Austin Fielding, Punk Rock and Engineering (#26)

Andrew: [00:00:20] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, and everything in between. Welcome back to another episode. We are thrilled to have Austin fielding a college friend that should have been a high school friend, but we missed the boat somehow on that one. So Austin is an engineer. He does a lot of really cool nerdy stuff.

And one of my inspirations in life is, you know, would Austin do this? Is this something that Austin would think was cool? So we're really excited to have Austin come on. Hopefully we'll talk a little bit about his career path, some of his extracurricular hobbies and all the different ways that we have become friends and didn't get to become friends.

Austin, welcome to the episode. Thank you so much for coming on.

Austin: [00:01:01] thank you so much for having me. This is my first podcast and I've been catching up on all your previous interviews and. I know that there are a lot of podcasts just kind of floating around in the ether, but y'all actually seem to have a good taste for what you're doing

Andrew: [00:01:16] That's that's the trick actually is we invited you just so we could get you as a listener. that's how we do this Daniel. And I go like, you know what? Who's not listening. Let's get them onto the podcast. And then we get an extra listener. So,

Austin: [00:01:26] 26 episodes. So you'll

have 28.

Andrew: [00:01:28] it's embarrassing. How close that number is to

Daniel: [00:01:33] No, no, no, no, no. It's it's millions. Remember it's millions,

Andrew: [00:01:37] Yeah. Sorry. It's one, one, two per millions yet. Sorry. Uh, That's what I meant. Fake it till you make it baby. So Austin, tell us a little bit about yourself. Give us your elevator pitch on who you are and what you do, where you live. That whole thing.

Austin: [00:01:50] Sure. So during the introduction, I had my head in my hands just because I am not somebody to have a praise or enthusiasm lauded upon them. So I am an engineer. I went to Texas tech university, got my engineering degree, did well in high school. Eagle scout, before that, I just did everything in the cookie cutter way of what you're supposed to do to get to success.

And. Frankly, it seems to have worked out for me pretty well. I have some misgivings about missed opportunities and whatnot, but thus far I'm doing okay. I worked in the oil field for three years, being a field engineer out in the boonies of Oklahoma, actually slinging 36 inch steel pipe, wrenches getting mud and gunk blown on me.

It's a lot of sitting and sleeping in your truck, but that was a fun job. Took a three-year hiatus. I'm going to call it a hiatus. It was three years of unemployment. And now I'm three years into a much cleaner industry of a semiconductor manufacturing. And Andrew knows me. I am also be Willard how this happened to me, but I'm thankful for it.

Andrew: [00:02:57] So let me rewind based on what I remember about it. Essentially, Texas tech grad, you got a, was it mechanical engineering?

Austin: [00:03:05] Mechanical. Yes, sir.

Andrew: [00:03:06] So you got a mechanical engineering degree and then you jumped to the oil field to make buckets of money and then oil did its bust. So were you fully unemployed for three years or what were you doing for three years?

Austin: [00:03:19] That's, that's a good question. And in the oil field, we call it barrels of money. That's the unit. so the three year time lapse was I got laid off in November of 2015 oil dumped our company had a difficult time, so I got one of the pink slips left on a very good note with everybody and my roommate and I actually got laid off within about 15 minutes of each other.

So we both arrived back at our shared rent home in Oklahoma city. And it's it's. 10 45 or 1115, or something like that. Whenever I opened the door and walk in, he had just been laid off from our corporate office. I had been laid off from our field office and he has an open Doseck his beer on the table at 11 o'clock in the morning for me.

And that was the remainder of that day. But from there we spent about two or three months trying to rebuild our life, like, build new careers send out resumes, send out job applications. We're doing everything the right way until finally we're just getting, not any nibbles, not any bites. So we just decided to go for broke and roll the dice and do what everybody says.

They wished they'd done during their mid twenties. I put everything. I owned into a storage unit and spent six months traveling across Europe. It was the longest pub crawl of my life. And whenever I got back, my father was in pretty. Pretty bad health. So I spent a year taking care of him and then my grandmother became really sick.

So I spent the next year taking care of her. And then just some time of float, 2017, father died, the dog died, Tom petty died and my grandmother died. And after that, you kind of just take whatever you can get

Andrew: [00:04:58] Dang. That is a heartbreaking gear.

Austin: [00:05:01] It is. And it's, it's very bad. I mean, I can laugh. I could cynically giggle about it, not laughing, but I think a cynical giggle is appropriate you know, four years after the fact. But yeah, when you encapsulate it into a two minute speech, it's a miserable time in a young man's life.

Daniel: [00:05:16] Yeah. I mean, there's, there's just so many things to unpack with kind of that entire journey. And so, I mean, it's, tough to find where to start, but I'm going to go with something easy and say, are you still in Oklahoma city? I mean, after doing all of that, where, where have you ended up as far as where you live and then, then we can talk a little bit about, you know, where you've built your life from here.

Cause that's a lot.

Austin: [00:05:38] Daniel, thank you for bringing it back to binary geography question. That is probably what I needed right now. I am no longer in Oklahoma city. Although a piece of my heart will always be there. It's a spectacular city that has the vibe of a small town and yada yada. I am living in Austin, Texas now.

So I am, I am Austin and Austin. I have a blue Mohawk. I am keeping Austin weird in every sense that I can. I hit up a lot of thrift stores, coffee shops, and I buy lava lamps. So that's uh, that's me keeping Austin weird,

Daniel: [00:06:06] That's fantastic.

Andrew: [00:06:08] that Mohawk is crazy. You're uh, I mean, we're talking like electric, blue

Austin: [00:06:12] electric blue is right. Yes.

Andrew: [00:06:14] Punk rocker.

Austin: [00:06:16] and that's all I wanted to be. Every time I'm driving in my tiny little Nissan Ultima going vroom, vroom up and down the highways to get to work. I'll have showtunes playing and I try to sing in the most punk rock or fashion I can. That is that's the pipe dream. And that, that might be a subject that comes up later in the interview.

