's a great release.
00:24:48.490 --> 00:24:54.830
And it's part of the firehouse that I miss very much. Before we continue, a quick note.
00:24:55.460 --> 00:25:00.180
I write a monthly newsletter for people trying to figure out what comes next in work and life.
00:25:01.020 --> 00:25:05.940
Every issue gives you a story, an idea, and a practical next step that you can
00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:07.580
take to live with greater purpose.
00:25:07.820 --> 00:25:11.170
You can subscribe to it and learn more about my work at my website.
00:25:11.600 --> 00:25:16.640
Bradleywrightphd.com Now, back to the conversation. Okay.
00:25:17.450 --> 00:25:22.620
Now, I'll get to your transition out of firefighting. But before that.
00:25:24.040 --> 00:25:25.770
Did you have any qualms about firefighting?
00:25:25.770 --> 00:25:30.310
So with music, you talked about how you thought it could be very self-centered
00:25:30.310 --> 00:25:36.000
and you weren't always proud of where your music went with Jerry Springer and stuff like that.
00:25:37.110 --> 00:25:39.490
What about firefighting? When you're in it, did you have sort of any.
00:25:41.110 --> 00:25:44.720
I don't know if they're moral qualms, but as much as like inner qualms,
00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:49.780
things you weren't sure about it. It wasn't maybe a good fit or it wasn't enough or something like that.
00:25:51.190 --> 00:25:56.550
Yeah, absolutely. I can remember early in my career as a career firefighter,
00:25:56.990 --> 00:26:00.300
I came into a union meeting with an idea I thought was a great idea,
00:26:00.300 --> 00:26:05.250
you know, like a way to maybe make the union a couple of dollars.
00:26:05.250 --> 00:26:08.700
But also more, it was more to do something good for the community.
00:26:08.700 --> 00:26:13.120
And it got shot down. And I can remember walking out of that meeting going,
00:26:13.380 --> 00:26:17.270
I can't do this. Like, I'm done. It really just knocked the wind out of my sails.
00:26:17.700 --> 00:26:20.920
Fortunately, I just, you know, gave it some time to subside.
00:26:20.920 --> 00:26:25.450
I came back, and, you know, over time, I think I was able to push through some
00:26:25.450 --> 00:26:30.370
other things that I thought were important. But there was moments of doubt for sure.
00:26:30.700 --> 00:26:34.500
There was moments where, you know, there was conflicts with the leadership of
00:26:34.500 --> 00:26:38.790
the department that I got pulled into indirectly. And I'm like,
00:26:38.790 --> 00:26:40.370
this is not what I signed up for.
00:26:40.660 --> 00:26:44.960
You know, doing the work is one thing, but the internal, sometimes the internal
00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:49.620
dynamics can be distressing, you know, and I'm not someone that likes to go
00:26:49.620 --> 00:26:53.770
into contentious adversarial situations.
00:26:54.290 --> 00:26:58.340
I like peace. What you describe, though, are things that could happen in any
00:26:58.340 --> 00:27:02.010
organization and probably happen more in other organizations than firefighting.
00:27:02.620 --> 00:27:05.810
And organizations are interesting because they give us an opportunity to have
00:27:05.810 --> 00:27:07.280
a bigger impact in the world.
00:27:08.090 --> 00:27:10.890
But they also come along with some baggage, like you just described.
00:27:11.690 --> 00:27:14.930
So you were a firefighter for about 13 years. Why did you leave?
00:27:16.190 --> 00:27:20.540
Well, I would have loved to keep going. I got into it late enough in life,
00:27:20.540 --> 00:27:23.900
especially the second part of it, being a career firefighter,
00:27:23.900 --> 00:27:26.960
that I was getting into my 60s.
00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:31.830
And you've got to really temper between loving doing the job,
00:27:31.830 --> 00:27:36.730
but also there's a mental and physical aspect of this where you are called upon
00:27:37.060 --> 00:27:38.620
to do some pretty extreme things.
00:27:38.620 --> 00:27:41.700
I mean, you're essentially a tactical athlete, putting on gear,
00:27:42.040 --> 00:27:46.140
going into some pretty high-stress environments, you know, high cardiac output.
00:27:47.150 --> 00:27:52.080
I wanted to leave in a way that I was not going to be a danger to myself or anyone else.
00:27:52.520 --> 00:28:00.610
And On the Horizon was a project that I thought was my next phase, my next chapter.
00:28:01.110 --> 00:28:07.370
So putting all that together, I decided it's time to end this career,
00:28:07.370 --> 00:28:11.700
kind of put a ribbon on it and move forward into the next chapter.
00:28:13.240 --> 00:28:19.530
What I appreciate about what you did is that even though you weren't in your mid-20s,
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:23.520
you went into firefighting, which is, as you say, a very physically demanding,
00:28:24.490 --> 00:28:30.330
job and a very dangerous job and illness and injury.
00:28:31.930 --> 00:28:34.410
And yet you still did it and you still had a really good experience for 13 years.
00:28:34.410 --> 00:28:37.630
And so it's a bit of a cliche to say it's never too late.
00:28:38.010 --> 00:28:42.950
It is too late for lots of things. Like, you know, I'm 63. I don't think I could
00:28:42.950 --> 00:28:45.110
go become a firefighter now, even if I wanted to.
00:28:45.650 --> 00:28:50.520
But it's often not too late, I guess I would say. Or sometimes we think it's
00:28:50.520 --> 00:28:54.190
later than it is, or we can still do quite a bit. So I appreciate that.
00:28:54.770 --> 00:29:00.650
So tell us about the opportunity that sort of, it didn't pull you out of firefighting,
00:29:00.650 --> 00:29:03.360
but it was available and it kind of was your next thing.
00:29:04.040 --> 00:29:06.230
Yeah, that's a great question. And,
00:29:06.770 --> 00:29:12.360
it appeared to be like something really appropriate to transition into.
00:29:12.360 --> 00:29:17.450
It essentially was someone was talking about collaborating on creating videos,
00:29:17.450 --> 00:29:23.650
meditation, calming videos for people who are incarcerated in prison in L.A.
00:29:24.090 --> 00:29:29.250
So if you could think of, you know, TV monitors being around the prison And instead of, you know,
00:29:29.980 --> 00:29:36.760
some intense talk show or news, calming nature-based meditative videos there
00:29:36.760 --> 00:29:40.430
to kind of like bring them, you know, bring their energy down,
00:29:40.430 --> 00:29:41.970
their mental energy down.
00:29:43.280 --> 00:29:44.120
That was the premise.
00:29:45.440 --> 00:29:48.430
Long story short, didn't work out. But I had already, you know,
00:29:48.650 --> 00:29:54.320
started the process of retirement. So that put me in a position of like, okay, what do I do now?
00:29:55.670 --> 00:29:59.990
Oh, interesting. So you're on one horse, you jumped off to get another horse,
00:29:59.990 --> 00:30:01.750
and that horse just went away.
00:30:02.590 --> 00:30:05.530
Was that sort of a crisis for you or a moment of panic, or is it like,
00:30:05.530 --> 00:30:06.780
okay, I'll figure this out?
00:30:07.630 --> 00:30:12.520
Yeah, I wouldn't say it was crisis or panic. It was distressing just because
00:30:12.520 --> 00:30:14.660
I thought it was going to be a great project.
00:30:16.110 --> 00:30:20.410
However, I think throughout my life there have been opportunities,
00:30:20.410 --> 00:30:24.100
like almost seeds being planted, if you will, that in the moment,
00:30:24.100 --> 00:30:26.450
they don't appear like anything unusual.
00:30:26.450 --> 00:30:32.600
But when I reflect back on them, they were creating opportunities downstream.
00:30:32.600 --> 00:30:40.170
So I, before I had retired, I, as a firefighter, we had continuing education
00:30:40.170 --> 00:30:42.400
training constantly, right?
00:30:42.670 --> 00:30:46.450
And a group came through there called the Fairfield County Trauma Response Team.
00:30:46.450 --> 00:30:51.170
They're a bunch of, a group of clinicians who work with first responders,
00:30:51.170 --> 00:30:55.940
especially after a critical incident, come in, do debriefs, offer therapy.
00:30:57.290 --> 00:31:03.380
They have resources. And during their presentation, this was like another lightning bolt moment.
00:31:04.140 --> 00:31:08.090
I didn't know that there were therapists who actually work with first responders
00:31:08.090 --> 00:31:12.120
and understand our world. I didn't know what PTSD was. I had never heard of
00:31:12.120 --> 00:31:18.820
EMDR, which is a go-to therapy for many people, but particularly military and first responders.
00:31:19.300 --> 00:31:23.510
And watching this clinician, I'm like, this is somebody I could relate to.
00:31:24.580 --> 00:31:30.310
Well, fast forward, Project A fell through, and I had some background in doing
00:31:30.310 --> 00:31:36.530
podcasting, so I thought, well, let me start a podcast with two of these clinicians
00:31:36.530 --> 00:31:38.520
from the Fairfield County Trauma Response Team.
00:31:38.520 --> 00:31:42.240
We'll talk about responder resilience. We'll talk about mental wellness, leadership,
00:31:43.360 --> 00:31:50.520
topics that they can use their mental wellness lens, their professional clinician
00:31:50.520 --> 00:31:55.040
lens, and I'll have my lived experience as a firefighter, And that was the birth
00:31:55.040 --> 00:31:57.080
of our Responder Resilience podcast.
00:31:57.760 --> 00:32:01.330
Okay. I was wondering how you connected with your co-hosts. So we have another
00:32:01.330 --> 00:32:03.750
lightning bolt moment. That's sort of a theme here.
00:32:04.690 --> 00:32:09.880
So in a way, we could summarize you finding purpose in your life as go about
00:32:09.880 --> 00:32:13.880
your day, do what you think is good, and then things will happen in specific
00:32:13.880 --> 00:32:16.510
moments you don't plan and go with them.
00:32:16.770 --> 00:32:21.440
Like there's more to your life than that, but that seems to be kind of a meta theme.
00:32:22.630 --> 00:32:26.760
It is, yeah, go through the open door, if you will, right? And yeah,
00:32:26.760 --> 00:32:32.260
these seeds are, you know, hopefully they show up in a way that you can recognize
00:32:32.260 --> 00:32:35.340
that this was something, you know, kind of gifted to you, right?
