[Music].
So I actually, in my notes, have written a multitude of failures.
And I just compile the list of times.
I don’t know if I failed or circumstances failed me or my brain failed, but
there is an element of failure. And maybe
this was, again, more an exploration of how
failure works.
Sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s the world, sometimes it’s circumstance.
You got to take responsibility for what goes on in your life, but you can
also see how things are
sometimes out of your control. And so I thought I would explore that a
little bit by going through.
Basically, laugh with me by laughing at
me with me is what we’re trying to get to.
So like everyone who finishes university
and I was particularly bad at education,
I was trying to get a job. And so I
was just like, hey, throwing it out there.
Let’s try to get any job we can. We just want to get started in life.
And I thought, “Oh, what’s a noble thing I can do? Let’s try to make myself
the best self I can be.”
I also maybe had taken on too much information for movies like that things
work out really nicely
in the end, which found real life. They don’t really
work that way. Like, I’ve got, I’ve had a very.
blessed life, but at the same time, if you, what my aspirations in my
reality, there is a significant gap.
there. So I was trying to get a job right out of university. And I didn’t
really know how things.
worked. One of the things, university, high school, all education says it’s
supposed to prepare you
for the real world, supposed to prepare you for stuff. It doesn’t even come
close. Like, I think.
middle school elementary school should have a course on how to study.
That’s been a big sticking point for me for the last little while. It’s been
years now.
Well, I think about education is that
education never teaches students how to study.
They say, “Here’s math. Take this math and go study it.” They don’t tell you
how to study it.
Should I just copy it? Should I do like other activities? Should I make up
my own formulas?
Should I just look at it? Should I put it under my pillow and use osmosis?
They don’t explore anything.
Because again, I think every kid’s probably a little
different. And so what’s successful for one kid.
won’t be successful for another, but you got to try the different ways to be
successful. And then
find what works for you. So then by the time you get to junior high school,
high school, you know
what kind of studying works for you. Therefore, you can study more
effectively. When you’re going to
the end of university and you’re trying to get jobs and stuff, they got to
tell you how jobs work.
And that I think was maybe the first failure, where school has failed me
miserably. So I said, you know,
again, maybe being a little aspirational in my thinking, I decided to apply
to CISIS. Now CISIS is
CSIS. It is the Canadian. I forget what
it stands for. Canadian. It’s not secret.
And I’m going to have to look it up. Let me do that real quick.
What does CISIS stand for? Oh, there you go. Okay. It’s Canadian security
intelligence services. So
this is essentially Canada’s CIA or Canada, because the FBI is national and
the CIA is international.
Canada has the RCMP is national and CISIS is international. So they deal
with international crime. Now.
they’re spies. This is Canada’s version of spies. And I just thought, oh,
right, a nice letter and
a resume, which had like, I sold dog food for six years on it and send that
into the CISIS head office
because they do have an office, which actually is in itself kind of weird.
And I didn’t do any research.
I didn’t think of what requirements they had. I didn’t actually apply for a
specific job. I just
sent a letter to the Canadian security intelligence services and said, I’d
like to work for you.
Now with a little life experience, I see why this wouldn’t have worked out.
because I don’t think CISIS
just accepts applications. I think they recruit. I think they’re going to go
to the military.
They’re going to go to police agencies.
They’re going to go to specific things.
Again, perhaps banks need like forensic accountants and whatnot. They’re
going to find the people
who fit the roles they need and then they’re going to recruit them. They’re
not just going to take
applications off the street. It’s why you’ve never looked on Craig’s list
and seen an ad for CISIS agents.
Now I didn’t think I was realistic enough to think
I’m not about to be a spy. I’m not going to be like.
the Canadian version of James Bond going around the world shooting things
and solving crimes.
I thought I would probably be doing a lot of data input. Maybe I’ll get good
enough at that.
That I’ll actually get a job as maybe as a data analyst or compiling other
people’s information
and doing stuff for them. I was pretty, I’m not even going to say good, I
was pretty good with computers.
I was adequate. I was better than average at the time. That’s certainly now
that’s not the case
because computers have come so far. But at the time, I could have done some
Excel sheets that maybe
other people couldn’t do. I could put
some things together that other people do.
So I sent them a resume and a letter in a
cover letter and I actually got a response,
which I now in my head think this was
very nice of them to not make fun of me.
And then the response was a very short letter and I just said I don’t know
where you would fit.
in the organization. And it was a very nice way of saying like what the fuck
are you talking about?
