Transcript
Clyde Mason: Hello. Good morning. This is my podcast. I'm sitting here with two cats next to me, a third in their cat house, and two other feral cats outside.
Clyde Mason: We're here in New York City. And this is the podcast called Midlife Verbal Journal. I'm a middle-aged New Yorker.
Clyde Mason: who's just like so sick of so much shit that I need a place to kind of release it. you know, I go to therapy, but therapy's expensive. And, you know, it's not a network, so I gotta pay out of pocket, of course.
Clyde Mason: And ah love therapy, it's great. But there are just some things that I'm not gonna bring into the room. into the conversation that you know like shit that's stupid and like man i feel like i'm getting a stupider too i feel like i don't know
Clyde Mason: i feel like i'm being bombarded with bullshit repetitiveness
Clyde Mason: podcasts that I listen to are all kind of like pristine and polished and you know they've got dozens of people or at least half a dozen people working on them on the back end and it's just like every podcast is kind of we just talk about the same thing unless it's you know a specific niche niche ne niche yeah
Clyde Mason: yeah and I you know, wanted to kind of release it. Release these thoughts. And I don't have any friends. But that's not a sad thing. It's more of, I'm not a good friend, and to have friends you have to be a friend.
Clyde Mason: And... i don't know. I'll talk about that in the future. How I feel about friendships. I guess in... I'll just talk about it in the future.
Clyde Mason: Yeah, so I'm a middle-aged, you know, 37 to 43-year-old living in New York City
Clyde Mason: with my wife, our cats. We used to have a pit bull. He passed.
Clyde Mason: No dogs at the moment um because both my wife and i work a lot and often.
Clyde Mason: And also, you know, at the end of our dog's life,
Clyde Mason: he, you know, the vet was so expensive. This is post-COVID. This is a couple years ago. And were to go the vet so much, all out of pocket.
Clyde Mason: Quality of the care, i don't know.
Clyde Mason: It's like I'd love to have a dog again for sure. I hope in another chapter we do.
Clyde Mason: But not right now. mean I'm also in addition to working I'm going to college again. um and doing a career pivot because of all this AI shit and like jobs I mean if you're like 35 to 55 that 20 year age range and like you got doubts about the next 10 to 30 years depending on where you fall in that age range
Clyde Mason: I mean you gotta figure this shit out like
Clyde Mason: It's like you either work in tech, you work in healthcare, care you work in the trades,
Clyde Mason: you work for the government, you make no money. i applied to so many different city and state jobs. I mean, I really wanted a state job for the security.
Clyde Mason: But in the end i was like, I can't live in New York City on this salary. Like, for real. Yeah, I looked at some federal government jobs.
Clyde Mason: I'm gonna be so honest here.
Clyde Mason: I applied to ICE. This was spring of 25 last year.
Clyde Mason: So if you if you watch South Park, that first episode where Mr. Mackie joins ICE and he's just like, I need a job. I'm not trying to arrest people and all this shit. That was kind of like me. I was like, well, there is a signing bonus.
Clyde Mason: And then I did a deep dive on how that signing bonus and just like most of Trump's bullshit is like coated with incentives that