00:32:36.050 --> 00:32:41.020
This was an opportunity that was gifted to you. So, yeah, I feel really grateful
00:32:41.020 --> 00:32:44.650
to know, you know, to have picked up on it, to have picked up that this was
00:32:44.650 --> 00:32:50.430
something that could basically spin off into some new purpose.
00:32:50.840 --> 00:32:56.800
And the podcast really became that purpose for a long time. That was my real main focus.
00:32:57.200 --> 00:33:02.220
And it's taken me to some places that has actually built another,
00:33:02.840 --> 00:33:08.470
if you will, kind of spun off another set of opportunities by the work that
00:33:08.470 --> 00:33:12.820
we've done, the body of work we've done as a team doing podcasts and the guests
00:33:12.820 --> 00:33:16.370
that we've spoken with in the process of recording these episodes.
00:33:17.120 --> 00:33:21.920
Okay. I mean, you've done over 200 episodes. And so it's a well-established
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:25.260
and well-received podcast.
00:33:26.450 --> 00:33:31.610
You're talking about how seeds in the past end up bearing fruition for the future.
00:33:32.130 --> 00:33:40.320
That your podcasting about first responders is really a cultivation of your
00:33:40.320 --> 00:33:45.610
life experiences because you have all this experience producing music, producing sound.
00:33:46.020 --> 00:33:51.970
You have this experience before that performing, and then you have all this
00:33:51.970 --> 00:33:56.930
experience as a firefighter helping people with traumatic issues.
00:33:57.570 --> 00:33:59.800
And so now you have a you're producing
00:33:59.800 --> 00:34:02.550
and performing a podcast that helps people with traumatic issues.
00:34:04.430 --> 00:34:09.160
Yeah, I love the way it all kind of folds back on itself.
00:34:09.160 --> 00:34:14.110
And I keep looking at, okay, how can we repurpose this? And one of the things
00:34:14.110 --> 00:34:19.980
that came through the podcast was we had created a sub-series called The Clinician's Guide.
00:34:20.130 --> 00:34:24.650
And this was really to help clinicians who want to work with first responders
00:34:24.650 --> 00:34:30.060
to understand our world and give them some expert insights into different niches.
00:34:30.060 --> 00:34:32.950
Like, what is it like to work with veterans who are first responders?
00:34:32.950 --> 00:34:37.260
You know, what is it like to work with 911 dispatchers or animal control officers?
00:34:37.770 --> 00:34:44.160
And so we basically took all the episodes we had recorded and were able to synthesize
00:34:44.160 --> 00:34:48.140
them into a book, which, you know, now has a life of its own,
00:34:48.910 --> 00:34:54.630
which is, you know, another layer of purpose, which the podcast has really provided us.
00:34:55.460 --> 00:34:59.940
So is that Helping the Helper? That is, yeah, Helping the Helpers. Okay.
00:35:01.130 --> 00:35:06.050
First of all, what a great title. So what do you spend your time on now?
00:35:06.050 --> 00:35:07.530
Is it primarily the podcast? Is
00:35:07.530 --> 00:35:11.250
it primarily the book? Is it other opportunities that you're working on?
00:35:13.390 --> 00:35:19.110
As of today, I started work on a new documentary film with director Jason Harney,
00:35:19.110 --> 00:35:24.430
who's a retired Las Vegas Metro police sergeant, and he's a documentary film director.
00:35:24.430 --> 00:35:30.230
So this is another extension of the podcast. Essentially, we recorded an episode with,
00:35:31.170 --> 00:35:36.670
the fire chief here where I live and a clinician who basically developed an
00:35:36.970 --> 00:35:39.810
embedded mental health program based on her,
00:35:40.350 --> 00:35:44.750
experiences helping out at the Surfside Collapse and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas
00:35:45.170 --> 00:35:49.490
high school shooting and the suicide of a firefighter in South Florida.
00:35:50.370 --> 00:35:56.620
She created a program which is now here in this county, which is revolutionary in some ways.
00:35:56.690 --> 00:36:00.710
And so the documentary is about the inception of the program,
00:36:01.230 --> 00:36:05.960
the solution that she is using to help firefighters, and then the success stories
00:36:05.960 --> 00:36:10.380
of people whose lives and careers have been positively impacted.
00:36:11.090 --> 00:36:12.230
I'm so glad to hear that.
00:36:13.980 --> 00:36:19.260
With the career you've had, you're at an age where you could retire if you wanted to.
00:36:19.520 --> 00:36:22.960
Like you could retire, nobody would gasp, but you've left the workforce early.
00:36:23.730 --> 00:36:27.870
And I know for myself, as I think about retirement and the future of the possibility of it.
00:36:29.470 --> 00:36:33.430
A primary question is, well, I want to do something that's interesting and engaging,
00:36:33.430 --> 00:36:34.560
something that matters.
00:36:35.250 --> 00:36:40.810
And so how wonderful that you have these projects going on and that these come
00:36:40.810 --> 00:36:46.970
up. Also, you mentioned how through the podcast you got to write a book.
00:36:46.970 --> 00:36:48.920
Through the podcast, you're doing documentaries.
00:36:50.330 --> 00:36:55.050
I once heard of the phrase serendipity vehicle, where somebody said,
00:36:55.460 --> 00:36:58.800
create things in your life that they themselves will create big things.
00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:03.530
Or we'll give you a chance to make connections and have good things happen in your life.
00:37:04.270 --> 00:37:07.060
And as much as anything, that's why I've relaunched this podcast.
00:37:07.060 --> 00:37:12.010
So I did 100 episodes some years ago, and good things came out of it.
00:37:12.760 --> 00:37:16.970
I got to know some people. I went to some conferences.
00:37:17.680 --> 00:37:22.370
I got some papers out of it. And then it was time to put it on pause for a while.
00:37:22.750 --> 00:37:26.150
But part of why I'm restarting it is I miss that serendipity of meeting people,
00:37:26.150 --> 00:37:28.610
the connections, the possibilities, and opportunities.
00:37:29.150 --> 00:37:34.010
I think that's a nice general principle for life of the things that matter most
00:37:34.010 --> 00:37:37.600
rarely happen when we're just sitting on the couch playing solitaire.
00:37:37.820 --> 00:37:41.250
That it's usually we're meeting people, we're doing stuff, we're trying stuff,
00:37:41.540 --> 00:37:45.610
and then there's little sparks and opportunities. And how did you phrase this
00:37:45.610 --> 00:37:49.810
earlier? Oh, opportunities gifted for you. I love that language.
00:37:50.580 --> 00:37:51.890
And encountering them.
00:37:54.180 --> 00:37:58.710
And they don't. So we have opportunities given to you or gifted to you,
00:37:59.820 --> 00:38:03.480
but they're not randomly assigned and you can do things to have more of them.
00:38:03.480 --> 00:38:07.190
And part of what you can do to get more of them is things like you've been doing,
00:38:07.190 --> 00:38:09.270
engaging people, trying things.
00:38:09.610 --> 00:38:11.670
I know it was this podcast, you meet a lot of people.
00:38:12.070 --> 00:38:14.180
So I appreciate that about your story.
00:38:14.670 --> 00:38:20.730
If you were to give advice to our listeners in terms of careers and inflection
00:38:20.730 --> 00:38:22.940
points, What would you say?
00:38:24.380 --> 00:38:29.170
Well, first, I think recognize the seeds that may have been sown,
00:38:29.170 --> 00:38:31.730
you know, and sometimes that's not always obvious.
00:38:31.730 --> 00:38:36.080
But we think of life as a series of choices and knowing that there is always
00:38:36.080 --> 00:38:41.260
another choice, you know, I could reflect back to that opportunity I thought
00:38:41.260 --> 00:38:44.740
I had when I was leaving the fire department that just didn't pan out.
00:38:45.250 --> 00:38:48.740
There's another choice, right? Option B, option C, option D.
00:38:49.060 --> 00:38:53.520
And I think when we come from a position of feeling choice, it's much more empowering
00:38:53.520 --> 00:38:59.120
than feeling like we're in a no option universe where we have no choice.
00:39:00.010 --> 00:39:03.090
There are so many choices and sometimes we just got to think outside of the
00:39:03.090 --> 00:39:07.600
box. It may not be something we've done before, something that we're comfortable
00:39:07.600 --> 00:39:10.750
doing or something that we're, you know, even know about.
00:39:11.150 --> 00:39:14.890
But that's the adventure, right? Go outside that box.
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:20.650
I love that. And when you talk about choices and sometimes we frame our lives
00:39:20.650 --> 00:39:24.980
as not having choices, it occurs to me that one version of the I have no choice
00:39:24.980 --> 00:39:27.370
is sort of structural, like the world's against me.
00:39:27.790 --> 00:39:29.540
People like me don't have a chance.
00:39:30.540 --> 00:39:33.890
Another version of it, though, is I've made a choice.
00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:36.950
Now I'm just going to stay in it. I'm going to keep my head down.
00:39:36.950 --> 00:39:38.980
I'm going to keep blinders on. I'm just going to move forward.
00:39:38.980 --> 00:39:42.260
So I will be an accountant for 45 years.
00:39:42.560 --> 00:39:45.580
And when I'm done, I'll retire. And that's it. Just not be open to things.
00:39:45.580 --> 00:39:49.690
Or that's almost fear-based or comfort-based.
00:39:50.640 --> 00:39:54.030
Because when you get a career going, it's pretty comfortable.
00:39:54.030 --> 00:39:59.500
You know, you get a paycheck every couple weeks and you know people and you know how to do the job.
00:40:00.610 --> 00:40:05.100
I appreciate your courage. So jumping from music to being a firefighter,
00:40:05.450 --> 00:40:07.520
and then, of course, being a firefighter is very courageous,
00:40:07.710 --> 00:40:10.670
and then being a firefighter to the mental health field.
00:40:10.840 --> 00:40:16.050
Those are a couple of very significant transitions that must have taken a lot of courage.
00:40:16.390 --> 00:40:19.780
Was it hard to make those? I mean, because as you talk about it now,
00:40:20.630 --> 00:40:23.580
you look back, it's like, you know, I had this opportunity to give it to me and I took it.
00:40:23.990 --> 00:40:31.460
But at the time, was there a lot of conversations with your wife or uncertainty
00:40:31.460 --> 00:40:34.720
or wrestling about it at night or self-doubt? I mean, you mentioned a little
00:40:34.720 --> 00:40:37.020
bit of that with the lieutenant's exam.
00:40:37.300 --> 00:40:40.500
But with the major transitions, how were they to go through emotionally?