You moron kid. But at the same time, it was respectful and it maybe even
took a moment to
recognize like this kid wants to do something bigger but just doesn’t know
how. Which I think was
the case. I wanted to do something good with myself in the world. I just
didn’t know how to do it yet.
Anyways, so I did not get a job at Canadian security intelligence services.
And that’s the first step
to how I live my life now is not a spy. So then I’m still looking for a job.
This is the same
era again with so I’m still in a situation. So now if I was going to get a
job, I’d do a lot of
research. I would find out stuff. I would make sure I know what I’m talking
about before I made any sort
of application. I’ve done internal interviews within the company I work in
now and I did as much
research as I could to get as much like background as I could so that I
could present myself very well.
Back then, I was just so ready to get a dream job out the gate that I just
thought any my brain was
making things look good that were not good for me. So there was a company
and I saw an ad and this was.
back then because this is when I’m in my 20s. So the Internet is functional
and it exists but it’s
not common. So most jobs, even it, you know, very technologically advanced
companies, you would still
send in a physical resume so you’d send it in the mail. So I saw an ad. I.
think it was on the Internet.
It must have been on the Internet and it was looking for a script writer.
Now I am a pithy guy.
I drizzle sarcasm. I am artistic and I’ve written lots of stuff. By that
time I’d actually written
a full novel. We’ll get to how that failed in a minute. I got quips. I could
do it. I can write
scripts. I could write scripts that dazzle people. I could even do drama. I
could do serious stuff.
Comedy is a hard thing to write. Drama is easy, comparatively speaking. So I
got this. So what I did is
I took some scripts that I had made for a mini Internet show I had at the
time. You can see that
this aspect of my life has not changed much. And I compiled those scripts
and I wrote, I made a list
of other things I’ve written in amazing scripts I’ve put together and then I
wrote an original script
for them and I made this package. And I thought, man, this is a pretty good
package. This has like
sketch comedy. Has little drama. Has some novel things to it. Like long form
literature style
writing. It shows that I am very diverse in my abilities. They’re going to
be creaming their
pants to get a hold of me. This is going to be awesome. And so I was putting
the envelope, the package
into the mailbox. And as my hand released, I realized, and you hear that
slam, you know,
when it slabs, and that’s the note that you’ll never get this back. This has
gone forever. This is
now in the world. This is in the hands of the person who you’ve sent it to.
As I released my hands
and heard that little pff, I realized it’s a computer company. They’re
looking for computer.
scripts. Not comedy scripts or drama scripts or any kind of script. It’s not
like a sketch show.
They had a, the reason I kind of conflated these things in my mind. This was
sort of the height
of flash and flash cartoons were huge. And my mind had put together, they
needed someone to write
scripts to make their flash cartoons. But what they actually probably wanted
was flash scripts.
Like if a then b go to 10, all those kind of, you know, basic things. They
wanted Python scripts.
They wanted SQL scripts. They wanted PHP scripts. They wanted database
access scripts. They wanted
a script writer to write computer scripts. And as I let go of that letter, I
realized, in that moment,
I realized, this is wrong. I have not done, I’ve not interpreted this the
way it is in reality.
And I’ve really messed up. And I couldn’t get it back. Now, thankfully, the
company never contact
because I now felt enough sort of self-humiliation, self-embarishment and
how stupid I was
that I was now dreading the call where they would ask me to come in and
actually talk to them about
scripts. And I was, part of my brain was going, they’re computer guys. What
they’re going to do,
is see this guy who’s so dumb and has made this huge mistake. They’ll bring
him in. They’ll sit down
and talk to him. And they’ll just be like this office joke. And I will, and
I, you know, I would have gone in.
Because I was out of university, I was in
debt. I needed a job. I would have gone in
for the interview knowing that I had applied for a job that didn’t exist,
knowing that I was doing
a thing that they were just laughing at. I still would have taken the shot.
And that would have just
added to the embarrassment. It would have been insane. I am thankful that
they never contacted me.
It is painful. I actually have a friend who ended up working at that company
for a short time. And he
said that it never came up. So they didn’t sit around. The office talking
about that one guy who applied.
for a script writer doing scripts, but not actually computer scripts. But I
mentioned in that story,
my first novel. Now, I actually have a tattoo of the title of the novel on
my back. And there’s
a secondary story. I got it on my lower left of my back. It is inches away
from being a tramp stamp.
Because I got it on my lower back before tramp stamps were a thing. And then
about two years later,
girls are all sort of getting like flurries or flashes or like barbed wire
and shit across the
bottom of their back above their butt. And actually all these slutty girls
ruined my tattoo.
