Watching the Nuke

October 30, 2020October 21, 2020 / T Wayne Hicks / Leave a comment

Sometimes, it just fails. And that’s okay.

But fuck, it sucks watching it happen.

Many strong relationships that have stood the test of time in many cases, are starting to fray.

I’ve watched good friends get cheated on by their wives. I’ve watched good friends cheat on their wives. I’ve watched relationships that I was convinced would never fall apart collapse quicker than an old building.

This pandemic didn’t cause the relationships to fail, all it did was hasten the destruction already inflicted. And many people are choosing to destroy their relationships.

Yes, even my parents. 45 years of marriage, starting to buckle because of old age, health problems, and anxiety about the future and what it holds.

It’s taken it’s toll and I’ve had to watch it first hand.

Disheartening? Yes. Disappointing? Of course. But I won’t say it’s unexpected, nor will I say that I don’t know the eventual result.

It hurts more because I know the WHYS and HOWS of these happenings.

When you become red-pilled, you see shit you don’t want to see. You understand the truth of life and you have to grapple with the consequences of the knowledge you have. You have to understand that everyday, a nuke drops somewhere, and you can’t do anything to stop it. You watch it, make a note of how it happened, and try like hell to make sure it doesn’t happen to you or anyone you love.

Knowing versus Not Knowing

When I was married, I was naive to many of the issues I know now. And that’s problematic because the problems I was told were the issue versus the ones that really ARE the issue is a dangerous place to be.

Ignorance is bliss, it seems, until the knowledge hits you like a boxer in the first round.

So, as with my own marriage and the problems I didn’t see until it was too late, I had to learn the hard way. I had to go through intensive therapy in order to understand the issues in my marriage, so understand that most people who are married don’t have the intellectual cajones to even fathom the basics of why they are having issues in their marriages.

Married life, for me and millions of people, is walking with a blindfold on hoping you don’t hit something. People HOPE their love is enough and it will transcend all other problems. But when the problems become too big or if many hit at once, we see a once-proud institution buckle mightily because the marriage is only as strong as the people in it. And many people are showing weaknesses even before the vows are uttered.

So, in my experience, I was ignorant in the ways of what I needed to do and look for in my marriage and in my life in general. I was under the impression, especially with other relationships I observed around me, that being present was the only requirement for marriage. It wasn’t work, it was “OK, I found my significant other, time to put down the hammer and get fat and complacent. She loves me for me, so it’s no problem.”

And I acted like it. I did what I was supposed to do, not what I should have been doing. I did the bare minimum to make the marriage work, and low and behold, it failed in less than a decade.

And all because I didn’t bother to learn how it worked, I was just glad I found someone. And my ex was glad her biological clock was arrested and she had two kids. At that point, I was terrible with women and she was the first to say yes, and she had been in unfulfilling relationships with men who didn’t want to commit. So we weren’t a strong marriage, we were a means to an end.

And, as I got more educated through what I went through with my own divorce, it’s natural for me to see similar issues with other people’s relationships, especially those closest to me.

The wreck of my marriage, for all the bad things it brought, gave me the knowledge and foresight to be able to have a healthier relationship in the future, and that started with myself and becoming better.

That knowledge, whether I wanted it or not, is on full display with all the relationships I see with the people that are closest to me. I try to impart some of what I learned to the people who need it most.

But here’s the major issue with that….they either can’t or refuse to hear it.

And so, I become preachy and obnoxious to them because I try to tell them to avoid the mistakes I made. I become annoyed when I see things they are doing (or more often times NOT doing) and I have to say something, only to be pushed away and shown the door. My warnings don’t mean much when they won’t heed them. They see my life, not as a success story where I am finally happy and a well-rounded individual who’s taking responsibility for his life, but as a stain of single masculinity. “At least I’m not single” becomes the battle cry of people who lack the intestinal fortitude to make their lives better, citing fate and luck as the main catalysts of their marriage.

After trying to help and getting rebuffed, it’s time to watch the nuke.