00:40:41.400 --> 00:40:45.810
Yeah, I think in terms of my wife, she is supportive of pretty much anything
00:40:45.810 --> 00:40:48.820
I do. And that didn't take a lot of conversation. It was more,
00:40:49.420 --> 00:40:51.360
as you mentioned, discomfort, right?
00:40:51.540 --> 00:40:54.610
I think the transition from volunteer to career firefighter,
00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:00.160
there was a lot of discomfort there because now, you know, you are the spotlights
00:41:00.160 --> 00:41:05.630
on you and, you know, you are the first line of, you know, of help out there.
00:41:06.160 --> 00:41:11.460
And I was walking into a culture where back then new guys, you know,
00:41:11.460 --> 00:41:13.850
are not respected. You know, you have to prove yourself.
00:41:14.170 --> 00:41:17.260
You have to, you know, they're checking you out. They want to see who you are.
00:41:17.260 --> 00:41:18.450
Like, how are you going to show up?
00:41:18.730 --> 00:41:23.010
And for me, that was really uncomfortable for a couple of years.
00:41:23.550 --> 00:41:26.200
So my attitude was...
00:41:27.490 --> 00:41:31.240
And maybe this is because I've run some marathons in my life and I've kind of
00:41:31.240 --> 00:41:36.280
had the mindset of, you know, I'm going to get through this stretch that I just hung in there.
00:41:36.610 --> 00:41:40.570
And on the other side of that, discomfort was, you know, one of the greatest
00:41:40.720 --> 00:41:42.430
experiences I've ever had in my life.
00:41:42.830 --> 00:41:48.630
So I think it's about maybe not to embrace discomfort, but just allow it and
00:41:48.630 --> 00:41:51.890
just allow it to be part of the process of getting the good stuff.
00:41:52.270 --> 00:41:57.180
When it's like when the Wizard of Oz changes from black and white into full
00:41:57.180 --> 00:42:00.120
color. You just got to get through that black and white stretch,
00:42:00.540 --> 00:42:02.000
and the full color is worth it.
00:42:02.890 --> 00:42:10.220
Oh, I like that. And so really we have a pairing of lightning bolt moments where
00:42:10.220 --> 00:42:16.550
you feel an opportunity has been gifted to you with the discomfort of taking it, the risk, the fear.
00:42:17.830 --> 00:42:21.000
And you can't separate the two. It just seems like they come together.
00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:26.930
I mean, what I want is the gifted opportunities with of novelty,
00:42:26.930 --> 00:42:29.500
but with the comfort of the familiar.
00:42:29.860 --> 00:42:31.620
And like, I just don't think that's on the menu.
00:42:32.510 --> 00:42:36.960
How can people learn more about you? How can they find out about your podcast,
00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:40.930
your book, any social connections that they can make with you?
00:42:42.300 --> 00:42:50.450
Yes, our website is ResponderTV.com. It has the podcast and the book and biographical
00:42:50.450 --> 00:42:54.210
information. And then we're out there on social, LinkedIn, Facebook.
00:42:54.630 --> 00:42:56.630
We're on Instagram, Responder.TV.
00:42:57.360 --> 00:43:01.280
And those are really the best ways to get in touch. You can certainly message
00:43:01.280 --> 00:43:05.250
me through socials or through ResponderTV.com.
00:43:06.090 --> 00:43:10.610
Great. Thank you so much, David, for taking the time to talk with us and to
00:43:10.610 --> 00:43:13.740
share your experiences with us that we could learn from it. I appreciate it.
00:43:14.300 --> 00:43:17.140
Thank you very much. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for listening to
00:43:17.140 --> 00:43:18.660
the Second Calling Podcast.
00:43:19.260 --> 00:43:23.270
If you want to keep on thinking about purpose and work and what comes next in
00:43:23.270 --> 00:43:25.960
life, you might want to subscribe to my monthly newsletter.
00:43:26.720 --> 00:43:31.800
Every issue gives you a story, an idea, and a next step that you can try yourself.
00:43:32.610 --> 00:43:37.810
You can find it and more about my work at my website, BradleyWrightPhD.com.
00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:39.680
I'll put the link in the show notes.
00:43:40.740 --> 00:43:42.270
Thank you, and I hope to see you next time.
00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:03.040
I met a few people at the firehouse, and they said, hey, come to a drill.
00:00:03.380 --> 00:00:05.080
I'm like, all right, I'll check it out.
00:00:05.720 --> 00:00:11.130
It really was the act of going through the open door that changed my life in this moment.
00:00:11.600 --> 00:00:15.030
I really just felt like, let me be curious, let me see what's here,
00:00:15.030 --> 00:00:18.750
what it's like. And so going to those drills and seeing what firefighting was
00:00:18.750 --> 00:00:22.320
like, I guess it just planted a seed. Welcome to Second Calling,
00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:26.550
where we explore life purpose in the lives of professionals at inflection points.
00:00:27.340 --> 00:00:31.390
Today's guest is David Dachinger. David has had a fascinating career.
00:00:31.530 --> 00:00:35.520
He started off as a music composer and producer, being nominated for a Grammy.
00:00:36.080 --> 00:00:39.130
He became a firefighter, working his way up to being a lieutenant.
00:00:39.590 --> 00:00:42.950
And then he entered the mental health space, where he's written a book,
00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:47.180
and he also produces a podcast, helping first responders.
00:00:47.560 --> 00:00:50.800
In this episode, we talk about following unexpected openings.
00:00:51.300 --> 00:00:57.320
We talk about how things that happen in one chapter of life can be the seeds for the next chapter.
00:00:57.790 --> 00:01:01.810
And we talk about the discomfort that can happen when we follow what's most
00:01:01.810 --> 00:01:06.040
meaningful If you've built a life for yourself that's working pretty well But
00:01:06.040 --> 00:01:09.590
you find yourself increasingly curious about new directions in life that don't
00:01:09.590 --> 00:01:11.040
really fit with where you're at now,
00:01:11.830 --> 00:01:13.400
Well, this story is for you.
00:01:13.700 --> 00:01:16.480
Welcome, David. It's a pleasure to have you on the show Thanks,
00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:18.400
bradley. It's great to be here.
00:01:19.750 --> 00:01:24.440
So let's start with when you got out of college, you went to Purdue,
00:01:24.440 --> 00:01:29.840
it looks like, and you got into the music business, but you weren't a performer.
00:01:30.030 --> 00:01:31.450
Could you tell us about what you did?
00:01:32.470 --> 00:01:36.710
Absolutely. I can back up a little bit before that. I went to Purdue for a couple
00:01:36.710 --> 00:01:39.430
of years thinking I wanted to become an airline pilot, and.
00:01:43.110 --> 00:01:47.810
The courses I took were for aeronautical engineering. My brain does not really
00:01:47.810 --> 00:01:51.890
compute stuff like physics and algebra and calculus.
00:01:51.890 --> 00:01:57.760
So I was spending all my time playing music. And so I pivoted and I transferred
00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:02.120
to Berklee College of Music in Boston because I just knew that music was what
00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:04.600
I wanted to do with my life at that point. So.
00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:11.520
The first time I ever set foot in a recording studio was actually when I was
00:02:11.520 --> 00:02:16.570
leaving high school and I had a girlfriend and I wanted to leave her with something memorable.
00:02:16.570 --> 00:02:21.000
And I wrote a song for her and I wanted to back in those days,
00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:25.040
you know, we didn't have, you know, you couldn't just send it on like a,
00:02:25.370 --> 00:02:27.770
you know, as part of a email or message.
00:02:27.770 --> 00:02:31.250
I went to a recording studio where they actually cut the discs,
00:02:31.590 --> 00:02:37.370
and I had them cut a 45-rpm record disc from this song, which I gave to my girlfriend.
00:02:38.520 --> 00:02:44.030
When I set foot in that recording studio, it was like getting hit by a lightning bolt.
00:02:44.350 --> 00:02:48.360
I was like, I want to do this. I want to work in a recording studio. It was like magic.
00:02:48.810 --> 00:02:53.510
So that was my intent going to Berklee, was to come out and to become a recording
00:02:53.510 --> 00:02:56.790
engineer, which I did eventually.
00:02:57.630 --> 00:03:01.750
Getting through college and then starting to begin my professional journey.
00:03:03.460 --> 00:03:06.710
Okay, I had meant for this just to be sort of prologue to what we talked about
00:03:06.710 --> 00:03:08.100
later, but let's dig into this.
00:03:08.500 --> 00:03:11.530
This is really interesting, your experience at the recording studio.
00:03:12.290 --> 00:03:16.140
So you wanted to be an airline pilot, but that wasn't working out.
00:03:16.540 --> 00:03:20.760
So how did you, and then you were playing music on the side as sort of like
00:03:20.760 --> 00:03:22.000
that's what you found yourself doing.
00:03:24.230 --> 00:03:28.800
How did you know to switch to music full time? Like, what was that transition,
00:03:29.260 --> 00:03:33.530
like? Because that's a pretty big change. I mean, that's a conversation with
00:03:33.530 --> 00:03:34.700
your parents kind of change.
00:03:35.210 --> 00:03:40.840
Yeah, absolutely. It was not necessarily a pleasant one because my father worked
00:03:40.840 --> 00:03:44.600
for the airlines, and I think he saw me as pursuing that route.
00:03:45.080 --> 00:03:48.660
But when I decided to switch to music, I know he was not too happy.
00:03:48.660 --> 00:03:53.540
He didn't necessarily say it to my face, but I heard secondhand that he was not too overjoyed.
00:03:54.140 --> 00:03:58.160
But speaking of joy, that was really my joy, was music. It was not,
00:03:58.820 --> 00:04:03.580
you know, designing airplanes, although I still love aviation and I would still
00:04:03.580 --> 00:04:05.750
love to, you know, be a pilot.
00:04:06.540 --> 00:04:11.180
I just had to make some hard choices and music was my joy. I spent my spare
00:04:11.180 --> 00:04:15.560
moments going to the radio station at the college dorm and becoming a DJ,
00:04:16.310 --> 00:04:21.130
hearing records I'd never been exposed to and playing music in a band.
00:04:21.500 --> 00:04:23.740
And Berkeley, same scenario.
00:04:24.380 --> 00:04:30.520
We formed a band not long after we got there, played colleges and ski resorts
00:04:30.520 --> 00:04:32.810
all over New England, had a blast.
00:04:32.970 --> 00:04:35.770
You know, if we made like, you know, 50 or 100 bucks a week,
00:04:35.770 --> 00:04:37.220
we thought we were doing great.