But yeah, punk, nineties punk rocker is that's. That's what my DNA was built for.

Daniel: [00:06:45] All right. So you're in Austin. You have an electric blue Mohawk. That kind of leads me to the next question of where, where did you land in terms of employment? Like I know we're all at home right now. You can do a little bit of crazy stuff with the hair. I, I personally have a mullet for the first time of my life, but so, so where have you landed?

Because I can't imagine seeing like an oil, rough Necker type with a Mohawk. So where are you at now?

Austin: [00:07:12] that is correct. So right now I work at same sense. Semi-conductor here in Austin. My position has been a, mostly worked from home one since March of 2020. And it's been very freeing it's. It can be difficult because my position is an equipment engineer is a lot of. Doing a penguin belly slide underneath these just enormous machines and contraptions and to rip parts out and replace them with new things and to diagnose ion gauges and tweak filaments and, you know, reprogram the bearer Tron sensor unit.

It's it's preposterous and madness of what we're doing. But I have been mostly looking at charts and doing supply chain management in shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt for the last year and a half. So that the day I got the blue Mohawk was a day that we were doing work from home and it was a half hour between me getting the Mohawk, getting home.

My boss calls me and says, Hey, we need a cryo replaced. Can you come in? Oh no. Oh no. So I wore a hat to work that day.

Daniel: [00:08:17] Nice.

Austin: [00:08:18] Yeah.

Daniel: [00:08:19] that's awesome. I, whenever I got my, my mullet, I didn't choose to immediately unveil it to the, my coworkers. I opted for, you know, the ponytail to get all of the party in the back in a in a kind of hidden fashion. And then did a few presentations in front of, I think the most was like 80 people.

And so after that, I sent a message to my boss afterwards. And I was like, Hey, so did anybody notice that I got a haircut and I have a mullet and she freaked out and she was supportive of it, but she was like, no, like you totally got away with it. Nobody saw it.

Austin: [00:08:50] That's exactly what you want. I like that you had the, the party in the back was well-contained and well-organized, it was like a bar mitzvah in the back. Yeah.

Daniel: [00:08:58] Oh man. The most

organized of parties,

Andrew: [00:09:03] I don't know where to go from that guys. How did bar mitzvahs come up?

Daniel: [00:09:08] Andrew, I think you've got to tell us about your hair. I think that's where we're at.

Andrew: [00:09:11] Well, my hair is not doing great guys. I don't have anything cool. And it's kinda long, but I look, y'all seen fifth element. Right. You know, the villain uh, in his little thing, that's kind of what I look like right now.

Austin: [00:09:23] man, that is what I got called at work. Yes. Mullets and the, Oh, this is the industries are coming back.

Andrew: [00:09:31] yes, that guy. So that's, that's what I've got. I've got the kind of emo villain, a fifth element kind of swoop going down the side of my head because I can't grow it out well enough. So I don't know what I'm doing. It's either that or I I'm going Peaky blinders with the slicked back twenties.

Look, if I'm really trying. I'm not as cool as you guys. I don't have y'all's commitment. That's what it actually is. I don't have y'all's commitment to hair change game, which probably says something sad about me and something great about you guys.

Austin: [00:10:07] Daniel. Do you have tattoos?

Daniel: [00:10:09] I do. Yeah, I've got a couple.

Austin: [00:10:10] Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Andrew credit to you for, for um, leaning into the weird, in,

in different ways.

Andrew: [00:10:17] it's. It's your inspiration? So Austin really is the inspiration for a lot of the weird stuff I've done shorter, the tattoos. Cause you're still English. Right?

Austin: [00:10:24] I am.

Andrew: [00:10:26] You have to be sad about it. It's

cool.

Austin: [00:10:27] hear that? That sigh and misgiving? Yeah, that wasn't my chair. Creaking. That was the corner of my soul.

Andrew: [00:10:34] Hey, there they're permanent, man. I get it.

Austin: [00:10:36] Yeah. I I've been going into some very existential States over the last month, maybe, or the last few weeks. And it's taken me to some very interesting headspaces, but I feel like I might as well get a tattoo I know exactly what tattoo I want. It would be like a full or a, a half chest goes all around the rib cage and like into the center of the chest.

And it would be miserable to go through. And I am, I seem to be very optimistic about my pain tolerance for having a needle on me for what might be 12 hours of work.

Andrew: [00:11:08] What is this tattoo? You're thinking of getting.

Austin: [00:11:10] good question. I think everybody has Their own emotes or little symbols or sigils that they like. For me, it's been a lot of earthy and animal based ones like rats and dragonflies and mods. This tattoo would be a scissor tail fly catcher, which is the state bird of Oklahoma. And it would be five or six or seven of them in flight or resting or sweeping back and forth and just like a mural of them or whatever on my right chest, my right rib cage.

The significance of it is that whenever I was in Oklahoma city or feeling very afloat, I would see these scissor tail flycatchers just going around. And whenever I saw them, it made me feel like despite all of my wonderings about what I was doing with my life, if I was where I needed to be, if I was on the optimal path, if I was following the beam.

Andrew: [00:12:04] Thank you for that.

Austin: [00:12:05] yeah, yeah. It it put me at peace. This is her tail flycatchers are a beautiful, nimble bird. They are small, but I once saw one of them getting into a fight with a Hawk in the middle of the sky and just doing all these aerial dives and just beating the bejesus out of this Hawk. That was three times its weight.

And I was thinking like that is, that is a great animal to get behind. You know, if some people are going to take the bear or the bull or up. Crocodile or you see everybody on Facebook, like I'm a lone Wolf and I'm a lion. We'd be like, well, I'm going to see I'm going to, I'm going to pick sister tail flycatcher because one it's very obscure so I can corner the market on that.