But anyways, I wrote a book. And this was in university. I was actually very
proud of it. The basic premise
of the plot. There were actually two main characters. There was a police
officer. And the police officer
had this uncanny ability to always hit what he shot at. So one day, he
encountered a repist who
was raping a girl and he shot him. But he could sell that. I did just
explain tramp stamps. Because
I needed to give context to there was a time before tramp stamps existed.
Because before
tramp stamps existed, if you got a tattoo on your back on let’s say your
lower back like I did,
there was no negative connotation to it. There was no association with the
tramp aspect.
So I felt it was necessary to make sure everyone understood. I know I’ve had
people say it like I
say I got this. This tattoo on my back. And I’ve had people go, do you not
know what a tramp stamp is?
Not realizing there was a time before tramp stamps. There was a time before
that was a thing. So I
have a tattoo on my shoulder. And I thought for balance, lower on the other
side of the body on my
back would be like a nice balancing feature of the tattoos. That’s why I got
it there. And then
honestly like two years later, tramp stamps got wicked popular. Weird one I
saw, no whatever,
I’m not talking about tattoos, Ignats is just put in the chat in the 1800s.
Yes, in the 1800s,
that is when I got my tattoo. And in the 1850s, tramp stamps became popular.
That’s why you’ll see so
many cowboys talk about tramps. They’re not actually talking about homeless
people. They’re talking
about women with tramp stamps. So that’s just a little more in-depth
knowledge for cowboy lore.
From Seemick B podcast. And Sean White Beef Jazz.
Anyways, now you’ve ruined the plot of my book. It
was a shitty book anyways. I wrote it when I was.
in my early 20s. So you know it wasn’t. I think it was again, conceptually
good. I think again,
I just need to work on, I needed to practice writing more. But the idea was.
that there was this guy
and he, if he shot something and he killed it, he knew inside. So as a
police officer, he could say,
you know, I shot at him and I hit him and
he died and that’s just a circumstance. As
whereas deep down inside, he knew he shot him on purpose because he had
essentially perfect aim.
The secondary main character was a ghost and the ghost had no context for
what being a ghost was.
So again, all media we’ve ever heard is that ghosts remain because you have
something left unfinished.
But the ghost himself didn’t know what he had left unfinished. So he was
going to try to find out
what he needed to finish so that he could move on. Not even knowing if there
was a place to move on
to. This is all conceptual. So he essentially tries to help the cop with
some issues and solve a
crime and whatnot. It’s a weird buddy cop thing but also they both have
these like really deep-seated.
issues which was supposed to be the heavy part.
Anyway, I didn’t conceptually quite a good book.
I wasn’t ready to write something that high, high-falutin yet. So I decided
I’m going to say,
but again, I’m still in the stage of my mind
where if I just do it and I do the thing,
it’s going to be successful because I’m young and stupid and I don’t know
how things work.
So I sent this book. Now at the time you had to send a sample of the book
with a cover letter
with a stamped self-addressed stamped envelope in it with a postcard that
said whether you wanted
your manuscript back or not. And I sent
it to every publisher in North America.
And then the rejection started coming because every
one of those self-addressed stamped envelopes.
came back to me and every single one of them came back with a rejection and
you want to know what
rejection feels like. You get to the point where every single day for weeks
and weeks and weeks.
There’s a letter for you. And in that letter is something saying that the
thing you spent a year,
two years working on, it is not good enough for anyone else to ever see.
Thank you for your time.
Goodbye now. And of course, it’s not. Now again, with the benefit of years
of experience and stuff,
I know that it wasn’t very good and it would take years
of editing and stuff. I did have one publisher say,
this is interesting. We’d be interested in looking at your next project. The
next project never came about in a realistic
amount of time. I did an internship at a
publishing company that was a
only did poetry. So they only did poetry. And we got dozens and dozens of
manuscripts every day.
And it was hardly any event was poetry. And the guy who ran the publishing
company said,
like, Peter, here’s a good job for you. I want you sit down and write the
rejection letters for these.
Now, it’s basically a form letter, but he’s like, if you can put in
something encouraging and positive,
that’s really nice. And me having had the similar experience of being
rejected by every single publisher
in North America, I had sympathy for these wannabe writers. The thing is, I.
read some of the worst
trash ever. And there’s one that sticks out to my mind and my memory. And it
was like a pre-50 shades
of gray concept. It was a BDSM kind of thing. The only bit I remember now is
the dominant man and the
submissive woman meets in a grocery store and he takes her hand and then
they’re frozen food
section. And that’s already funny if you’re being honest. And he takes her
hand and he puts it on.
her frozen Turkey. And he holds it there against the Turkey for an extent
time until her hand goes numb.