00:04:37.590 --> 00:04:42.090
And so that was the beginning of this music journey, which, you know,
00:04:42.090 --> 00:04:44.230
I thought that was the be all end all.
00:04:44.230 --> 00:04:49.400
And it was fulfilling, but I think there's a certain self-centeredness about
00:04:49.400 --> 00:04:56.580
being a musician that doesn't necessarily fulfill the full purpose that I was looking for in life.
00:04:57.590 --> 00:05:02.030
Oh, interesting. I mean, I suppose as a musician, your success,
00:05:02.030 --> 00:05:05.430
if hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people are
00:05:05.430 --> 00:05:09.760
looking at you, listening to you share what comes from within you.
00:05:10.100 --> 00:05:12.870
So it would have to be very self-focused.
00:05:14.550 --> 00:05:19.340
It is i mean it can require a lot of practice um a lot of uh you know you're
00:05:19.340 --> 00:05:21.280
on stage right you're in the spotlight your um,
00:05:22.060 --> 00:05:28.850
people are you know giving you adulation or um applause you know they're they're
00:05:28.850 --> 00:05:31.860
cheering you on and so that can be really
00:05:32.300 --> 00:05:37.910
gratifying for the ego but at the end of the day um you know i think my bigger
00:05:37.910 --> 00:05:40.300
purpose was to impact people in a different way but,
00:05:40.760 --> 00:05:44.880
But, you know, music has always been a beautiful part of my life, and it's morphed in.
00:05:45.760 --> 00:05:48.130
The way I've been able to make a living doing it.
00:05:48.780 --> 00:05:53.870
I went from playing in bands to becoming a recording engineer,
00:05:53.870 --> 00:05:59.640
making records, mixing records, and that led to some great opportunities to travel and meet people.
00:06:00.100 --> 00:06:05.250
And when the music business started changing, I found myself at an inflection point there.
00:06:05.250 --> 00:06:08.780
It was really starting to lean more heavily towards rap and hip-hop,
00:06:08.780 --> 00:06:10.860
which was definitely not my thing.
00:06:10.860 --> 00:06:16.170
And so I had to recalibrate and come up with a new plan.
00:06:16.170 --> 00:06:22.070
And kind of a, I don't know, kind of like a chance thing happened.
00:06:22.070 --> 00:06:26.610
I was in a recording studio in Madison Avenue working on an advertisement,
00:06:27.020 --> 00:06:32.340
and I saw a magazine article which mentioned a guy that I went to high school with who had a music,
00:06:32.990 --> 00:06:37.820
production company that supplied music for tv sports and i thought well i should
00:06:37.820 --> 00:06:42.860
look up this guy rob and see what he's up to and that kind of began my journey
00:06:42.860 --> 00:06:45.930
as a composer for television music,
00:06:46.620 --> 00:06:51.730
okay so you've had magic happen a couple times for you in recording studios um.
00:06:53.450 --> 00:06:57.170
I can't stop thinking about it. When you went into the recording studio the
00:06:57.170 --> 00:06:59.100
first time, you said it was like a bolt of magic.
00:06:59.850 --> 00:07:04.570
Before that, had you thought of music mainly in terms of performance and less
00:07:04.570 --> 00:07:08.860
in recording? Or what was the big aha of walking into the studio? you?
00:07:09.590 --> 00:07:13.370
Great question. I had always tinkered with this recording thing.
00:07:14.010 --> 00:07:18.290
One of the greatest gifts I got was an old tape recorder. And I would love nothing
00:07:18.290 --> 00:07:21.820
more than to just play piano into it or sing songs into it.
00:07:22.810 --> 00:07:27.890
I would make movies with an eight millimeter camera. And so all this creative
00:07:27.890 --> 00:07:33.750
audio video stuff was one of my great passions in life.
00:07:34.040 --> 00:07:36.910
And so I was doing it on a pretty rudimentary level.
00:07:37.320 --> 00:07:41.440
Walking into the studio now, you're looking at a place that is completely designed
00:07:41.440 --> 00:07:43.120
and set up to record music.
00:07:43.570 --> 00:07:48.670
It's got an amazing recording console, multi-track tape machines,
00:07:48.670 --> 00:07:53.330
a control room, which is isolated from the studio, a studio which has got great,
00:07:53.330 --> 00:07:56.650
you know, kind of wood on the walls and fabrics and,
00:07:57.330 --> 00:07:59.780
isolation for the drums versus the piano.
00:08:00.920 --> 00:08:06.080
They are truly magical places where, you know, music goes from an idea or a
00:08:06.080 --> 00:08:09.810
rough demo and becomes a polished, finished product.
00:08:10.180 --> 00:08:14.560
And that can be a long, tedious process, but it really brought together those
00:08:14.560 --> 00:08:19.570
elements that I was tinkering with in my earlier days to, like, it's all here.
00:08:19.750 --> 00:08:24.120
You know, this is the workshop. This is the place where everything comes together
00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:31.450
and you create incredible music mixes, you know, records, what songs come to
00:08:31.450 --> 00:08:32.910
life in this recording studio.
00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:38.430
Interesting. So there's two themes I want to highlight. One,
00:08:38.580 --> 00:08:42.030
this was something you'd always been interested in, you'd toyed with,
00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:45.500
almost like on an ad hoc basis.
00:08:46.840 --> 00:08:49.070
And then you saw it all together and it hit.
00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:54.900
It's pretty common when people get into purpose that it's not binary.
00:08:54.900 --> 00:08:58.660
It's not like no interest, no interest, no interest, suddenly complete interest.
00:08:59.510 --> 00:09:02.570
Rather, it does seem like they kind of poke at it, prod at it,
00:09:02.810 --> 00:09:07.550
play with it, and then sort of almost give it permission to become a bigger
00:09:07.550 --> 00:09:10.630
part of their life or something happens where it does.
00:09:11.430 --> 00:09:18.240
And then seeing it all happen, like an experience, that's a really important idea because,
00:09:19.550 --> 00:09:25.110
We can imagine what things are like, but sometimes we have a more visceral response
00:09:25.110 --> 00:09:27.990
to an experience. We get into something, and it goes both ways.
00:09:28.800 --> 00:09:32.950
The person I interviewed for the previous episode talked about an experience
00:09:32.950 --> 00:09:36.150
at her work where she got into it and almost had an out-of-body experience,
00:09:36.150 --> 00:09:39.370
but in the other direction of, yeah, I can't do this anymore. I'm done.
00:09:39.770 --> 00:09:43.110
It doesn't always happen that way, but when it does, it can be very telling.
00:09:43.330 --> 00:09:47.250
Okay, I have to ask, did your high school girlfriend like the record you cut for her?
00:09:48.030 --> 00:09:51.190
She did very much. I mean, it was, you know, dedicated to her,
00:09:51.190 --> 00:09:54.100
like her name was in the title and it was very personal.
00:09:54.830 --> 00:09:59.020
So, you know, unfortunately, we didn't, our relationship didn't really last
00:09:59.020 --> 00:10:02.940
past my going away to college. But I felt like that was, you know,
00:10:02.940 --> 00:10:07.530
a very appropriate way to give her something that she could think,
00:10:07.530 --> 00:10:08.670
you know, remember me by.
00:10:10.620 --> 00:10:13.760
That's so classy. I think when I went to college, my goodbye was like,
00:10:13.760 --> 00:10:17.250
OK, yeah, well, I'll see you. And like, maybe I'll see you at Christmas.
00:10:17.250 --> 00:10:18.330
Like, that was it. like so.
00:10:19.230 --> 00:10:23.930
Kudos for that. Okay, so you're a record producer, or I'm sorry,
00:10:24.750 --> 00:10:27.280
you're in the music business as a producer and an engineer.
00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:35.280
And you saw a magazine article that enabled you to get into sports and other types of this work.
00:10:35.670 --> 00:10:38.800
What were some of your favorite moments of that, of that kind of phase of your
00:10:38.800 --> 00:10:40.160
life or that part of your career?
00:10:41.730 --> 00:10:47.360
So this was an interesting transition. So I went from I wanted to go from recording
00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:50.730
and mixing records to writing music for television.
00:10:51.180 --> 00:10:57.490
And, you know, it was not like, you know, going from first gear to sixth gear.
00:10:57.490 --> 00:11:00.450
It was definitely like a, you know, a stepped up process.
00:11:01.410 --> 00:11:06.830
For a few years, I was writing music for what you would call talk shows like
00:11:07.190 --> 00:11:13.110
Sally, Jesse, Raphael. I think I had some music on Jerry Springer and Maury Povich.
00:11:13.400 --> 00:11:18.490
And so I was building up a catalog and getting to I was learning the ropes of
00:11:18.490 --> 00:11:22.240
that part of the business, which is very different from working in a recording studio.
00:11:22.620 --> 00:11:28.960
So over those first years, I cannot say I was proud of the shows that I was
00:11:28.960 --> 00:11:30.530
getting my music on, but it was
00:11:30.530 --> 00:11:34.770
a means to an end, like necessary steps to get to where I wanted to go.
00:11:34.770 --> 00:11:42.220
So when I finally fully connected with Rob, who was selling music to television
00:11:42.220 --> 00:11:45.760
networks, I at least got some experience.
00:11:45.760 --> 00:11:50.700
I started to understand music publishing, royalties, and some of the business
00:11:50.700 --> 00:11:54.150
aspects of music. Because music, as much fun as it is to create,
00:11:54.150 --> 00:12:00.030
you really have to be very well versed in the business in order to actually make money.
00:12:00.530 --> 00:12:04.950
So I learned those pieces. And finally, when I started working with Rob,
00:12:05.290 --> 00:12:10.430
we were able to play some music with ABC Sports. And eventually we built a huge
00:12:10.430 --> 00:12:14.270
catalog with CBS Sports. And the moments that...
00:12:15.220 --> 00:12:20.330
I'm so proud of are hearing my music as part of the Masters golf tournament
00:12:20.330 --> 00:12:24.920
and hearing my music in the Super Bowl and actually recording an orchestra,
00:12:24.920 --> 00:12:29.380
conducting my music with a live orchestra in a studio in New York City,
00:12:30.190 --> 00:12:32.620
which was a piece that we wrote for the Masters.
00:12:32.950 --> 00:12:38.920
And we brought in the sportscaster, Jim Nance, who is the voice of the Masters, essentially.