Powerlessness Coupled with Understanding

Look, my experiences aren’t the way to go, I understand that. My advice is just that, advice. I’m not going to pretend I’m a relationship expert. And, quite frankly, some relationships are destined to fail. Hell, some relationships need to fail.

But it still doesn’t make watching them falter any more pleasant. I’ve had several friends whose marriages have failed this year alone who I’ve had to console or talk to in order to tell them that regardless of what I did say or do in order to warn them, I just couldn’t get through to them until the rubble settled.

Sometimes, the best advice you can give someone is no advice at all. Letting them fail, while difficult, is the best way for them to understand and learn from the mistakes they made.

It still sucks to watch it all go down. It still blows to have to witness the nuke, people you love and respect, watching their world crumble.

But, as I watch, there’s something I understand.

There’s only so much you can do as a person outside of the blast radius.

You can’t put yourself in their situation and steer away from the bridge.

Sometimes, they have to drive off the cliff in order to see what mistakes they made.

It’s why watching friends and family struggle in their hollow marriages is so difficult, but also a necessity. They need to understand that there may be a way to save their marriages, but it would involve behavioral adjustments and epiphanies they just won’t understand, let alone do.

THEY have to make the decision, they have to do the work, they have to see the issues. And more times than not, they don’t.

Look, I don’t want my parents to split up. I don’t want my friends to have this heartache of a cheating spouse. Their worlds are crumbling and the best I can do is to support them going through these difficult life experiences.

Because the bottom line is that is all I can do for them. Be there to listen, support, and try to help where I can.

This is a time they need a strong friend, son, brother, etc to help them make sense of what’s going on in their lives. You may very well know what’s happening with them because of your own experiences and telling them “I told you so” doesn’t do anything but piss them off and shit on their circumstances.

They need someone who can understand what they’re going through and point them in the right direction after the damage has been done.

Sometimes you just can’t save it. It sucks, but that’s how it is.

The nuke’s going to go off. You have to be there to help rebuild.

The Lost Art of the Dance

October 16, 2020September 21, 2020 / T Wayne Hicks / 2 Comments

“That is the way it is, we always fall in love because of a detail, a nuance. It is a marker we set up for ourselves in the midst of the confusion, in the infinite space of love. The greatest passions come from such little causes.”

― Georges Rodenbach, The Bells of Bruges

Wanna see how far we’ve fallen in the dating world? Simply look at online dating. It’s turned into a meat market with hookups as the end game for most people.

Here we see, many hopeless individuals, moving from encounter to encounter, thinking the next one will be the one they will finally be with.
Like an episode of Quantum Leap, they keep jumping from person to person, life to life, in hopes they’ll finally be able to say they can “settle down” and stop the merry-go-round.

The dinners, movies, activities that involve a quick interrogation, then potential sex if everyone is game, then ghosting after the sex wasn’t that good, the conversation dried up, the meaning, the skies parting, the light beaming down, all of it doesn’t happen.

And the trudging to the next good thing happens. And most of the time, it doesn’t happen.

Like a horrible game of musical chairs where the seats are covered in rusty nails, they force themselves to sit down because it’s better than not having a chair.

Technology has eliminated the whole point of dating, the dance. The push and pull, the subtlety, the slow burn that makes the sex, the climax, the anticipation of being with someone who’s weaved themselves into your mind.

The world is now about notches, being hot, and having as much sex as you can with no end in sight. And after 20 years of this, women and men, are still no closer to finding the person they want, because they pissed their chances away with a clear lack of dating direction.

“Dating is Hell”

Show me a person who hates to date, and I’ll show you someone who has never been on a REAL date. The nuance, the mystery, the dance has been removed for convenience’s sake, and the dating market has struggled with this very recently. With hook up apps, the dance of dating, the lost art of carrying a conversation, the subtlety of words and meanings meant to do a slow burn and build sexual tension has been replaced with swipe left or right, quick bios, and hit it and quit it.

Pick Up Artistry, which for years was a skill that few possessed but was honed and sharpened by constantly going up to people in public and talking to them, body language mastery, etc, has been replaced by the crapshoot shit show of technological convenience.