And it, it has personal significance for me. I think a lot of people in Texas have probably not see a lion, you know, mauling a hyena and been like, that's my spirit animal, but I've seen this as a tale flycatcher long story short. What tattoo would I get? It'd be a bird. I'm going to get a bird.

Andrew: [00:13:00] Get a bird mural on your chest. Like, are you thinking like Japanese style where it covers like a whole lot or you go more minimalistic?

Austin: [00:13:07] I like the water color, bright patterns. not a minimalistic one. kind of like a DaVinci drawing style. I mean, I would want it to be accurate and not comic book or like an emoji setup. I would want it to be appropriate to, to the actual bird.

Andrew: [00:13:21] I got you. That sounds cool. And For people listening. My excitement at following the beam that is uh, dark tower, Stephen King reference. And I don't know what it was about those books, but they were truly motivational, almost like a self-help fantasy book. So I just like, I like hearing references. Daniel just finished that up, actually.

Daniel: [00:13:38] It did a couple of months ago. So I'm right there with you on the, on the beam. I will say, like, I felt like the first book was painful and then it got a lot better from there. The end is definitely worth it.

Austin: [00:13:51] I haven't got there. I think I've got through book five of the dark tower series or I stopped on the song of Susanna, which is either five or six.

Andrew: [00:14:00] I did not realize you hadn't finished it. Uh, Let me know if you need some copies.

Austin: [00:14:03] I I'm looking at my bookshelf and I have all of them top to bottom it's just you know, sitting down and reading in this economy.

Daniel: [00:14:12] You got to get it on audible. Got to listen to it.

Austin: [00:14:15] Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew: [00:14:16] I actually just paid four of the employees over at pain's internet to get audible gave him 20 bucks a piece. I was like, audible is my favorite thing in the world. Here is money. I will cover the second month because the first month free. So please get this for two months and at least listen to two books.

So you guys can be better people,

Austin: [00:14:35] It's phenomenal.

Andrew: [00:14:36] it's one of my favorite things.

let me bring something up there. So obviously you've got the nerd creds going. We're talking Stephen King, dark tower. You're an engineer. And not even like one of those pretend engineers, like, uh, what was that? And for not the infrastructure is the, industrial.

Thank you. You're not one of those pretend industrial engineers, which, you know, don't, don't kill me if any of y'all are listening.

Austin: [00:15:05] I nearly went industrial engineering. Mechanical was a tough gig and I was like, industrial seems practical and useful. And I wouldn't mechanical because I'm a glutton for pain and yeah.

Andrew: [00:15:15] and the money's good, but you know, let's not, there we go. So you've got that side going, but also you're pretty physical guy. You know, it's hard to, hard to throw a visual up on a podcast, but you're a tough guy. You won fight club while we were in college. I'm pretty sure. Or at least you've seen the most entertaining at the winning and you are.

What, if, if someone came up to you, they would not think this is a dude that plays five D and D campaigns and you know, wants to do comic books and reads all this stuff. You know, they wouldn't, they wouldn't pigeonhole you into that. They'd be like, Oh Lord, there's this punk rock. Or I hope he doesn't beat me up and take my money.

Yeah. So how do you draw that line between the physicality, like, what do you do? How do you stay physical and all that kind of stuff? When a lot of these hobbies and a lot of things that you gravitate that I know about are definitely more stationary. Sit down. They don't incline themselves to large pecs or biceps.

Austin: [00:16:10] right. Rolling dice keto for eight hours during the single Saturday and eating pretzels and Funyuns and mountain Dew it doesn't get your triceps really go and roll and all those

Andrew: [00:16:21] And ladies, Austin has some great triceps.

Austin: [00:16:24] Okay. The, so I, I will say on the subject of fight club, there was one fight that I lost and I got Jacob and Steven and I don't know it wasn't Stephan's, but we had a number of people who came through and I got every fight started except for one. And it was against you, Andrew.

Andrew: [00:16:43] Oh, well, I wasn't counting myself on that. That's not fair. I

had

practice.

Austin: [00:16:47] think, I mean, I did TaeKwonDo and stuff for a little bit too, but just the tenacity that you came forward with me on like don't, don't undersell, anybody's attitude of going into a fight.

you ever get cornered like that. And you know, it's going to fight my mom who was maybe 105 pounds threw the first punch at a girl in a Western bar because she knew that girl was about to start some stuff. that's what I was brought up with from small town, Texas women teaching me how to fight.

To loop back to the question of how do I maintain like physical fitness and physical health while having hobbies that do not accommodate that is rule number three is practice awareness. Be conscientious of what you're putting into your body and make smart decisions about what you're eating.

And whenever you go work out, my philosophy was I need to get a set of weights in my hand that I have no business trying to lift. So I would be doing skull crushers or overhead press with 50 pound or 60 pound dumbbells. Because in my mind I am a small, I'm the same small asthmatic 12 year old who got out.

In tee-ball by a girl walking up behind me and tagging me with the ball like this, that mental image has never changed. So whenever you go to work out or you go into a gym, take a look at the people who have bodies that you want to be like the bodies that you want to emulate, figure out what they're doing and do more of that.

In 2019, I had joined the thousand pound club for the first time I had a debt. Yeah. I had a deadlift of 405 pounds. I was doing bench press at like. Two two 60 or two 75, and then whatever my squat was to fill that, I mean, I was, I was, as Bruce Willis said, I am a meat Popsicle. I was a manly man and it felt good because, and the way I got to doing that, I have this big grievance with treadmills.

I have very little cardio skills, but whenever you go into a gym and this is going to hackle people, this is going to make feathers, be raised. Look at the people who were on the treadmill and look at the people who are lifting weights, because that is the easiest way to bifurcate the people who are there because they think they need to be there.