00:12:40.070 --> 00:12:44.670
We decided to dedicate that piece to his father, who had recently passed away.
00:12:44.920 --> 00:12:46.920
So we had Jim there. We had his mother there.
00:12:47.200 --> 00:12:53.860
We shot video and presented him with a plaque and a signed copy of the score.
00:12:54.240 --> 00:12:57.450
And so that was a moment that I'm super proud of, that I'm like,
00:12:57.800 --> 00:13:02.560
you know, I never in my wildest dreams that I think I'd be writing music for
00:13:02.560 --> 00:13:06.300
the Masters, let alone, you know, hanging out with someone like Jim Nance.
00:13:07.500 --> 00:13:13.400
That's wonderful. You were gifted at packaging music in meaningful ways,
00:13:13.400 --> 00:13:17.330
you know, between your girlfriend and Jim Nance and his father. Interesting.
00:13:17.750 --> 00:13:23.000
Okay, so typically with somebody's career, as you've just described,
00:13:23.550 --> 00:13:26.860
the end game goes something like this. I've done it for 40 years.
00:13:27.360 --> 00:13:31.170
I am now retiring. I'm an honored figure in the field.
00:13:31.720 --> 00:13:34.980
It's been my life, and now I'm going to play the grandkids.
00:13:35.640 --> 00:13:38.190
But you sort of took a left turn somewhere here in the middle.
00:13:38.190 --> 00:13:43.250
And in your LinkedIn description, it shows Lieutenant Firefighter.
00:13:43.710 --> 00:13:49.040
Now, how did – tell us about that shift. Did you – were you drawn to it?
00:13:49.400 --> 00:13:51.180
Was there something you were trying to get away from?
00:13:52.240 --> 00:13:55.970
What happened? So this is going to be another interesting story.
00:13:55.970 --> 00:14:00.080
After living in New York City for a better part of 20 years,
00:14:00.460 --> 00:14:03.640
our daughter was getting older, and it was time to move out to the burbs,
00:14:04.120 --> 00:14:06.510
get her into a school for kindergarten.
00:14:06.930 --> 00:14:11.540
And the house that we chose to move to was next to a firehouse.
00:14:12.050 --> 00:14:15.850
Now, I had no previous experience, no connection with fire departments,
00:14:15.850 --> 00:14:18.450
really was not on my radar any way, shape, or form.
00:14:18.900 --> 00:14:21.120
And I'm thinking, hey, these guys are going to be going out.
00:14:21.120 --> 00:14:25.630
I hope they're not making a lot of noise, you know, running their sirens and air horns and radios.
00:14:26.330 --> 00:14:28.130
That was what I went into this with.
00:14:29.060 --> 00:14:32.620
Fast forward a little bit, I was invited to a barbecue at the firehouse,
00:14:32.620 --> 00:14:35.910
went over, met some guys, and we didn't know people in this town.
00:14:35.910 --> 00:14:39.860
We were pretty much, you know, moving there with no prior social connections.
00:14:40.410 --> 00:14:44.290
So met a few people at the firehouse. They said, hey, come to a drill.
00:14:44.630 --> 00:14:46.340
I'm like, all right, I'll check it out.
00:14:47.140 --> 00:14:52.560
It really was the act of going through the open door that changed my life in this moment.
00:14:53.020 --> 00:14:57.190
Really just felt like, let me be curious. Let me see what's here, what it's like.
00:14:57.190 --> 00:15:00.520
And so going to those drills and seeing what firefighting was like,
00:15:00.800 --> 00:15:02.500
I guess it just planted a seed.
00:15:02.500 --> 00:15:07.420
I started to think, hey, this isn't too bad. Maybe I'll keep coming back.
00:15:07.420 --> 00:15:12.940
And I did. I joined the volunteer fire department there, did that for about
00:15:12.940 --> 00:15:16.560
eight years, loved it, continued to write music.
00:15:16.930 --> 00:15:20.550
But as this moved forward, I'm like, I want to take this further.
00:15:20.910 --> 00:15:25.220
And I started testing to become a career firefighter. Now, what's important
00:15:25.220 --> 00:15:29.630
in all this is that I found a level of purpose in doing that work that I had
00:15:29.630 --> 00:15:34.640
never experienced before in any other part of my life. Oh, really?
00:15:35.640 --> 00:15:40.580
Because it seems that with music, there's a lot of meaning in it in terms of self-expression.
00:15:41.690 --> 00:15:47.360
But you found like a different source of purpose or meaning with firefighting. Tell me about that.
00:15:48.300 --> 00:15:52.000
Yeah, music is beautiful that way. And you know it does impact people.
00:15:52.000 --> 00:15:57.490
But in some ways, it's an indirect impact, right? Unless you're standing in
00:15:57.490 --> 00:16:02.470
front of somebody playing a song and you see that it's reaching them emotionally.
00:16:02.860 --> 00:16:05.760
When you're writing music for television, it's a little bit removed.
00:16:06.460 --> 00:16:10.340
However, if you are on an ambulance or a fire truck and you're showing up to
00:16:10.340 --> 00:16:13.910
somebody's worst day and you are able to help them through part of that,
00:16:13.910 --> 00:16:16.570
even if it's holding their hand, helping them off the floor,
00:16:17.250 --> 00:16:20.510
making a phone call, getting them the help that they need,
00:16:21.320 --> 00:16:26.330
there's an immediate sense of purpose that in some ways is unparalleled.
00:16:26.620 --> 00:16:33.710
And so that was part of what really drew me into the fire profession that made
00:16:33.710 --> 00:16:37.790
me feel I'm all in with this. This is really a calling that I didn't realize I had.
00:16:39.370 --> 00:16:42.710
That makes sense when you explain it that way. I have a couple of friends who
00:16:42.710 --> 00:16:47.300
are firefighters or have been, and I'm always struck by how different their
00:16:47.300 --> 00:16:49.780
job is from so many other jobs in society.
00:16:51.110 --> 00:16:57.240
So if in my job as a sociologist i see a dead body as part of my work like my
00:16:57.240 --> 00:17:00.180
lecture's gone terribly wrong like something's gone bad,
00:17:01.040 --> 00:17:04.980
i just don't see a lot of dead bodies i don't see a lot of you know december
00:17:04.980 --> 00:17:08.930
body parts i don't see people bleeding i don't see people sobbing hysterically,
00:17:09.540 --> 00:17:13.610
and yet as a firefighter you wake up you have breakfast you go to the firehouse
00:17:13.880 --> 00:17:17.640
and you don't know what's going to happen that day and you and you have to be
00:17:17.640 --> 00:17:18.790
ready for almost anything,
00:17:19.910 --> 00:17:25.490
That is part of the that is part of the beauty of that job is if you embrace those kinds of things.
00:17:25.490 --> 00:17:29.400
Right. First, there's intense preparation. So you feel like you're somewhat
00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:32.410
prepared for whatever may come through. But then there's the uncertainty and
00:17:32.410 --> 00:17:35.100
the unknown of like, what's this day going to bring?
00:17:35.480 --> 00:17:39.260
And truly, you know, you cannot make up some of the things you will see out there.
00:17:40.740 --> 00:17:44.760
As you alluded to, some of them are pretty intense, traumatic scenes.
00:17:44.760 --> 00:17:48.360
But also there's some, you know, sometimes it borders on humor.
00:17:48.360 --> 00:17:52.250
It borders on, like, scratching your head, like, what was this person thinking?
00:17:53.230 --> 00:17:57.100
However, there's an incredible amount of problem solving, an incredible amount of creativity.
00:17:57.160 --> 00:18:00.700
And some of the people I worked with in the fire service are some of the most
00:18:00.700 --> 00:18:04.800
brilliant creative people I've ever met, which parallels the music world.
00:18:05.340 --> 00:18:09.300
You know, you're constantly sort of solving problems and making creative decisions
00:18:09.300 --> 00:18:12.840
to get a result similar in both worlds.
00:18:12.840 --> 00:18:17.340
There's, you know, there's improvising, there's, you know, coming together on
00:18:17.340 --> 00:18:22.810
a certain plateau of similar training, but then sometimes you have to leave
00:18:22.810 --> 00:18:26.280
that and work together as a team with that foundation.
00:18:27.160 --> 00:18:32.200
So as I thought about it more, there is a lot of parallels between music and
00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:34.360
emergency services. Okay.
00:18:35.240 --> 00:18:38.330
Tell me about the camaraderie at the firehouse, because it seems like that's
00:18:38.330 --> 00:18:40.120
something you wouldn't have as much with music.
00:18:40.120 --> 00:18:44.510
I mean, you had the people you worked with, but it seems that the firehouse
00:18:44.510 --> 00:18:49.800
is almost a hothouse for people connecting and forming teams and bonding.
00:18:50.180 --> 00:18:51.510
And that could be very meaningful.
00:18:52.440 --> 00:18:56.370
Absolutely. I mean, there is some connection where if you're in a band,
00:18:56.370 --> 00:19:00.160
say, you travel, you're spending a lot of time together. It's kind of like a
00:19:00.470 --> 00:19:02.160
dysfunctional family many times.
00:19:02.970 --> 00:19:07.710
But the firehouse, as you kind of pointed to, is a really special thing where
00:19:07.710 --> 00:19:12.270
you're literally living with people for at least 24 hours at a shot,
00:19:12.480 --> 00:19:15.870
eating, going on the calls, sleeping, working out,
00:19:16.670 --> 00:19:19.490
sitting around the kitchen table, solving the world's problems,
00:19:19.850 --> 00:19:21.930
giving each other financial advice.
00:19:22.350 --> 00:19:24.880
Marriage advice, nutritional advice.
00:19:25.560 --> 00:19:32.150
It builds bonds that during that stretch of time when you're part of the department are incredible.
00:19:32.530 --> 00:19:37.880
Those are people that will show up for you in your worst moment to support you and your family.
00:19:38.910 --> 00:19:44.400
They'll bust your chops, but they'll also give you a hug when you need it.
00:19:44.850 --> 00:19:49.620
And so it's a powerful thing. And it also makes it that much more difficult
00:19:49.940 --> 00:19:51.810
when you do leave the profession,
00:19:52.500 --> 00:19:57.390
to leave that behind it's it's you know it's a hard act to follow and um in
00:19:57.390 --> 00:20:01.720
some ways i'm still searching for that same tribe that i i left behind at the firehouse,
00:20:02.980 --> 00:20:06.840
yeah and you had to try that a lot of people won't ever find like after,
00:20:07.810 --> 00:20:14.540
for most of us once we leave our family of origin our intense constant connection
00:20:14.540 --> 00:20:19.220
with other people in our lives is over, except maybe, except for our nuclear family, of course.