In short, everyone has stopped trying. Their physical appearance, their mental approach, their attitudes reflect people that don’t seem to care about meeting others. They put as little effort into themselves as they can, then write a glowing bio on a dating site and use filters to make themselves appear less unattractive, hoping that the person that swipes right for them is also just as uncaring about their own life, and they just fall in together in a depression laden relationship where they both get tired and one or both eventually cheat.

Depressing as fuck, isn’t it?

Because the end game is the relationship.

In the case of dating and interpersonal communications, it was never about the end game, the destination. The relationship was a goal, but you never stopped gaming your significant other. Now, people go through the hell of dating in order to get to the greater hell of a relationship with someone they have no business being with.

So with the glowing reviews of dating as being an introvert’s worst nightmare, and everyone claiming to be introverted, then FINALLY getting through it to be with SOMEONE, ANYONE, they have given up on something in life that should really be fulfilling, fun, and worthwhile.

No one wants to do the work it takes to be a good date anymore. No one wants to put in the time to focus on themselves, on being attractive, on being high quality, because they’d rather piss and moan and swipe, swipe, swipe. Because in the dating lottery, no one gets lucky, they just get frustrated, and they can’t see that they’re doing to themselves.

But also, the act, the dance, has been lost in all of this. COVID didn’t kill personal interactions, it only exposed what we’ve already known. No one wants to do the work, engage in the dating world, and have fun meeting new people.

If they treat it like a chore, then it is one.

Lost Arts

Conversation, words, nuance, body language, building intimacy, polarity, and tension in your interactions.

There’s a reason a woman touches her lip when she talks to you, sees you, and fantasizes about you. Because you have “primed the pump” so to speak with a mystery, an aloofness that only she can see.

The roles aren’t there, the masculine dances and leads the feminine, but now, everyone wants to get fucked.

It’s a mindless, soulless diversion that while can be fun, is generally not as fulfilling as dating and building that tension in a social setting.

The lost arts of interaction have taken their tolls on the dating world, only to be lost to the world, and seeing only the manosphere take up the banner on bringing it back. We need to continue to champion game, because it’s an important aspect in the dance of attraction.

But the dance scares men. Because it involves them being able to confidently interact with a woman. You must enchant her, you must be a mystery, you must build that tension, and men don’t know shit about how to do that. So they swipe, swipe, swipe.

This is why I will always be a proponent of game. The rise of petrified fear of rejection, lack of confidence, technological ease, and reduction of the societal importance of social gatherings continues to hound the dating world and we’re seeing the effects first hand.
You build the attraction. You have to master key interactions with women.

Body language mastery.

All of this is the dance.

The keys to seducing and building tension. Women love it, they just don’t say it out loud. They appreciate a man who works to keep her engaged, playfully using words, implying sexual nuance in daily conversations, and putting small, seductive thoughts in her head.

What men don’t realize is that you can utilize modern dating tech to enhance this ability, but we seldom do that.

Dating technology makes us lazy.

This is why the concepts that the manosphere teaches will never go out of style, regardless of how much technology tries to cancel it out.

The art of the dance, the tension built, the ebb and flow of flirtation, the push, and pull of the interaction, the game, will never go away.

Social interaction will always be an important skill that men need to continue to work on mastering. Your job is to build it and she will cum.

You lead the dance.

Women want to be taken, claimed. They want passion.

Women want to be seduced.

They want a man to make them dream of him and what he’s capable of.

They want a man to use her emotions to make her excited.

She wants exciting.

She wants you to assert your masculinity over her. Engulf her in it. Because she knows your strength. She knows your motives and lets herself go. She wants to fall for you and she wants you to catch her.

She wants to dance.

So learn to dance with her.

Sleep in the Fire

October 9, 2020September 21, 2020 / T Wayne Hicks / 1 Comment

It doesn’t get easier, you just get stronger.

If there’s one thing I would teach men, teach them early and often, teach them with endless examples, teach them with all my grey hairs, all the creaks of my body, all the sleep in my eyes waking up early to stand a post, all of it, it’s that it never ends.