And the people who are there because they want something more,

Andrew: [00:19:02] Well, dude, I would say that goes double for girls. Obviously guys, that is an easy, like, Hey, I want to look like that guy. But a lot of girls aren't paying attention and the girls who look good at the gym are lifting weights most of the time. And yet they don't care. They still go to the treadmill. I've got some beef there.

We're not going to go down that road cause that'll be a whole episode. But

Austin: [00:19:23] that.

but the strong is the new sexy was what I found on Pinterest. And if yes, lift weights, if, if you have never done listeners of this podcast, if you have never done a dead lift before in your life, because you're intimidated by the sound of it, I guarantee a burpee is more miserable.

A deadlift is just picking up your keys again and again and again, do deadlifts. Deadlifts are wonderful. Deadlifts are the new kale. They're the new SIE Berry.

Andrew: [00:19:55] I love it.

Daniel: [00:19:56] I do. I do like deadlifting I will say though that the burpee is probably my, like, if I had just one workout that I was doing, I'm probably going to do a burpee. But I care a whole lot more about cardio than Andrew does. And then maybe, maybe you as well, Austin only because looking good and being able to lift heavy things is great.

But if you're playing a sport where you got to run around a lot, it's not as much of an advantage.

Austin: [00:20:21] Right. You, you would not see um, Oh, who is the, perfect Olympic cyclist. Who did the live strong foundation?

Daniel: [00:20:27] Oh yeah. Lance Armstrong?

Austin: [00:20:28] I don't think Lance Armstrong did overhead press or deadlifts. That was not his forte. And, that's an anomaly. If, what you are are you you're like me and Andrew and you just want designer urban outfitter muscles

Daniel: [00:20:42] For sure. And like, that's something where I think a lot of people who are going in with the mindset of, I need to lose weight. I need to be more fit a lot of times it's Oh, I just need to go for a run. I need to go for a jog because I think we associate it's really, really hard and I'm breathing hard and I'm sweating a lot.

So it must mean that I'm doing a whole lot of work and I will totally agree with you that that's not necessarily the case. And if you're just trying to get in shape, weightlifting's easier. I like weightlifting more because it does not hurt nearly as much as going on a run or doing breakfast or whatever

it is.

Austin: [00:21:14] I will agree. The reason I lift weights is because I'm a coward and I can't run. So, but if, you want the start, like start off with weights.

Daniel: [00:21:28] Okay. So I'm, curious for somebody who, it sounds like in a lot of ways, you've got a lot of things going the direction that you want them to be going in your life. Now I want to hear, like, what are some of the things that you had to say no to along the way? You know, it sounds like there may be some, some nutrition stuff there.

But what are some of the big sacrifices you've had to make in your life to get to the point that you're at now?

Austin: [00:21:53] So that is the crux of whenever this interview was posed to me, what I wanted to talk about is what you have to give up. Yeah. What you decide to give up what you're willing to give up in what you have to in order to choose another path. Now y'all can cut and paste this next section, back into the nutrition if you want to. But it's one thought that I really want to mention it's if you're going to go for fast food or something, don't get a Coke.

Don't get a diet Coke, because that is the greatest lie in America. And don't get a side, dish cheeseburgers are fine, but don't get the fries and don't get the Coke.

Daniel: [00:22:28] can I get two cheeseburgers instead?

Austin: [00:22:29] Yes, yes you can. But I had a cheeseburger competition between all of my local vendors or, I mean all the local cheeseburger shops and it was, I want a double cheeseburger, however it comes.

And that is how I chose the best winner of the cheeseburgers of the local local fast food chains.

Andrew: [00:22:45] Obviously you have to tell us who it was because we need our Austin guide, our Austin guide from Austin, because that's just fun to say,

Austin: [00:22:51] This, this is an absolute cheater answer. It has to be P Terry's.

Daniel: [00:22:55] So good.

Austin: [00:22:56] Yes Peter is, is it's the best kept secret. And I have had a lot of people talk to me about in and out. And I mean, whenever I had my hands around their neck, their last whispering gasp before their lights completely went out was maybe I should've tried P Terry's

Daniel: [00:23:13] yeah. I'm there with you.

I

totally agree.

Austin: [00:23:18] Yeah. ? So the question of sacrifice and what you have to give up. There's this, we talked to earlier about my blue Mohawk and me wanting to be a nineties punk rocker. And there's a good movie called SLC punks, salt Lake city punks. And it's got the guy who played shaggy and Scooby doo in it, but basically he's a punk rocker and he lives his life of being a punk rocker and skateboarding and spray painting things.

And, you know, smoking cigarettes at the right tender age of 16 and a half or something like that. But what he, what he ends up doing is he shaves off his Mohawk or his giant spiked hairdo. And he goes to work at a law firm. And the idea is that, I mean, the punctuated thought of that is that. The life you want is very rarely a self-sustaining one.

Andrew is a writer. I am a punk rocker at heart, but these things are not innately lucrative. Being an artist is hard. It's a lot of suffering. It's a lot of rice and beans. Being an engineer though is it's easy. You, you put on your shoes, you wear some cool, crazy zany socks that your mother got you for Christmas because you want to be that edgy guy or the cool guy at the water cooler.

You go into work every day. You stare at spreadsheets. You get phone calls from people about, I dunno, subject matter. You're not really educated on death. Nothing that makes sense, your heart, a flutter, but you do that because every two weeks you get a piece of paper in the mail and you say, maybe I can take this.

And I can spend it on steel toed, red wing boots, and I can get some, no FX or some Pennywise tickets. I can buy a tasteful, sleeveless, denim vest, and go out and throw elbows with a bunch of sweaty beard, drenched hobos in a mosh pit. And , that's what I want. that is the sacrifice is that between eight to five, which is really seven 30 to six 30, you show up in your little Paisley polo and your slacks, which would never make it into a mosh pit.