00:20:19.740 --> 00:20:21.920
But, you know, we don't find it in work.
00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:26.960
With firefighting, were you in the station or the firehouse that was next to your house?
00:20:28.330 --> 00:20:32.210
Yeah, good question. I was a volunteer in that department, which is,
00:20:32.590 --> 00:20:36.480
it's called a combination department. So they were career members who lived
00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:39.420
in the firehouse and then us volunteers who showed up as needed.
00:20:39.800 --> 00:20:44.190
When I tested for and got hired as a career firefighter, then I was literally
00:20:44.190 --> 00:20:50.150
living at the firehouse, you know, with my crew and usually 24 hours at a time.
00:20:50.150 --> 00:20:54.550
Sometimes you'd work a double and be there for 48. I think one time I did three
00:20:54.550 --> 00:20:59.530
24-hour shifts back to back. So I was there 72 hours and as you can imagine
00:20:59.530 --> 00:21:01.110
at the end of that it was pretty toasted.
00:21:02.990 --> 00:21:07.890
Just the image, though, of being next door to your home for your work.
00:21:08.230 --> 00:21:12.640
I mean, you had a strangely integrated life. And I mean, I'm sure you heard
00:21:12.640 --> 00:21:16.450
thousands of jokes about your commute, you know, walking from the driveway over.
00:21:17.100 --> 00:21:24.270
But so once again, with firefighting, you had a place-based experience.
00:21:24.800 --> 00:21:28.800
With the recording studio, you walked in as like a bolt hit you.
00:21:29.380 --> 00:21:32.970
With firefighting it sounds like you walked in and you saw what they're doing
00:21:32.970 --> 00:21:37.600
because you're right next door and it aroused your curiosity sort of demystified
00:21:37.600 --> 00:21:39.620
it sort of made it possible,
00:21:40.260 --> 00:21:46.220
but in both cases you went into the situation without a strong interest in what
00:21:46.220 --> 00:21:48.910
the situation offered or at least.
00:21:50.230 --> 00:21:54.620
Certainly with firefighting you had some interest with recording but then And
00:21:54.880 --> 00:21:58.850
seeing it happen in place really solidified it for you.
00:21:59.890 --> 00:22:03.500
Yeah, and that's an interesting point because with music, since I had grown
00:22:03.500 --> 00:22:07.840
up with it and it was part of my life, that wasn't a stretch,
00:22:07.840 --> 00:22:10.790
right? That really felt like a natural extension of what I'd done.
00:22:11.230 --> 00:22:15.370
Firefighting came out of nowhere, right? And I constantly had this conversation
00:22:15.370 --> 00:22:19.080
with myself, even when I got to the point of testing for promotion.
00:22:19.080 --> 00:22:21.950
Like, do I belong here? Is this really who I am?
00:22:21.950 --> 00:22:25.760
Like, how do I justify? How do I live up to the expectations,
00:22:25.760 --> 00:22:30.660
not only my own expectations, but the expectation of all these people that I'm
00:22:30.660 --> 00:22:34.210
going to be working with, that I'm good enough to be one of them?
00:22:34.350 --> 00:22:39.430
It took a lot to talk myself off the ledge a few times, to give myself,
00:22:39.430 --> 00:22:40.690
boost my own confidence.
00:22:41.410 --> 00:22:45.340
Because I remember when they were offering testing for lieutenant,
00:22:45.820 --> 00:22:48.840
I said to a couple of guys on my shift, including the captain,
00:22:48.840 --> 00:22:51.890
like, you know, I don't really think that's me. And they were like...
00:22:52.940 --> 00:22:56.170
Do it, you know, do it, even if you do it for a couple of years,
00:22:56.170 --> 00:22:58.060
and someone else will move into the position.
00:22:58.480 --> 00:23:02.060
They showed faith in me and, you know, kind of seeing something in me that I
00:23:02.060 --> 00:23:06.290
didn't see in myself. So that I took that, made a leap of faith and said,
00:23:06.290 --> 00:23:12.080
Okay, I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to commit to this process of testing and see what happens.
00:23:12.380 --> 00:23:16.610
So sounds like the big payoffs for being a firefighter for you were a,
00:23:16.920 --> 00:23:20.150
like the direct opportunities to help people.
00:23:20.430 --> 00:23:25.040
Somebody's day is better or life has changed because you interacted with them.
00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:30.860
And also the connection with the other firefighters.
00:23:31.610 --> 00:23:35.610
I will say now that I'm thinking about it, the firefighters that I've known
00:23:35.780 --> 00:23:40.330
tended to be pretty well socially adjusted. They're very comfortable interacting with each other.
00:23:40.680 --> 00:23:44.720
And maybe people who aren't comfortable with that don't select themselves into
00:23:44.720 --> 00:23:48.040
that situation, or if they try to, they're not allowed into it.
00:23:48.510 --> 00:23:51.580
But I would say that firefighters tend to be, at least the ones I've known,
00:23:51.580 --> 00:23:53.250
have been well-adjusted socially.
00:23:54.480 --> 00:23:59.400
Yeah, they tend to be very gregarious, outgoing people. Not to say that you
00:23:59.400 --> 00:24:05.570
can't be somewhat kind of an introverted person and still have a good career.
00:24:05.950 --> 00:24:10.170
I would say I kind of straddle the line. I can be extroverted and introverted,
00:24:10.170 --> 00:24:15.270
but certainly there was people I worked with who were way more extroverted than me.
00:24:15.270 --> 00:24:21.240
And it is part of, I think, part of the persona of a firefighter is to be that,
00:24:21.730 --> 00:24:28.360
extroverted, very gregarious, humorous. You know, humor is a big part of the job.
00:24:28.920 --> 00:24:30.730
Chop busting is a big part of the job.
00:24:31.300 --> 00:24:36.200
But laughing is a big part of the job. And I think that's partially a coping
00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:38.150
mechanism, but partially, you know,
00:24:38.730 --> 00:24:43.220
we're, again, being together with your fellow firefighters, having done these
00:24:43.220 --> 00:24:48.070
crazy calls all day long, sometimes that's a great release.
00:24:48.490 --> 00:24:54.830
And it's part of the firehouse that I miss very much. Before we continue, a quick note.
00:24:55.460 --> 00:25:00.180
I write a monthly newsletter for people trying to figure out what comes next in work and life.
00:25:01.020 --> 00:25:05.940
Every issue gives you a story, an idea, and a practical next step that you can
00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:07.580
take to live with greater purpose.
00:25:07.820 --> 00:25:11.170
You can subscribe to it and learn more about my work at my website.
00:25:11.600 --> 00:25:16.640
Bradleywrightphd.com Now, back to the conversation. Okay.
00:25:17.450 --> 00:25:22.620
Now, I'll get to your transition out of firefighting. But before that.
00:25:24.040 --> 00:25:25.770
Did you have any qualms about firefighting?
00:25:25.770 --> 00:25:30.310
So with music, you talked about how you thought it could be very self-centered
00:25:30.310 --> 00:25:36.000
and you weren't always proud of where your music went with Jerry Springer and stuff like that.
00:25:37.110 --> 00:25:39.490
What about firefighting? When you're in it, did you have sort of any.
00:25:41.110 --> 00:25:44.720
I don't know if they're moral qualms, but as much as like inner qualms,
00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:49.780
things you weren't sure about it. It wasn't maybe a good fit or it wasn't enough or something like that.
00:25:51.190 --> 00:25:56.550
Yeah, absolutely. I can remember early in my career as a career firefighter,
00:25:56.990 --> 00:26:00.300
I came into a union meeting with an idea I thought was a great idea,
00:26:00.300 --> 00:26:05.250
you know, like a way to maybe make the union a couple of dollars.
00:26:05.250 --> 00:26:08.700
But also more, it was more to do something good for the community.
00:26:08.700 --> 00:26:13.120
And it got shot down. And I can remember walking out of that meeting going,
00:26:13.380 --> 00:26:17.270
I can't do this. Like, I'm done. It really just knocked the wind out of my sails.
00:26:17.700 --> 00:26:20.920
Fortunately, I just, you know, gave it some time to subside.
00:26:20.920 --> 00:26:25.450
I came back, and, you know, over time, I think I was able to push through some
00:26:25.450 --> 00:26:30.370
other things that I thought were important. But there was moments of doubt for sure.
00:26:30.700 --> 00:26:34.500
There was moments where, you know, there was conflicts with the leadership of
00:26:34.500 --> 00:26:38.790
the department that I got pulled into indirectly. And I'm like,
00:26:38.790 --> 00:26:40.370
this is not what I signed up for.
00:26:40.660 --> 00:26:44.960
You know, doing the work is one thing, but the internal, sometimes the internal
00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:49.620
dynamics can be distressing, you know, and I'm not someone that likes to go
00:26:49.620 --> 00:26:53.770
into contentious adversarial situations.
00:26:54.290 --> 00:26:58.340
I like peace. What you describe, though, are things that could happen in any
00:26:58.340 --> 00:27:02.010
organization and probably happen more in other organizations than firefighting.
00:27:02.620 --> 00:27:05.810
And organizations are interesting because they give us an opportunity to have
00:27:05.810 --> 00:27:07.280
a bigger impact in the world.
00:27:08.090 --> 00:27:10.890
But they also come along with some baggage, like you just described.
00:27:11.690 --> 00:27:14.930
So you were a firefighter for about 13 years. Why did you leave?
00:27:16.190 --> 00:27:20.540
Well, I would have loved to keep going. I got into it late enough in life,
00:27:20.540 --> 00:27:23.900
especially the second part of it, being a career firefighter,
00:27:23.900 --> 00:27:26.960
that I was getting into my 60s.
00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:31.830
And you've got to really temper between loving doing the job,
00:27:31.830 --> 00:27:36.730
but also there's a mental and physical aspect of this where you are called upon
00:27:37.060 --> 00:27:38.620
to do some pretty extreme things.
00:27:38.620 --> 00:27:41.700
I mean, you're essentially a tactical athlete, putting on gear,
00:27:42.040 --> 00:27:46.140
going into some pretty high-stress environments, you know, high cardiac output.
00:27:47.150 --> 00:27:52.080
I wanted to leave in a way that I was not going to be a danger to myself or anyone else.