Men were specifically built for the heavy lift of life. They were specifically built to be the line to guard and protect all he loves with his strength and never-ending vigilance against those that mean to take it.

You don’t sleep. You rest.

You don’t ever let your guard down, because if you do, everything that you’ve built can be blasted away.

You are the order in the chaos.

And this terrifies the fuck out of men these days.

When I tell you it’s going to all fall down, no one wants to play “Ring around the Rosie.”

Because the measure of a man is his ability to provide for himself and those he loves. And if he’s not doing that, then he’s not a man. We’re told this every day.

See the countless numbers on male suicides (7/10 suicides in the US are men) and the absolute state of masculinity as a service to the world.

Men are the livestock of the world, providing and not getting back. This is the true issue, but it’s not going to be solved anytime soon.

The bottom line that will never change is that men are success objects. And many of us, through feminization, have been told we can put down the burdens and let the women do it. But the women aren’t equipped to do it, they’re different. They can do it just fine, but that’s not their role.

Men are constantly expected to perform. And this is not a bad thing as we are built for exactly that, but somewhere, someone sold us the fact that we didn’t have to. We didn’t have to carry the burdens and we could fuck off in life and not hold the line. And that was the day it all changed.

“Sleep When You’re Dead.”

Men have to understand that the world is thankless, and the work we do is even more thankless.

You aren’t going to get a pat on the butt for a good job done every day. No one cares. You still have to get up and make the donuts. You still have to do what you do.

Which is what I do every day.

Since starting my own business 10 years ago, it’s become less about me and more about those that rely on me to provide them a livelihood. Now, 15 people rely on me to be upright and focused daily to make sure they have jobs.

Which means? I don’t sleep.

I just rest.

I can tell you for 22 years, and especially these last 10, the trucking industry and owning my own business doesn’t allow me much sleep. Sleeping sound isn’t happening, as I’m always concerned about what’s happening, challenges my business faces, and how I’m going to maintain keeping 15 people employed on a daily basis.

But keep in mind, if I’m not there, it doesn’t all go to shit. There are tons of qualified people that I employ that run the day to day very well, and my fellow owners are some of the best people to be in business with. But the peace of mind that comes to my employees and my fellow owners knowing that I’m always THERE, even if I’m not, and my mind is always THERE, is some of the most powerful support I can give them. They know that I won’t drop the ball, and if I do, it’s picked up quickly.

Even when they don’t need me, knowing that I’m here watching everything is a comforting blanket for all of my employees and they know that they don’t necessarily NEED me, but if there’s an issue, they know I’ll handle it.

There’s a certain pride knowing that you are steering the ship, making sure you’re avoiding storms, and fighting every day at the helm to make things better for everyone who counts on you.

But you constantly are on guard to protect those who count on you and those you love. You have created the bubbles they live in, and you have a responsibility to use all of your strength to maintain it.

Which means….

You have to get stronger, every day. The pain of growth makes you impervious to life. The pain of failure makes you aware of life’s pitfalls.

Both are useful in making you the best you can be so that you can more easily maintain your life and the lives of those who count on you.

But it still means you don’t sleep….you sleep in a fire. Constantly aware of issues affecting you and your business and navigating to avoid or surpass those problems.

Yes, you’re always on.

Harsh Reality is Better than Malleable Fantasy

People don’t want to experience bad stuff. But we have to in order to grow.

Men are playing scared. They’ve been told masculine traits are outdated. They have been told to be vulnerable. And while the vulnerability is certainly valid, it’s not good to consistently be that way. Men stand guard. Men hold the line. Men put the world on their backs and carry it.

Confrontation, tragedy, setbacks, failures, bumps in the road are all a part of it. You can’t get away from the way life goes, but you can determine how you’ll allow it to affect you, and that’s by forging yourself in the fires you sleep in. Always being sharp, prepared and ready for anything that will cause you issues in your life.

The world won’t stop. We want it to, we do. But it doesn’t. The sooner a man realizes this, the sooner he understands that he must always sleep with one eye open, to stand guard and protect, because the world doesn’t care about you. Life doesn’t take it easy until you tell it to.

So you want an easy life? Be prepared to live an uneventful one.

