 So, I don't want to shock you, but I've just been an arrogant SOB last few weeks, just kind of realising it now, had to suffer some humiliations, you know, minor humiliations, but to realise that I've been out of touch with reality. So, humility means living in reality, having an accurate sense of your own importance, and when you're not living in reality, when you don't have an accurate sense of your own importance, you will get humiliated. I just had some minor humiliations over the past few weeks, and I'm going into some of these streams and I'm just like looking forward to banning people. It's like, I'm looking forward to like, you're banned for life, bro. And that's not really where I want to be at, I mean, on the other hand, yeah, people who make me unhappy, then yeah, I want to ban them, you know, or people are abusive, I do want to ban them, but I don't want to be going into these live streams, I'm looking forward to banning people, but I have to admit, I have been, I have sometimes had that attitude. Like when you do discussion and argument shows like I do, like tempers are going to run high, and so there are going to be interpersonal conflicts and, you know, parted ways with a lot of regulars on from the show over the past month. And some of that's inevitable, but some of it's just because I've, you know, sufferable pompous SOB. Yeah, I'm just like, I'm just like looking forward to sometimes just like, you know, tearing people down and just putting people on blast. I just noticing that in myself and like feeling like really smug and superior and like looking forward to like dicing people up with my sarcasm and just being snippy and superior and just a prick. I'm noticing that coming up quite a bit the last few weeks. And as a result, I'm getting these like, you know, minor humiliations. They can escalate. Like if I, if I like flip someone off when I'm driving, like this is LA, man, I could get shot. I mean, things can spiral and, and I'm kind of like looking forward to various aspects of my life to like exercising my authority and, and, but I remember what a rabbi said. If you, if you're looking forward to reprimanding someone, you probably shouldn't. And yeah, that's, that's true for me. I found myself like looking forward to reprimanding people past few weeks. So I haven't gotten out of alignment. Just have to call myself out for this. Just like face it. I've lost touch with reality a little bit. Just being kind of arrogant, superior smug and just looking forward to banning people and just like, you know, good riddance to bad rubbish, you know, that kind of attitude and not always serving me well. So on the other hand, I don't want to go to the other extreme and just like meekly putting out with abusive behavior, like being all Christ-like and turning the other cheek and Lord make me a doormat for other people to walk over, which I've often, I've often embodied that as well. So I want to walk the, the, the middle ground. I had a therapist who noted that I don't like to negotiate relationships. Like if you have people in your life, you will always have to negotiate stuff. But I don't like to negotiate interpersonal relationships. It's like, you know, it's either my way or I prefer to just be on my own reading books. And so I remember the therapist encouraged me to keep, you know, people who I found fairly difficult, but to keep them in my life, I just wanted to like cut them out of my life. But he encouraged me to just to negotiate with them. And so I did for, for a year or two, then eventually I did end up pretty much cutting them out of my life. But yeah, I got to admit, I don't like to negotiate. People who know me well say that, you know, I'm not exactly flexible. I'm more like, you know, it's got to be my way or the highway kind of guy. Not someone who like bends and, you know, super flexible and, you know, just goes along to get along. But it's the middle of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot right now and I had a friend who called me and said, you know, I'd like to invite you to my Sukkot for a meal, but you always leave, you know, after an hour. And these Sukkot meals will often go two, three hours or more. I'm 53, so I really do anything that I don't really want to do. And so if, if after an hour I want to leave, I just get up and leave. But he says, like, you know, why should I invite you over and have you take up a chair? You're just going to leave after an hour. So yeah, I get bored with most people or just pretty, pretty quick to just cut and run. Like instead of dealing with the messiness of human relations, it's like, oh, well, at least I can live stream and then everything's going to be on my terms. Or if, if I can't have things on my terms and then I just want to read a book or listen to a lecture or do some writing or just live stream because all human relationships require negotiation, require give and take. And not exactly being Mr. Flexible is probably a reaction to a chaotic childhood. And so, you know, I developed all these stringencies to protect myself, but for whatever the reason that hasn't really served me. So humility means living in reality. You have an accurate understanding of your own importance. And so when I've enjoyed some small successes in, in one area by life, I've often tried to take it into other areas like, okay, you know, I was hustling magazines asshole of the month, like treat me with a respect, bro. And I got out of touch with my, with my accurate level of importance in different situations. So that there are some areas of my life where I have an important role. Like I have an important role on my live streams in my live streams in my channel. Right. But outside of my live streams, there aren't a lot of things that, that I do where I have an important role for much of the rest of my life. I do much better when I'm just taking directions. And that's really been helpful to my recovery is to recognize certain areas of my life where I simply want to follow directions, instead of just doing what I think is, is right. And that's an accurate understanding of my own importance. Cause there are lots of areas of my life where I'm not in charge, where if I'm going to have a happy congenial operation, then it's going to consist of me taking other people's directions. And, and I'll just go along with that, just, you know, swimmingly