00:27:52.520 --> 00:28:00.610
And On the Horizon was a project that I thought was my next phase, my next chapter.
00:28:01.110 --> 00:28:07.370
So putting all that together, I decided it's time to end this career,
00:28:07.370 --> 00:28:11.700
kind of put a ribbon on it and move forward into the next chapter.
00:28:13.240 --> 00:28:19.530
What I appreciate about what you did is that even though you weren't in your mid-20s,
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:23.520
you went into firefighting, which is, as you say, a very physically demanding,
00:28:24.490 --> 00:28:30.330
job and a very dangerous job and illness and injury.
00:28:31.930 --> 00:28:34.410
And yet you still did it and you still had a really good experience for 13 years.
00:28:34.410 --> 00:28:37.630
And so it's a bit of a cliche to say it's never too late.
00:28:38.010 --> 00:28:42.950
It is too late for lots of things. Like, you know, I'm 63. I don't think I could
00:28:42.950 --> 00:28:45.110
go become a firefighter now, even if I wanted to.
00:28:45.650 --> 00:28:50.520
But it's often not too late, I guess I would say. Or sometimes we think it's
00:28:50.520 --> 00:28:54.190
later than it is, or we can still do quite a bit. So I appreciate that.
00:28:54.770 --> 00:29:00.650
So tell us about the opportunity that sort of, it didn't pull you out of firefighting,
00:29:00.650 --> 00:29:03.360
but it was available and it kind of was your next thing.
00:29:04.040 --> 00:29:06.230
Yeah, that's a great question. And,
00:29:06.770 --> 00:29:12.360
it appeared to be like something really appropriate to transition into.
00:29:12.360 --> 00:29:17.450
It essentially was someone was talking about collaborating on creating videos,
00:29:17.450 --> 00:29:23.650
meditation, calming videos for people who are incarcerated in prison in L.A.
00:29:24.090 --> 00:29:29.250
So if you could think of, you know, TV monitors being around the prison And instead of, you know,
00:29:29.980 --> 00:29:36.760
some intense talk show or news, calming nature-based meditative videos there
00:29:36.760 --> 00:29:40.430
to kind of like bring them, you know, bring their energy down,
00:29:40.430 --> 00:29:41.970
their mental energy down.
00:29:43.280 --> 00:29:44.120
That was the premise.
00:29:45.440 --> 00:29:48.430
Long story short, didn't work out. But I had already, you know,
00:29:48.650 --> 00:29:54.320
started the process of retirement. So that put me in a position of like, okay, what do I do now?
00:29:55.670 --> 00:29:59.990
Oh, interesting. So you're on one horse, you jumped off to get another horse,
00:29:59.990 --> 00:30:01.750
and that horse just went away.
00:30:02.590 --> 00:30:05.530
Was that sort of a crisis for you or a moment of panic, or is it like,
00:30:05.530 --> 00:30:06.780
okay, I'll figure this out?
00:30:07.630 --> 00:30:12.520
Yeah, I wouldn't say it was crisis or panic. It was distressing just because
00:30:12.520 --> 00:30:14.660
I thought it was going to be a great project.
00:30:16.110 --> 00:30:20.410
However, I think throughout my life there have been opportunities,
00:30:20.410 --> 00:30:24.100
like almost seeds being planted, if you will, that in the moment,
00:30:24.100 --> 00:30:26.450
they don't appear like anything unusual.
00:30:26.450 --> 00:30:32.600
But when I reflect back on them, they were creating opportunities downstream.
00:30:32.600 --> 00:30:40.170
So I, before I had retired, I, as a firefighter, we had continuing education
00:30:40.170 --> 00:30:42.400
training constantly, right?
00:30:42.670 --> 00:30:46.450
And a group came through there called the Fairfield County Trauma Response Team.
00:30:46.450 --> 00:30:51.170
They're a bunch of, a group of clinicians who work with first responders,
00:30:51.170 --> 00:30:55.940
especially after a critical incident, come in, do debriefs, offer therapy.
00:30:57.290 --> 00:31:03.380
They have resources. And during their presentation, this was like another lightning bolt moment.
00:31:04.140 --> 00:31:08.090
I didn't know that there were therapists who actually work with first responders
00:31:08.090 --> 00:31:12.120
and understand our world. I didn't know what PTSD was. I had never heard of
00:31:12.120 --> 00:31:18.820
EMDR, which is a go-to therapy for many people, but particularly military and first responders.
00:31:19.300 --> 00:31:23.510
And watching this clinician, I'm like, this is somebody I could relate to.
00:31:24.580 --> 00:31:30.310
Well, fast forward, Project A fell through, and I had some background in doing
00:31:30.310 --> 00:31:36.530
podcasting, so I thought, well, let me start a podcast with two of these clinicians
00:31:36.530 --> 00:31:38.520
from the Fairfield County Trauma Response Team.
00:31:38.520 --> 00:31:42.240
We'll talk about responder resilience. We'll talk about mental wellness, leadership,
00:31:43.360 --> 00:31:50.520
topics that they can use their mental wellness lens, their professional clinician
00:31:50.520 --> 00:31:55.040
lens, and I'll have my lived experience as a firefighter, And that was the birth
00:31:55.040 --> 00:31:57.080
of our Responder Resilience podcast.
00:31:57.760 --> 00:32:01.330
Okay. I was wondering how you connected with your co-hosts. So we have another
00:32:01.330 --> 00:32:03.750
lightning bolt moment. That's sort of a theme here.
00:32:04.690 --> 00:32:09.880
So in a way, we could summarize you finding purpose in your life as go about
00:32:09.880 --> 00:32:13.880
your day, do what you think is good, and then things will happen in specific
00:32:13.880 --> 00:32:16.510
moments you don't plan and go with them.
00:32:16.770 --> 00:32:21.440
Like there's more to your life than that, but that seems to be kind of a meta theme.
00:32:22.630 --> 00:32:26.760
It is, yeah, go through the open door, if you will, right? And yeah,
00:32:26.760 --> 00:32:32.260
these seeds are, you know, hopefully they show up in a way that you can recognize
00:32:32.260 --> 00:32:35.340
that this was something, you know, kind of gifted to you, right?
00:32:36.050 --> 00:32:41.020
This was an opportunity that was gifted to you. So, yeah, I feel really grateful
00:32:41.020 --> 00:32:44.650
to know, you know, to have picked up on it, to have picked up that this was
00:32:44.650 --> 00:32:50.430
something that could basically spin off into some new purpose.
00:32:50.840 --> 00:32:56.800
And the podcast really became that purpose for a long time. That was my real main focus.
00:32:57.200 --> 00:33:02.220
And it's taken me to some places that has actually built another,
00:33:02.840 --> 00:33:08.470
if you will, kind of spun off another set of opportunities by the work that
00:33:08.470 --> 00:33:12.820
we've done, the body of work we've done as a team doing podcasts and the guests
00:33:12.820 --> 00:33:16.370
that we've spoken with in the process of recording these episodes.
00:33:17.120 --> 00:33:21.920
Okay. I mean, you've done over 200 episodes. And so it's a well-established
00:33:21.920 --> 00:33:25.260
and well-received podcast.
00:33:26.450 --> 00:33:31.610
You're talking about how seeds in the past end up bearing fruition for the future.
00:33:32.130 --> 00:33:40.320
That your podcasting about first responders is really a cultivation of your
00:33:40.320 --> 00:33:45.610
life experiences because you have all this experience producing music, producing sound.
00:33:46.020 --> 00:33:51.970
You have this experience before that performing, and then you have all this
00:33:51.970 --> 00:33:56.930
experience as a firefighter helping people with traumatic issues.
00:33:57.570 --> 00:33:59.800
And so now you have a you're producing
00:33:59.800 --> 00:34:02.550
and performing a podcast that helps people with traumatic issues.
00:34:04.430 --> 00:34:09.160
Yeah, I love the way it all kind of folds back on itself.
00:34:09.160 --> 00:34:14.110
And I keep looking at, okay, how can we repurpose this? And one of the things
00:34:14.110 --> 00:34:19.980
that came through the podcast was we had created a sub-series called The Clinician's Guide.
00:34:20.130 --> 00:34:24.650
And this was really to help clinicians who want to work with first responders
00:34:24.650 --> 00:34:30.060
to understand our world and give them some expert insights into different niches.
00:34:30.060 --> 00:34:32.950
Like, what is it like to work with veterans who are first responders?
00:34:32.950 --> 00:34:37.260
You know, what is it like to work with 911 dispatchers or animal control officers?
00:34:37.770 --> 00:34:44.160
And so we basically took all the episodes we had recorded and were able to synthesize
00:34:44.160 --> 00:34:48.140
them into a book, which, you know, now has a life of its own,
00:34:48.910 --> 00:34:54.630
which is, you know, another layer of purpose, which the podcast has really provided us.
00:34:55.460 --> 00:34:59.940
So is that Helping the Helper? That is, yeah, Helping the Helpers. Okay.
00:35:01.130 --> 00:35:06.050
First of all, what a great title. So what do you spend your time on now?
00:35:06.050 --> 00:35:07.530
Is it primarily the podcast? Is
00:35:07.530 --> 00:35:11.250
it primarily the book? Is it other opportunities that you're working on?
00:35:13.390 --> 00:35:19.110
As of today, I started work on a new documentary film with director Jason Harney,
00:35:19.110 --> 00:35:24.430
who's a retired Las Vegas Metro police sergeant, and he's a documentary film director.
00:35:24.430 --> 00:35:30.230
So this is another extension of the podcast. Essentially, we recorded an episode with,
00:35:31.170 --> 00:35:36.670
the fire chief here where I live and a clinician who basically developed an
00:35:36.970 --> 00:35:39.810
embedded mental health program based on her,
00:35:40.350 --> 00:35:44.750
experiences helping out at the Surfside Collapse and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas
00:35:45.170 --> 00:35:49.490
high school shooting and the suicide of a firefighter in South Florida.
00:35:50.370 --> 00:35:56.620
She created a program which is now here in this county, which is revolutionary in some ways.
00:35:56.690 --> 00:36:00.710
And so the documentary is about the inception of the program,
00:36:01.230 --> 00:36:05.960
the solution that she is using to help firefighters, and then the success stories
00:36:05.960 --> 00:36:10.380
of people whose lives and careers have been positively impacted.
00:36:11.090 --> 00:36:12.230
I'm so glad to hear that.
00:36:13.980 --> 00:36:19.260
With the career you've had, you're at an age where you could retire if you wanted to.