And you do these things because you want to have this freedom on the weekends and there's a in congruency. There's an incongruence there. I dunno, there is. a break in the synthesis of your life, whenever you're doing this very corporate job and you're doing it only to fuel something that is not even tangentially related,

Daniel: [00:25:35] Hmm. So, you're really on, as far as a work life balance, like it's a harsh divide between the two there's not a ton of, bleed over between, you know? Yeah. I'm bringing some of my, punk NIST to work and maybe you are with your Mohawk. Right. But or I'm bringing some of my corporateness to the mosh pit is kind of there are two different Austin's out there and, and sort of your sacrifice is that you need the corporate Austin so that you can have the paycheck to sort of fund the mosh pit Austin, which lets you, you know, maintain your soul and not just

hate your life.

Austin: [00:26:17] Yes. And that's the podcast? No, it's, it's, it's true. And there's a certain irony because, you know, thrift store clothing and PBRs are pretty cheap. And if you get a $10 or $20 ticket at the door to go see some local, nobody band that's, it's really affordable and you don't have to have a degree or any letters before or after your name to do that.

But I have, I have been willing to give up the idea of practicing in a band 40 hours a week in a garage band. Making minimal money and just living on hopes and dreams and hot pockets and fruit roll-ups and American spirits or whatever it is, I don't smoke, but you, you get the concept.

I've, I've chosen not to do that and still be able to plug it into the music community because instead I have done this, you know, corporate, high paying job or this engineering position.

It's not really a corporate job. Like I still have to put on steel-toed boots and crawl underneath stuff. And there's a lot of swearing and a lot of reaching in places that you can't look at with a wrench. That's a nine mil, whenever you need a 10 mil and who's got the 10 mill it's in the other toolbox.

Well, who was in charge of that? Get Jeff over here. I'm going to stab him with this nine mil. So, uh, I've decided to do this to where I get a good paying job and I get to live, lead this. I mean, it's, it's kind of a luxurious lifestyle. I have a bunch of used furniture in my own home, but it is my own home.

It's a good spot in Austin. I have money for groceries. I have money for haircuts. You know, if I, get holes in my socks, I can replace them. I can buy people birthday gifts. I'm not going to miss a car payment,

but it still lives something itchy.

Daniel: [00:27:59] I think what you're describing is really interesting. And before I comment any further, let me ask this. Are you happy with the arrangement or are you happy with kind of this balance between the two.

Austin: [00:28:11] I have to be. And not because, not because I've obligated myself or painted myself into a corner, but. I love my home, the home that I was able to buy because I lived in a ramshackle apartment in Oklahoma city. And because I've bought only used everything taken hand me downs everywhere I can never got into expensive champagne or caviar or Dolce and Gabbana jackets because I never did that.

I am in this 1971 home in Austin, Texas that has the coolest seventies be mid-century vibe. I, if you are. Able to do so while listening to this podcast look up flocked wallpaper, it is gold leaf wallpaper with this black velvet design pattern on it. That's a feature of the home. The all the bathrooms are like, my shower is three foot by three foot.

It's about seven feet tall. I'm six foot. And it's pink tile. it is heinously bubblegum, pink tile, but this is the home that I love. So how could I not like this arrangement? I am following the beam. Once in a while in your life, you get the feeling where you know that you are right where you need to be.

And that is how I feel now.

Daniel: [00:29:29] that's amazing. And I feel like that's something that is important for people of our generation, especially to find a way to sort of hear I work with and manage a lot of millennials that kind of fall into this sort of trap of feeling like, ah, this job. Like, it's not me. It's not who I am. I don't love it.

Even though it's a good job, like, it, it more than pays the bills and, and it can sort of provide, opportunity to go out and do some more of those things. Like I don't work for an accounting firm where you gotta put in 80 hour weeks, a hundred hour weeks, you know, in order to make your paycheck.

yeah, maybe you got a 50 hour week sometimes, but it's very doable. And so I just think that's an important thing to kind of find a way to grow into it. And it's not going to be for everybody. There's some people who want to do the whole fruit roll-ups hot pockets live in a crappy, like, and that's fine.

But I'd be willing to guess that there are plenty of other people that are totally okay with holding down a solid job, getting to enjoy, you know, not having to just eat fast food all the time, and then still pursuing some of those passions on the side.

Austin: [00:30:44] had a phone call with my 90 year old grandfather the other day, and I had been sipping absent all night. So I sent him a text message at midnight or 12:30 AM. And he sent me a text message back that said, well, give me a call. I'm up. Cause he had been sitting around like sipping water down scotch all night.

So this was a very colorful conversation between two flagrant liars in the middle of the night. But I, I asked him for life advice and he told me just what you have voiced yourself is that you want to feel like you're making a contribution. You have to understand that you are, it is okay to have a six year time in your life.

Whenever you show up, go to work, build your nest egg, take care of yourself, carry that back home and build a padding for yourself to where you're not just going to go pinballing around like ball lightening, sapping, every resource, like a mosquito until you have to get to the next thing.

Andrew: [00:31:42] that is exactly what I mean. I don't know if you plan this, but that's kind of the concept of dead by tomorrow is a lot of what we do is not going to be the Zuckerberg creating, you know, we're not going to disrupt an economy. We're not going to disrupt culture. 99% of us. We've got to be okay with doing our best in the small ways.

you know, your sacrifice there, you, you traded the punk rock lifestyle, which, you know, we'll just, we'll assume that was just, it's a little silo for. A well-paying job. And by the way, Austin's not alone on the engineering, like just about anything that you're like, Oh, I'm going to get this job because it's going to pay well.

And I'm going to get to sit at a desk, only people who don't have uh, degrees that actually give you skills, get to sit at desks. And then the engineers and the doctors and all those other people, they go make real money. The people that sit at desks are kind of in that in-between, you can work up your ladder, but like you go get a job in it.