for, for weeks at a time. And then I'll get impatient, it's like, become entitled and start, you know, throwing my weight around and start letting people know what I think and what I feel and, you know, where, where they're falling short. And, and they don't respond well. And I get a little bit of humiliation. So I've got to come back to reality, come back to the understanding I can, God can. I'll, I'll let God, I'll, I'll turn my life and my will over to the care of God as I understand God, talk to my sponsor, do my step work and come, come back to reality. And, and notice, like, no, I've never, I've never played Fortnite. I haven't played any video games in, in 40 years, maybe in my teens. I played a little Space Invaders, I think, but I don't think I played any video games in 35 or 40 years, just gives superior quality sound with the, with the headset. So that's why I'm using it. But I just want to call myself out for being an arrogant SOB who doesn't want to negotiate human relations, who has lost touch with his own relative importance of various aspects of life, who's become looking forward to putting people on blast, like looking forward to, to pointing out to other people their, their defects, where they're falling short and also just like calling myself out for not wanting to negotiate, you know, human relationships, but just like, it's my way or the highway. Yeah, try to return to reality. I've lived so much of my, my life in, in delusions of grandeur, because it's, it's like, it's like a narcotic. I just kind of bliss out in my fantasies of my, my own importance. And like, I learned it as a child and it was adaptive as a child, because my parents say, you know, we need you to stay out of the way. And so I just like sitting in a chair and tell myself stories about how important I am, what a grand role I had to play in a particular adventure. And I would just bliss out and I'd feel amazing as I just slipped into fantasy. But this adaptation of slipping into fantasy, well, it became a maladaptation as living in a world of fantasy and delusion in a world where, you know, I have some, you know, grandiose importance and people are admiring me, it became my go-to narcotic that I would return to again and again. And that's how I deal with my real life failures by just, you know, blissing out in this delusion of fantasy of, you know, this really important person. So I want to come back to reality and to an accurate sense of myself and to my own role. Oh, what's really helped me to these insights is this porcelain channel. So the, particularly the, the, the documentary on Baked Alaska and the Diary of an E-Celeb, I think it was called, and I, and I watched that and, and it made me reflect, okay, what is growth and what is grift? All right, what is just like changing to take advantage of new circumstances but, you know, without any solid core, you're just like looking for a new grift, you know, new ways to take advantage of people. That may mean, you know, being really nice or having a religious conversion or a political conversion or, you know, it could mean castigating yourself, but you still want to control the play. You don't want to just be the actor. You want to be the director and the costume designer and the producer. And, and you may be very nice and very manipulative, but still trying to control other people. So, yeah, I watched that porcelain documentary on Baked Alaska and I reflected, okay, so am I grifting or am I growing? Okay, am I, am I manipulating changing circumstances or am I engaging in, in genuine growth? Also the documentary on Gavin McGinnis affected me and then the one on Owen Benjamin where he was just like on this tear to, you know, ban people for the slightest criticism. So I've always maintained I don't ban people for criticism. I just ban people for abuse, right? But I watched the, the documentary on, watched that documentary on Owen Benjamin smarter than the average bear. That's certainly how I've usually thought of myself. I was like smarter than average. And, and I just saw him just, you know, go on what looked like a self-distortion. You know, go on what looked like a self-destructive cycle and banning people and alienating people. And I thought, okay, that, that resonates with me. I've done quite a bit of that in my own life. And, you know, maybe I'm growing, but maybe I'm grifting, growing versus grifting. So I'm looking forward to looking at his other, other documentaries, but they, they shook me up because I saw a lot of myself in the, these E-celeb documentaries there and not, not attractive parts of myself. Not attractive parts of myself. You know, I resonated with some parts of the baked Alaska story, the Owen Benjamin story, the Gavin McGinnis story, the Joe Rogan story. And yeah, it made me think, it made me realize that I'm getting a little bit out of touch with reality, kind of sometimes losing sight of my own, you know, place in the grand scheme of things, my own relative importance in the grand scheme of things. And when I come into a live stream, I'm looking forward to banning people for life. That's not a place where I want to go. And if I'm in my daily life, if I'm like looking forward to putting people on blast, like just, you know, letting them know where they fall on short, that's, that's not, that's not really the mindset that I want to be in. I want to be in a mindset of how can I be of service to other people? How can I treat myself with love and compassion? And how can I treat other people with love and compassion? Establish appropriate boundaries, but I don't want to be in, in like this head trigger, you know, putting people on blast, just, just like dying to ban people for life from my, my chat room. Just like, you know, let's get rid of the dead wood here. You know, let's, let's clean all these people out of my, my live streams. No, I don't want to be like looking forward to, to that. That's an indicator that I've gotten out of alignment spiritually. And I want to get back into reality. Yeah. How many balance, flexibility, and accurate sense of your own importance. So if you're a leader, lead. If you're a writer, write. If you're a painter, paint. If you're a runner, run. That's all being in reality. But if you're not a leader, don't lead. If you're not good with details, don't, don't become an accountant. Talk to you guys later.