I’m not promising anything but tough love to men who come to me for advice.

I’m telling them if they want to be successful, they always have to be on.

I can’t put it any other way. Men want to be successful and that means that have to work. Depending on how smart you work and how you play your success determines how much you can let off the gas later in life.

But you NEVER can coast. Many men believe they can coast, sleep with no consequences, and wake up with no worries.

The good, easy life is a lie. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Facing life with your chest out, getting stronger with every obstacle you overcome, until the obstacles aren’t obstacles anymore. Until the pain doesn’t hurt anymore. Sleep in that bed of fire, because you’ll wake up rested and stronger.

Remember, you don’t sleep, you rest.

You have to get up and fight every day, so fight stronger, fight knowing that there are those depending on you to be stronger, more invincible than you were the day before.

You want an easy life?

Then do what you’re doing. Don’t worry about anything. Clock in and clock out. Kiss the wife, play with the kids, go to bed, get fat, watch the clock tick away on a life with no legacy, no direction, no purpose, no mission.

The men that lead this charge are the same men who have regrets later in life and are chained to an uncaring wife, dead-end job, and die as soon as they retire.

Some want to watch the world die. The “enjoy the decline” crowd have every right to live their lives the way they see fit. But remember, they won’t understand that overcoming hardships is one of the truly amazing parts of a full life.

Making excuses for not overcoming becomes a punch line for those who will never be there, on the front lines, fighting every day to provide the world that the decliners enjoy.

Thankless? Sure.

Worth it? You tell me.

Times Like These

October 2, 2020September 16, 2020 / T Wayne Hicks / 3 Comments

“In the fullness of time
A garden to nurture and protect”

Rush – “The Garden”

I won’t lie.

2020 has been an interesting year.

Needless to say, I’ve gotten a few more grey hairs in the luscious silk like fibers on my skull as the year has gone on, but here we are, winding it down.

I tweet out messages each day as to my mindset on that particular day and lately, my tolerance for bullshit has been at an all-time low.

It’s not been something that I’ve been aware of until I decided to read “4 Hour Work Week” by Tim Feriss.

Do you realize how much time you are wasting daily at work, at home, at other places, simply passing the time doing bullshit that is taking away from what you really are? Your passions are put on the back burner for trying to win an argument on your phone with a dipshit anon on Twitter.

The manosphere, and me in particular, rail against all of this time wasting because I finally realized, in 2020, that my time WAS being wasted big time, especially at work.

When COVID hit, most people cuddled up on the couch, stayed in their pajamas, drank 8 cups of coffee and binge-watched shows they would never watch under normal circumstances. They played video games until they won every single match and got all of the virtual hardware that came with being on the top of your game.

Most saw working from home as an opportunity to sit on their asses. Instead of realizing they had dreams they could now pursue with extra time, they logged into the company Zoom meeting, then logged out, then went back to bed. Their kids, realizing that an 8 hour school day was actually only 1 hour of true work, decided to do the same, as they were watching their parents drool into a cup as they checked out another episode of “Cake Boss”.

So, he we are 150 days after the initial 15 days to stop the spread, and many people haven’t done anything but get worse in their lives. Marriages are ending, nothing has gotten accomplished, and the urge to do something with their lives ended after day 2. Like the people who make New Year’s resolutions at the gym in January, then February 1st, all the newbies are gone, back to their comfy homes and lit screens to escape from a life they don’t want to live, nor do they want to do the work to change it.

It’s fucking depressing, but it’s the way it is.

Take Your Time Back

If you truly want to take your life back, the first thing you must do is do a personal audit of your time. Doesn’t matter where it starts, but you must take specific notes and analyze your day. Mine started at work. I was spending incredible amounts of time on emails and notes that anyone of my other employees could have done, except I chose to because reasons…

All the little shit took up too much of my time, so I decided to change it up. I focused all of my attention on things that were going to need my attention. I worked ahead. I chose to spend time focusing on more important aspects of my life as opposed to the droll and mundane busy work that clogs us all up.

Ask yourself a question. What if you just didn’t answer your emails?