You're going to be out in the field, in the dirt, just as often as you're going to be in some disgusting attic or some basement or some room that nobody's touched for 20 years. So there's a lot of jobs that pay well, do not actually have you at a desk looking at a computer all day.

Austin: [00:32:51] there's nothing shameful about that. I want to emphasize that, like I have been covered in WD 40 and muck, and I have to think this is what my degree got me. And it's, so fortunate that I was in that kind of a position where I am surrounded by people with work ethic that is, miles above my own.

They show up and they do this 360 days a week or a year. I'm sure it feels like 360 days a week to some of these people who are roughnecks or technicians or welders or programmers or truck drivers or forklift operators or pallet manufacturers. Like the supply chain management is its own incredibly unique world.

And if you are a podcast listener and you don't have a pedigree or an associate's degree, or, bachelor's in anything. Understand that this still applies to you. You are also contributing. Everybody has to do something. If you are tolerating what you are doing now, or you don't think that there's another bigger Lily pad that you can immediately get to it's okay.

It's okay to be discontent, but progressing in your life.

Andrew: [00:33:59] I like it. I've got another question for you, but before I get to it, one of the things that you're talking about, just to clarify, essentially, you're trading, you're trading that lifestyle. You talked about where it's hot pockets and concerts and playing your guitar or your bass what you're doing is you're trading that for freedom because you could pursue that.

But if it doesn't work out, you're limited on, where you're at, when you started, what you're doing is taking and what we're all doing. You take this Avenue and you say, Hey, I can get money here. And yeah, I can do my writing, my punk rock, whatever it is on the side. But also you can do everything else.

You can go and play. How many ever D and D campaign, like what are you up to? I'm sure you're slowed down now, but I know there's a hot minute there. You're playing a lot of D and D.

Austin: [00:34:45] I was, that was during the unemployed years and I am a damn good dungeon master. I was playing a lot of D and D and that's one of the other elements that I wanted to include in this is that I, I have so many interests and I had a friend over last night, we got pizza and I kind of told them I'm going to be on this podcast, but I don't know exactly what to say, because I want to emphasize, I have all these interests.

And right now I am a master of none of them. And he used the old adage about the Jack of all trades master of none thing, but it's, you can have. A dozen interests. You can be a writer, a long boarder and ultimate Frisbee player. You can go bouldering, you can play guitar. You can do stand up, slam poetry, standup comedy, stand up, poetry, slam comedy, whatever you like, but you're not going to be able to push all of those in parallel.

So you really need to choose what you're doing. What I am doing right now is trying to get three apartments worth and two inheritances of stuff out of my home. Like I am looking at stuff that I've been carrying around, just baggage that I've carried around from. What a rent house, two apartments, moving back to my bed and moving back in with my parents, because I am not a golden child.

This is not an easy road two storage units. And now it's sitting in boxes all throughout my house and I've lived in this house for two years. So that is my hobby now is trying to cut ties with things, to get onto other items after this is going to be leather working after that is going to be pipe making after that is going to be home renovation and home repair.

But if I try to do all together, nothing will get done.

Because I know you and I get to pull stuff out of thin air because, that's benefit here.

Andrew: [00:36:38] You have a sort of say technique called the 14th hour, and I think it kind of goes hand in hand with this.

Austin: [00:36:45] Yeah. All right. So it is Sunday. Tomorrow's Monday as it tends to follow. I want you to pre-build what your day is going to be. So if you have a typical, we're going to run the gamut of an eight to five You're going to have to show up at seven 40 to get prepared for the eight o'clock Workday. If you have a 20, 30 minute commute, that means you need to be ready between seven and seven 20.

If you're going to wake up, have a small cup of coffee and some breakfast cereal, do pushups, have water, brush your teeth. All of that. You're going to wake up at six to six 30. So that's our starting time is six o'clock. The 14th hour from the beginning of your day will be 8:00 PM. After the 14th hour in my mind is when you run out of gas, it's an eight hour Workday, right?

And we get an hour for lunch, so that's nine hours, but then you have all the preparation before and after that's 11 hours. So. Skipping everything else that has to be written in of, am I going to get groceries? Am I going to cook food? Am I going to walk the dog? Am I going to put the kids to bed? Am I going to watch TV with my spouse or my significant other?

Am I going to remember to send that birthday card? Am I going to call my grandmother? And that's, that's everything that has to get chopped up like small grains of rice and fit somewhere after the 14th hour or after that 12 hour period, you have two hours left in your day. What do you want to spend that on?

For me? I could be spending two hours, pulling hard drives from all of my dad's old laptops. I'm ripping those out and converting the files so I can get rid of all these spare electronics that are sitting around. I could spend two hours trying to cut down boxes, go through memory books.

So if you have two hours between the 12 hours of work and life and the 14th hour, which is whenever you frankly just run out of gas, Five days a week, 10 hours. What do you want to put 10 hours to what hobby? What pursuit? So, Andrew, if I told you that this next week you have 10 hours to invest in something you're going to get 10 hours worth of better at a task or a hobby or a project.

And Daniel, you answered this too. What do y'all want it to be 10 hours of dedicated practice of deep work? What's it going to be

Andrew: [00:38:52] You asked that because actually right before we started recording, I was at the coffee shop, writing out my week and you're right. I, my cutoff for planning was the 14th hour, eight o'clock I'm giving myself an hour in the morning and then roughly an hour and a half after work.

So I was ready for this question without even knowing we're going to go down this path.

Austin: [00:39:11] good. Now, whenever you do this, I really want you to make sure that you're racking up those hours. I, I trust that both of you. I mean, y'all are 50 episodes into this podcast, 50 plus

Andrew: [00:39:22] No, I think we're at, this is episode number 26,

Austin: [00:39:25] okay. I heard 50 earlier. I counted 26 also. Actually I wanted to get the benefit of the doubt.

