Boehmcke's Human Condition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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