Try it. I stopped checking my email every 10 minutes to now doing it twice a day, sometimes not even that. I find that 99 out of every 100 emails I delete. I find that if an email is indeed important, I’ll determine if it is. And if I don’t answer? If it’s important enough, people know how to get in touch with me.

But here’s the thing.

It’s never important enough. People just think it is.

When you stop to think about it, people who have an acute attack of self importance tend to want to have answers to questions they already know the answers to because they want their bosses to “bless” what they are doing.

It’s CYA (cover your ass) with reckless abandon, to the point where people can’t function or even wipe their ass without a permission slip.

So your job now is to put them out to pasture. They have to make decisions without your constant babysitting, and if they can’t, they need not be in your employ.

You have to let the decisions of your employees fall where they may, all the while, have faith that not responding to every little spark will not cause a gigantic blaze, because, guess what? It won’t.

I started looking at what I was doing everyday, and I found that it was more of wasting time with pointless busy work, responding to emails on shit I didn’t need to, or going over policy that should have been known because no one wanted to get in trouble.

So you have the conversations, you adjust your schedule, you work it into your voicemails about how and when people can get a hold of you, and you move forward with the work that truly needs your attention. I can’t tell you how much my life has changed when I removed the time wasting bullshit from my world and focused on what I really wanted and needed to do.

This goes for working out, paying off debt, and prioritizing my life first, then everything else second. My priorities have never been a secret, so I focus on me first, then career, job, kids, etc.

When I put my time first, strangely, everything started to get better. The stupid, pointless meetings ceased. The box clogging emails stopped. The visits from uncertain employees diminished. And the important things rose up from under the pile of stupid shit to get my attention.

As people get older, especially men, they start to prioritize their time much more because they see the clock ticking on their lives. Is it mortality that is giving me this chance to pause?

In a way, yes. I know that I don’t have a lot of time on this Earth, so the best way to spend it would be to do what I want to do. And even if I have priorities in my life, my ability to deal with those priorities gets better when I diminish the amount of wasted time that I have in my life.

Nobody wants to die regretting what they didn’t do. So what better time than now, when all of this shit is hitting, to reinforce my boundaries and make them walls.

Time Audits

In order to do any of this, you have to know what’s important in your life and prioritize that.

Start with a notebook, and go through your day.

What are you doing that someone else could be?

What are you doing that is not advancing your life goals?

What are you wasting valuable time on that you could be doing something productive?

These are questions that can be answered with a two week micromanage of your life.

I went around, was mindful of what I was doing, wrote it down, and changed the parts that were taking away from my goals.

And you can’t just half ass it, you have to whole ass it. You have to make a move to cutting the clutter from your life both physically and with time.

Clutter happens in many different forms, your job is to identify and get the fuck rid of it.

So now?

I check emails twice a day.

I’m able to be reached (by emergency only) on my cell phone. If it isn’t an emergency, I call it out and ask if I need to be contacted for something that can be solved without me.

You can’t be a dick, but you can be assertive in protecting your time.

I now put my projects and company issues first and handle them. And with that daily audit, I can identify, ahead of time, what issues will come up and if they need to be dealt with by me or by others.

My personal life includes helping my kids and putting their interests and difficulties higher than I had.

Dating comes after I’ve established all of my time and have organized it.

The more time you take to audit the time you spend, the more you realize that you have more time that you would ever realize.

The excess time that I have is now spent writing, focusing on my life goals, and handling and preparing my business for the fun times ahead.

Leading is best done by someone who has great time management skills.

But you have to start now. You have to micromanage your life.

Grab a pen and pad. Start to analyze what things are wasting your time.

Time is more valuable than money because a good use of time can actually make and save you more money.

But you have to make it happen. Start prioritizing your time. Take it for yourself and watch all the issues you thought would happen when you did it fall to the wayside because people understand you don’t hang out for bullshit pointlessness.

It’s time to a take your life back, minutes to hours at a time.

Turn off the TV, get to the gym, work on your side hustle, work for yourself.

Enriching your life is the best thing you can do with the time you save.

Get to work.