So you,

you have 26 hours that have been discussed of how to live your life with productivity, with attention, with dedication, with the idea that you're going to be dead by tomorrow. So I trust that you can do this, but also really make sure you hold your nose to the grindstone on that.

Now, 10 hours, Daniel. What's it going to

Daniel: [00:39:48] Yeah. So I feel like. I cheat a little bit in that I get to use some of my work hours, my work time to pursue some of the things that wanting to do. So, podcasting, that's definitely a part of it. I just recently wrapped up a kind of consumer experience program thing. So like a lot of it just comes down to, trying to learn new things, trying to grow.

And I have the chance to do some of that during my work hours as well. what, that means for me is that kind of 14th hour, that, that 10 hours, a lot of times, I'm trying to be intentional about using that within relationships. And so that could be you know, just really spending time with my wife and my daughter spending extra time there, spending time with neighbors down the street, spending time with friends and doing things.

Where it's not just, go into you together, go and see a movie, but it's like, Hey, like I've got time to come, help you tear down your kitchen or build your deck and doing some of that. So it's investing in relationships in a more intentional way so that those things are there for the long-term and there's a depth to them that goes beyond just, yeah.

We like to watch basketball together and play video games together. No, there's, there's more depth to it. So that's been a lot of my approach is just really being intentional about the people in my life and trying to get more depth. They're trying to get to know them and let them get to know me and, and experience things together.

Yeah.

Austin: [00:41:17] Daniel that is, that is upsetting how ingenious and like emotionally accurate the how poignant that is. Yeah.

Andrew and I get really excited because, you know, I expected Andrew to be like, I'm going to spend five of those 10 hours that I get during, you know, applying the 12 to 14 hour rule. I'm going to go into the backyard and throw knives for 10 hours, or, you know, I'm going to say, I'm going to work on my Renaissance fair costume, but there's, there's so many things that don't just have to be life doesn't have to be a crafting game.

Cause you're, you're going to forget about the belt that I made, but if you have a really good neighbor or, you know, a family member that you're able to actually go over and cook dinner with or something, or. Yeah. Okay.

let me get my to-do list. I have some, some edits to make.

Daniel: [00:42:00] so let, let me, let me give some advice on that. I love stacking things together and so. I like the, the ultimate to me is if I can kill two or three birds with one stone and sorry, I know you love birds, so maybe we should say, say something else there.

Austin: [00:42:17] you, you opened this can of worms now. Lie in it.

Daniel: [00:42:19] But I love getting the chance to work on one of those crafting things with somebody else, so that you're getting the benefit on both sides of things. So that's going back to like helping with home projects. I love telling friends, like, yes, I would love to come help you because we get the chance to spend time together.

And I get the chance to see, Oh, like that's how you build this thing. Or that's how you take this thing apart and you get to do it with somebody else. And I personally have a friend who's an amazing craftsmen and I love helping them with projects because I see how somebody who's really good at it, does it.

We get to do it in their house and then I can go back and like, Try to do it in my house. It's never quite as good, but it's always

Austin: [00:42:59] Yeah,

you get to go to class for a subject matter that you really love. tell me about this friend and what is the, the craft? Is it woodworking?

Daniel: [00:43:07] Yeah. So, so his name is Tim and he is excellent at woodworking. he's built all sorts of furniture. He recently built their cabinets and countertops and yeah, he's fantastic of work woodworking. He also has taught me how to fly fish. He's one of these people that's just kind of good at a lot of things.

So I love doing stuff with Tim because I feel like, yeah, like you said, it's going to class.

Austin: [00:43:32] Now, let me ask you, Tim is not 33. Is he?

Daniel: [00:43:36] I think he probably just turned 30.

Austin: [00:43:38] what?

Daniel: [00:43:40] Yeah, yeah. Yup. Yup.

Andrew: [00:43:46] Hey comparison is the thief of joy. Don't don't let it get to you also. He's incredibly Hampson so, you know

Austin: [00:43:53] handsome and winsome. Oh no, dude. I, I can't even fold a fitted sheet like, and he's got fly fishing and woodworking down can I rent for woodworking for a minute?

It is the most enviable passion to be able to take something and turn it into an actual product.

but, and it's a big, but the amount of. Square footage that everything takes to be able to do. This is so demanding. There is a guy down the street around the corner who I've been meaning to bring a six pack to, and just being like, can you show me something? He's got this garage that's dedicated to woodworking, which I don't know if you know this, but garages can be dedicated to two things, either stuff or woodworking because you need a table saw, you need a miter saw you need a space for a router.

You maybe need a drill press. If you're getting really fancy. If you're going to be, you know, delicious about it, you're going to get a planer then the wood. So unless you are building like Beverly Hills bird houses, this kind of demands a lot of space.

Daniel: [00:44:50] Yeah, it does. I've, I've got the, the miter saw in work bench sort of set up, but that's about as far as I've gotten, I kind of take the approach of, I will try to start a project where I need one or two more tools to do that project. And that's how I slowly amassed my tools.

Austin: [00:45:07] Yeah, sexy shelves. That's all I want just sexy shelves.

Daniel: [00:45:12] Hey, and you can do that with the, you can do that with a miter saw.

Austin: [00:45:17] Yeah. Now what is, what is Tim set up like, Andrew, you have to sit on the background with this because I don't know if you have woodworking your experience.

Andrew: [00:45:24] Excuse me. I have, I have done things with wood that would make women blush

Austin: [00:45:29] We went on a

camping trip and uh, Andrew brought throwing axes. So ladies, if you want to blush it a man with a buzz cut. Lord of the rings tattoos and throwing axes. I know a man. I know a guy for you.

Andrew: [00:45:42] Why does this podcast always turn on me?

Austin: [00:45:47] So what is, what is Tim's would set up look like.

Daniel: [00:45:50] All right. So When Tim and I first started. Kind of hanging out again. And I saw some of the stuff he was working on, they, him and his wife lived in an apartment and they just rented one of the, like little, it's like a one-car garage.