00:36:19.520 --> 00:36:22.960
Like you could retire, nobody would gasp, but you've left the workforce early.
00:36:23.730 --> 00:36:27.870
And I know for myself, as I think about retirement and the future of the possibility of it.
00:36:29.470 --> 00:36:33.430
A primary question is, well, I want to do something that's interesting and engaging,
00:36:33.430 --> 00:36:34.560
something that matters.
00:36:35.250 --> 00:36:40.810
And so how wonderful that you have these projects going on and that these come
00:36:40.810 --> 00:36:46.970
up. Also, you mentioned how through the podcast you got to write a book.
00:36:46.970 --> 00:36:48.920
Through the podcast, you're doing documentaries.
00:36:50.330 --> 00:36:55.050
I once heard of the phrase serendipity vehicle, where somebody said,
00:36:55.460 --> 00:36:58.800
create things in your life that they themselves will create big things.
00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:03.530
Or we'll give you a chance to make connections and have good things happen in your life.
00:37:04.270 --> 00:37:07.060
And as much as anything, that's why I've relaunched this podcast.
00:37:07.060 --> 00:37:12.010
So I did 100 episodes some years ago, and good things came out of it.
00:37:12.760 --> 00:37:16.970
I got to know some people. I went to some conferences.
00:37:17.680 --> 00:37:22.370
I got some papers out of it. And then it was time to put it on pause for a while.
00:37:22.750 --> 00:37:26.150
But part of why I'm restarting it is I miss that serendipity of meeting people,
00:37:26.150 --> 00:37:28.610
the connections, the possibilities, and opportunities.
00:37:29.150 --> 00:37:34.010
I think that's a nice general principle for life of the things that matter most
00:37:34.010 --> 00:37:37.600
rarely happen when we're just sitting on the couch playing solitaire.
00:37:37.820 --> 00:37:41.250
That it's usually we're meeting people, we're doing stuff, we're trying stuff,
00:37:41.540 --> 00:37:45.610
and then there's little sparks and opportunities. And how did you phrase this
00:37:45.610 --> 00:37:49.810
earlier? Oh, opportunities gifted for you. I love that language.
00:37:50.580 --> 00:37:51.890
And encountering them.
00:37:54.180 --> 00:37:58.710
And they don't. So we have opportunities given to you or gifted to you,
00:37:59.820 --> 00:38:03.480
but they're not randomly assigned and you can do things to have more of them.
00:38:03.480 --> 00:38:07.190
And part of what you can do to get more of them is things like you've been doing,
00:38:07.190 --> 00:38:09.270
engaging people, trying things.
00:38:09.610 --> 00:38:11.670
I know it was this podcast, you meet a lot of people.
00:38:12.070 --> 00:38:14.180
So I appreciate that about your story.
00:38:14.670 --> 00:38:20.730
If you were to give advice to our listeners in terms of careers and inflection
00:38:20.730 --> 00:38:22.940
points, What would you say?
00:38:24.380 --> 00:38:29.170
Well, first, I think recognize the seeds that may have been sown,
00:38:29.170 --> 00:38:31.730
you know, and sometimes that's not always obvious.
00:38:31.730 --> 00:38:36.080
But we think of life as a series of choices and knowing that there is always
00:38:36.080 --> 00:38:41.260
another choice, you know, I could reflect back to that opportunity I thought
00:38:41.260 --> 00:38:44.740
I had when I was leaving the fire department that just didn't pan out.
00:38:45.250 --> 00:38:48.740
There's another choice, right? Option B, option C, option D.
00:38:49.060 --> 00:38:53.520
And I think when we come from a position of feeling choice, it's much more empowering
00:38:53.520 --> 00:38:59.120
than feeling like we're in a no option universe where we have no choice.
00:39:00.010 --> 00:39:03.090
There are so many choices and sometimes we just got to think outside of the
00:39:03.090 --> 00:39:07.600
box. It may not be something we've done before, something that we're comfortable
00:39:07.600 --> 00:39:10.750
doing or something that we're, you know, even know about.
00:39:11.150 --> 00:39:14.890
But that's the adventure, right? Go outside that box.
00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:20.650
I love that. And when you talk about choices and sometimes we frame our lives
00:39:20.650 --> 00:39:24.980
as not having choices, it occurs to me that one version of the I have no choice
00:39:24.980 --> 00:39:27.370
is sort of structural, like the world's against me.
00:39:27.790 --> 00:39:29.540
People like me don't have a chance.
00:39:30.540 --> 00:39:33.890
Another version of it, though, is I've made a choice.
00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:36.950
Now I'm just going to stay in it. I'm going to keep my head down.
00:39:36.950 --> 00:39:38.980
I'm going to keep blinders on. I'm just going to move forward.
00:39:38.980 --> 00:39:42.260
So I will be an accountant for 45 years.
00:39:42.560 --> 00:39:45.580
And when I'm done, I'll retire. And that's it. Just not be open to things.
00:39:45.580 --> 00:39:49.690
Or that's almost fear-based or comfort-based.
00:39:50.640 --> 00:39:54.030
Because when you get a career going, it's pretty comfortable.
00:39:54.030 --> 00:39:59.500
You know, you get a paycheck every couple weeks and you know people and you know how to do the job.
00:40:00.610 --> 00:40:05.100
I appreciate your courage. So jumping from music to being a firefighter,
00:40:05.450 --> 00:40:07.520
and then, of course, being a firefighter is very courageous,
00:40:07.710 --> 00:40:10.670
and then being a firefighter to the mental health field.
00:40:10.840 --> 00:40:16.050
Those are a couple of very significant transitions that must have taken a lot of courage.
00:40:16.390 --> 00:40:19.780
Was it hard to make those? I mean, because as you talk about it now,
00:40:20.630 --> 00:40:23.580
you look back, it's like, you know, I had this opportunity to give it to me and I took it.
00:40:23.990 --> 00:40:31.460
But at the time, was there a lot of conversations with your wife or uncertainty
00:40:31.460 --> 00:40:34.720
or wrestling about it at night or self-doubt? I mean, you mentioned a little
00:40:34.720 --> 00:40:37.020
bit of that with the lieutenant's exam.
00:40:37.300 --> 00:40:40.500
But with the major transitions, how were they to go through emotionally?
00:40:41.400 --> 00:40:45.810
Yeah, I think in terms of my wife, she is supportive of pretty much anything
00:40:45.810 --> 00:40:48.820
I do. And that didn't take a lot of conversation. It was more,
00:40:49.420 --> 00:40:51.360
as you mentioned, discomfort, right?
00:40:51.540 --> 00:40:54.610
I think the transition from volunteer to career firefighter,
00:40:55.000 --> 00:41:00.160
there was a lot of discomfort there because now, you know, you are the spotlights
00:41:00.160 --> 00:41:05.630
on you and, you know, you are the first line of, you know, of help out there.
00:41:06.160 --> 00:41:11.460
And I was walking into a culture where back then new guys, you know,
00:41:11.460 --> 00:41:13.850
are not respected. You know, you have to prove yourself.
00:41:14.170 --> 00:41:17.260
You have to, you know, they're checking you out. They want to see who you are.
00:41:17.260 --> 00:41:18.450
Like, how are you going to show up?
00:41:18.730 --> 00:41:23.010
And for me, that was really uncomfortable for a couple of years.
00:41:23.550 --> 00:41:26.200
So my attitude was...
00:41:27.490 --> 00:41:31.240
And maybe this is because I've run some marathons in my life and I've kind of
00:41:31.240 --> 00:41:36.280
had the mindset of, you know, I'm going to get through this stretch that I just hung in there.
00:41:36.610 --> 00:41:40.570
And on the other side of that, discomfort was, you know, one of the greatest
00:41:40.720 --> 00:41:42.430
experiences I've ever had in my life.
00:41:42.830 --> 00:41:48.630
So I think it's about maybe not to embrace discomfort, but just allow it and
00:41:48.630 --> 00:41:51.890
just allow it to be part of the process of getting the good stuff.
00:41:52.270 --> 00:41:57.180
When it's like when the Wizard of Oz changes from black and white into full
00:41:57.180 --> 00:42:00.120
color. You just got to get through that black and white stretch,
00:42:00.540 --> 00:42:02.000
and the full color is worth it.
00:42:02.890 --> 00:42:10.220
Oh, I like that. And so really we have a pairing of lightning bolt moments where
00:42:10.220 --> 00:42:16.550
you feel an opportunity has been gifted to you with the discomfort of taking it, the risk, the fear.
00:42:17.830 --> 00:42:21.000
And you can't separate the two. It just seems like they come together.
00:42:21.000 --> 00:42:26.930
I mean, what I want is the gifted opportunities with of novelty,
00:42:26.930 --> 00:42:29.500
but with the comfort of the familiar.
00:42:29.860 --> 00:42:31.620
And like, I just don't think that's on the menu.
00:42:32.510 --> 00:42:36.960
How can people learn more about you? How can they find out about your podcast,
00:42:36.960 --> 00:42:40.930
your book, any social connections that they can make with you?
00:42:42.300 --> 00:42:50.450
Yes, our website is ResponderTV.com. It has the podcast and the book and biographical
00:42:50.450 --> 00:42:54.210
information. And then we're out there on social, LinkedIn, Facebook.
00:42:54.630 --> 00:42:56.630
We're on Instagram, Responder.TV.
00:42:57.360 --> 00:43:01.280
And those are really the best ways to get in touch. You can certainly message
00:43:01.280 --> 00:43:05.250
me through socials or through ResponderTV.com.
00:43:06.090 --> 00:43:10.610
Great. Thank you so much, David, for taking the time to talk with us and to
00:43:10.610 --> 00:43:13.740
share your experiences with us that we could learn from it. I appreciate it.
00:43:14.300 --> 00:43:17.140
Thank you very much. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for listening to
00:43:17.140 --> 00:43:18.660
the Second Calling Podcast.
00:43:19.260 --> 00:43:23.270
If you want to keep on thinking about purpose and work and what comes next in
00:43:23.270 --> 00:43:25.960
life, you might want to subscribe to my monthly newsletter.
00:43:26.720 --> 00:43:31.800
Every issue gives you a story, an idea, and a next step that you can try yourself.
00:43:32.610 --> 00:43:37.810
You can find it and more about my work at my website, BradleyWrightPhD.com.
00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:39.680
I'll put the link in the show notes.
00:43:40.740 --> 00:43:42.270
Thank you, and I hope to see you next time.