And it’s so cold it starts to hurt. And I was just pissing myself laughing
the whole time. Because
it’s just the idea of holding a frozen Turkey as being sexually stimulating
anyway. It was just a bit.
much. I guess if you’re horny enough, it probably worked. I mean that guy
probably the guy wrote it. He
probably was, he was probably into that kind of stuff. Ralph says, damn, I
wish I finished writing
novels. It is hard. I mean, that’s it. I think everyone has the ability to
start. It’s the getting
through the middle and finishing. So last six months ago, I wrote and.
recorded Montana LDablo.
If you go to Montana LDablo.com, it is a choose your own adventure. And that
took me a year to write.
And then I got sick and was in the hospital. And then I got out and I was
working on it really hard.
And then I got COVID. And then I decided I’m just going to finish it. So I
don’t think it’s very
strong. I think it’s a really good first effort. I’m working on the concept
and stuff for a second
choose your own adventure book. But I really enjoyed making it. And I think
that made a huge difference.
Right now, what I’m doing is taking the first Montana LDablo story. I’ve had
some AI transcribe it
from voice to text. I’m going to go through and fix it and add stuff. And
then actually self-publish it
on Amazon. Yes, conceptualizing and starting is easy. And that’s actually
where everyone falls
apart. Because everyone has like a notebook like this with like probably a
good idea in it. I don’t
even get a sh*t on people. Most people’s ideas are pretty solid. It is
sitting down in again, a book.
It’s a year-long process, probably minimal. And then do you have the where
the will to sit down
and edit? Do you have the will to cut half the sh*t you wrote because you
realize it’s not very good.
or rewrite it to make it better? Anyways, working as an intern in a
publishing company was very.
eye-opening. And that was probably more leading me to understand how the
world works. And again,
why I wasn’t getting these jobs that I was completely doofing in the first.
place. I did do again a very
movie-like thing. I thought, “Oh, you know what I’ll do? I’ll take my novel
that I’ve written. I’ll leave it
on the publisher’s computer.” And then one day he’ll go, “Oh, what’s this
file I don’t recognize? He’ll
click it open and start reading and go, “Oh, it’s a novel by that young
intern, that young very handsome
and intern with lots of hair.” Oh my god, this is brilliant. I’m going to
publish this. And then that would
set off my publishing career. What actually happened is it was on his
desktop. He just deleted it.
He’s like, “I don’t recognize that file. It was gone.” So I’ve realized like
the movie concept of
how success works has no relationship to reality. And these lessons are the
lessons that get us
through there. So that’s a lot of rejection I experienced. Variant, I claim,
I claim, I act to,
Rao probably has not heard the story
of the failure of my judo career. Which.
since we’re here,
I got one more story after this. This will probably be edited. But I have
done judo my whole life
since I was like 10 years old. So now I’m 50. I’ve been doing judo for 40.
years. In university, I was on
the university judo team. I really, really, really wanted to go to the
Olympics. So I was like working
really hard towards it. I was huge. So the body you see now is nothing. I.
was like four at one time.
So this is how sad you can get if you don’t maintain that. I was doing judo
four or five nights
a week and going to the gym four or five mornings a week. And I was sleeping
10 hours a day. I.
basically one half the country. So I got this the like the West Canada part
and I went to the nationals.
And so I’m in the nationals. I’m fighting and then I have this moment. And
you know, this is
getting towards that peak, that moment. And my opponent grabs two of my
fingers and pulls them
backwards. Now I probably, so 50% of my mind thinks he did this on purpose
to cheat. 50% of my mind
thinks he did this as an accident. So he broke, broke these two fingers. So
this little finger,
so I can close, you can close your finger all the way. This little finger
doesn’t. Like I can do
that and try to push it. It does not close because it was broken. In the
movie, not the movie, but in a movie,
what happens is the hero gets injured and then they maybe tape it up or they
go off and they take a
break. And they use their heart, their spirit to will them to win. So they
go back in and then they
would using some special move or some some, so just the purity of their will
to win and be better.
They win the fight and they become the champion. I went out two broken
fingers. I taped them up to
this third finger. I’m like, okay, I’m going to do it. I’m going to go back
in. I’m going to be the
hero that everyone’s seen in every movie. They’re going to make a movie
about this guy right here.
And I go in and I get my ass kicked because judo is not a thing you can
fight with only one hand. You
need two hands to do it. I got absolutely destroyed.
