Our community works better when we know who we’re walking with. If you’re new or you’ve been here a while but quiet post a quick intro below. Who you are, where you’re at, and what brought you here. Most men don't reach out for help, this is a small but significant step in announcing you are ready for The Work.

I've built up a good barrier around anger, and that emotion gets an outward projection the most I feel. Mostly towards the customers I interact with at work. Saturday is always such a busy day for me, limited staffing... But this Saturday in particular I felt targeted, I felt like a victim, and I felt like I was going to come unglued I was so busy. Then what happens? I step in dog droppings (aka landmines) at a customers house, who was incredibly rude, I could have had smoke coming out of my ears and I wouldn't have been surprised. I brought all that emotion home with me, I was not embodied at all, short fused, and just being a jerk. So I've spent the last 3 nights when the house is quiet meditating, listening, witnessing. I've had enough of being short tempered and an asshole. I found where this anger lives finally, my shoulders and it feels like lightning bolts shooting through my hands! Like jolts of electricity. I used meditation 1, I've used it in the past as well. But something stuck out. Draw from the last time you were triggered to help bring up the emotion, and then drop the story and hold onto the emotion. Worked beautifully! I'm 3 days into this release of anger and I feel more comfortable and confident witnessing it. Cheers

I want to talk about maybe the most destructive, legalised and normalised drug on the planet, ALCOHOL! There's a photo of me somewhere with my Grandad. He is helping me pour a tiny glass of beer out a small keg. My father is the one taking the photograph and everyone seems so happy and proud of me and my first beer. I am 4 years old. My Dad always liked a drink and I remember him coming home and making himself a dry Martini to “help him unwind after a long day at work.” Occasionally he'd have a glass of wine or two as well with dinner. As I only saw him once or twice a week for dinner as he usually arrived after I had gone to bed, God knows how much he really drank. I never remember seeing him drunk until his 50th birthday when his uni mates came round and they all got wasted. I was 21 at the time and had a superhuman resitance to alcohol thanks to my own university experience which had trained me well. As a result I was a fairly sober bystander to the carnage that ensued that night. I remember him enjoying a pint or 2 (max when he was driving) at the pub with lunch and he enjoyed a good single malt whiskey. Whiskey had been what put him in hospital with a split knee requiring over 50 stiches. He was 20 years old and had ridden his Lambretta from Cambridge to Loughborough to see his Dad. They drank a bottle of whiskey and probably some beers beforehand. After a rather shit night's sleep he rode back to uni. While merging onto the dual carriageway, he fell asleep on his bike, slamming into a truck nearly killing himself. By all accounts I am pretty lucky to even exist!! My Grandad always enjoyed a drink as well even when he was at death's door (91 years old) and couldn't eat as his swallowing mechanism was failing him. He managed to get to my cousin's wedding for a few hours and had a feeding tube and a nurse with him. Instead of drying up the spittle in his mouth with the absorbant swabs he dipped them in his favourite single malt and pushed that around his mouth instead. I am guessing the love of booze didn't start with him and goes way back in our family line.

Lately as some of you have heard me on the calls I've been having some difficulties getting embodied and witnessing. I'd say these emotions were tricking me, I was attaching! Confused, scared, no confidence. Inner dialogue was confused, doubtful, and I was attaching to all of it. I had a realization during todays session, got deep down into what I think was a pivotal moment for me. I saw an embarrassed Nick, 5th grade, doing a pretend job interview as part of a class assignment. There were kids parents on campus holding interviews and I chose a construction worker career path because I thought that was the easy way out, no education needed, not much thought or homework required... I thought I would skate through it, and of course I didn't. I didn't even get the job, I failed the assignment! All these emotions set in, and I felt defeated for a long time after that, "I'm not smart enough for college. Oh that requires a degree? I'll pass. I'm too lazy. I should've repeated grade school, my parents are always so frustrated when I ask for help. I shouldn't need this much help." I had dropped the dreams, the intuition, and I watched from the outside. Look at everyone around me so driven, continued education with degrees, I'll just work an easy job that I can tolerate and let my free time be my life, "work to live not live to work". I have settled for far too long! Here's a quote from Pink Floyd, I use to be on the side of the coin that felt that too much time had passed, and that I was too late. Never in my life did I think I would be where I am today. I settled, gave up on too much and tried to absolutely burry that feeling of being too stupid or lazy, distracted or incapable. But I'm feeling reborn at 34, and in control. Time " You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun".

I was reminded of this quote when @NickValdovinos was sharing his story. “It's quite funny how for the first few years, bamboo grows so slowly you might think it's died. While all the other plants sprout and grow and flower, and even bear fruit, the bamboo remains almost completely underground, humble and unremarkable. But all those years it spends in the ground aren't wasted... While the other plants grow upward, the bamboo spreads its roots deep and wide in the soil, until one day, the roots have all grown. Then the bamboo shoots upward faster than anyone could have imagined.” — You Yeong-Gwang, The Rainfall Market