Got up. You have to bow. So I bow and I walk off.
And that’s when the tears just started. Like I’m going down the side of my
face because this is it.
That’s the end of my judo career right there. And that’s reality. And again,
it’s not even sad.
It’s just that’s what happens. That’s real life.
Like you get hurt. You don’t become the champion.
It ends your career. You try really hard. Sometimes that does not enough.
And you can’t just like,
it doesn’t suck. It’s just real life. So
sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it doesn’t.
So I, that was the end of my judo career. I ended up though, but because I
had that experience in judo,
I came to Japan. And I have a really nice life in Japan. I credit that to
judo. So I think, yes,
I lost this one thing that would have kept me in Canada. But I got this
other thing that landed me in
Japan where I’m actually really happy. So that’s kind of the end point of
what I would end up
be getting to is like, how can I tell that one’s actually better? If I
become champion, I maybe would
have had a shitty job and been doing judo the rest of my life in Canada in
the country where no one
gives a shit about judo. Whereas now I’ve come to Japan. And as a mediocre
player, I get this status
because I’m a foreign guy who does a Japanese thing and does it really well.
And you know, really cares
about it and wants to share it with other people and they think I’m awesome.
I have an immediate
group of support, group of friends. It’s great. I think it’s, I see in a way
probably better.
And it was my last story. So again, this is the same period. End of
university trying to find jobs.
I go on and I find an online job recruiter and they’re actually based in
California. So I go, okay,
call them up. So I’m calling them long distance. I go, hi, I’m in Canada.
The job market’s tough.
I’m looking for jobs. I was wondering if there’s anything available in your
region because California’s
very up and coming. This was like the beginning and the very soon the end of
the first Internet.com.
bubble. I talked to them for quite a long time and then the recruiter said,
come on down and I’ll
get you working. And I was like, okay, I will arrange that. Hang up. I
immediately start looking for tickets
to San Jose. How much did they cost? I talked to
my parents because again, I’m in debt. How can I.
afford to go and get a job? But if I can get a job in California working for
a computer company,
I don’t be making tons of money really soon. So this is worthwhile. Let’s
try it. So I borrow money.
I get an airplane. I book a hotel. Really cheap cheap cheap. So cheap hotel.
I’m in San Jose. I call up the recruiter and I go, yeah, so I’m here and you
can just hear this
pause on the other end of the phone. They’re like, what? I go, well, I’m
here. You said, come on down.
You get me working. So I came on down and I’m
here now. What’s the next step? And they go,
and then they try to talk around. I’m like, oh, for fuck’s sake. They were
being euphemistic. They were
not being honest or direct. They weren’t being real. They were just saying
this because they’re
essentially a salesperson. So they talked to me for a bit and they’re like,
well, let me make some
arrangements and I’ll call you back. They didn’t call me back. So I started
calling the agency that
they worked for. And I got passed on to someone else who’s like, come on in.
But I’m like, I’ve now hit.
like deep, deep depression at this point. Come on in. We’ll see what we can
do. I come in. I mean,
we haven’t talked about visas or anything. So there’s no way I can get a job
in America. You can’t
just show up in America and get a job. You need a green card. You probably
need the job before you can
get all the shit I would need to get a job. So I’m
now in a position where I’m in San Jose. I have.
spent more money than I have. I’m completely lost.
I’m sitting in the shitty, shitty little hotel.
And this notification notification comes out and they call the hotel. They
call the room.
And it’s there’s been a chemical leak up the road of this big factory. And.
what they’re saying is
please don’t leave your room under any circumstances. So I can’t even go
like walk around. This is like
San Jose. It’s like sort of the bright sun shiny California weather. No, I
can’t go outside. Go,
you know, get a drink somewhere. No, you can’t go outside. I have to stay
indoors. I’m staying in this
place. And at this time, again, this is late 90s early 2000s HBO exists, but
it only plays two
movies a day and it just plays them on loops. So I don’t remember what the
other movie was, but I watched
Stuart Little four or five times in a 24 hour period because I could not
leave my hotel room. I
couldn’t leave the place I was staying. I was in the depths of depression. I
found it difficult to
motivate myself to do anything. And I’m just watching Stuart Little over and
over and over again.
And it’s talking about like if you have big dreams, you’ll like be
successful. And all I’m doing is
sitting in this shitty hotel room with chemicals apparently all around me,
probably giving me cancer
as I speak. Being as unsuccessful as humanly possible and I think Stuart
Little lied to me.
[Music].