You could rent at the apartment. And so he rented that out and had all of his stuff built into sort of that garage on tables with, you know, you could roll it out. And like, like a modular type approach to things. So that it maximized the space and he was able to really do a lot of that stuff in, in a lot of the tools that you mentioned had him definitely had them in there.

It wasn't as easy as, okay. I'm going to got my table saw I'm gonna run this through and then pop over to my Microsoft. And like, you know, it's all of a sudden go. It's like, you got to move some stuff around and plug some stuff in, but. that was still doable. Now at this point, you know, he's had the chance to go out, to, to walk the Hatchie to Texas where there's a lot of space and a like big old shop.

That's

that's the way to describe it.

Austin: [00:46:48] uh,

Daniel: [00:46:49] shop. Yes.

Yeah.

has definitely grown that to be more of what you would picture now, but early on, it was not like this gigantic wood shop. It was something where he had a passion for it. And part of Tim's cheap code is I know his dad is pretty crafty as well, so there's that history there, but he knew he had this passion for it and found a way to make it work in a situation where otherwise somebody might be like, ah, maybe someday I'll put it off to when I buy a big old house with a big old garage.

Austin: [00:47:26] So I want to segue from exactly what you just said into the, crux of my point earlier of maybe someday Tim picked as now. I'm sure Tim has is a very multifaceted man, but it seems that he had a hobby or a craft or a passion that he nurtured. He put 10 hours a week, every weekend to his 14th hour. Was it divided between a sourdough starting kits and acrylic sunglass making or box top collection from cereals?

It seems like he had a passion that he knew right off was going to be woodworking and he has dumped so many hours into it that by gosh, you know, and, and darn the man, he's just really good at it.

Daniel: [00:48:11] Yeah, that's completely completely true. And I think a lot of it is uh, something Andrew and I have talked about before, which is just paying attention to all the little minutes that we spend on things like social media and watching TV shows and like doing all of these sorts of things. And when you're passionate about something, you love something you, you scheme and you find ways get the little minutes to go and do it to where, may not just be your, your 13th and 14th hour, but you may be able to squeeze in a few extra as well.

Austin: [00:48:42] Yeah. A seven minute instructional video from YouTube will help during

your lunch break.

Andrew: [00:48:48] Just have a little learning where you're picking up pieces, just, Oh, Hey, here's a, literally a 10 minute video on YouTube. It costs you no time. We waste 10 minutes and you watch that every day. And now you're an hour deep in a lesson instead of paying a $500 a semester for that hour, you're getting it for free on your lunch break.

Austin: [00:49:04] So here's, here's a lesson in home construction that I learned have y'all heard of fire blocks in home. Do y'all know what a fire block is?

Andrew: [00:49:11] Yeah. If the house catches on fire um, it stops the fire from spreading to the other side of the house. So to say,

Austin: [00:49:17] Yeah. Now what is a fire block? Like how would you physically describe it and where it is?

Andrew: [00:49:21] To me, a son of a gun that prevents me from morning wires sometimes, but I it's usually in the middle of the house that made it a concrete and a mix of sand. I think.

Austin: [00:49:32] yep. So mine were like two inch seat or two by fours that were very difficult to drill through. And I didn't know, there were so many of them in an exterior wall, but my intention was just to casually run an HTMI cable from the, you know, where the projector hooks up down to where the Xbox sits on the floor.

so, so now I have a large painting hanging out in my media room because it has to cover the three shabby drywall patches that I did learning about how fire blocks are spaced. So folks at home, if you have a hobby, get those small questions because you might, I might've been able to YouTube. Oh, there were fire blocks in an exterior home built between 1960 and 1984.

That's hard to get an HTMI cable through

Andrew: [00:50:15] cable drops are, are no joke sometimes.

Austin: [00:50:18] no, they are not.

Andrew: [00:50:26] Let me pivot you a little bit real quick. We like to wrap up at the end with stories. So if you have a story, there are any stories that you want to embarrass us with.

Tell about your life. Interesting moments, anything like that.

Austin: [00:50:38] I want to thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I listened to some of the other guests that you had on, and I know you had the owner of Roxana T and his experiences being a military advisor. And one of the stories that really caught me was the idea that T is feminine whenever he was over in Afghanistan, having tea with military leaders that were just armed to the teeth with bandoliers and banana clips and AK 40 sevens and frag grenades.

So the idea that I am on a podcast that is it with, you know, within the same vein as these giants is flattering to me. And my only point is that I, I want to represent. The little people who have no idea what they're doing. And I just want to tell you it's okay. Because once in a while, you're going to find that crossroad and you're going to see that scissor tail fly catcher that tells you you're right.

Where you need to be.

Andrew: [00:51:29] I like it and don't worry, Austin. Daniel and I are both out of our league on that too. we're with ya,

Austin: [00:51:34] I'm glad you set me up on that one. Yeah. All right. So

Andrew: [00:51:38] no, no, we're we are sincerely grateful. You're here either way. So thank you.

And Daniel's the busy one. He's the one that we actually have to make time with. I got all the time in the

track01: [00:51:45] world.

Austin: [00:51:45] So story time during w after I was laid off, I grabbed a backpack and I went across Europe. Spent six months just traveling about it was crazy among the places that I went to was Pamplona, Spain, which you might know is famous for the tomato throwing festival.

Have y'all heard of this. Okay. That wasn't happening at the time I went to y'all know what else? Pamplona Spain is famous for.

Andrew: [00:52:10] I would guess wine, but I don't know. I feel like that's not where you're going.

Austin: [00:52:14] It's it's much more violent than that. A wine. Does it break people's back and throw them 17 feet into the air? It is the running of the bulls that happens in Pamplona, Spain. Now it's so I got, I timed this just right. That me and another friend, Richie , who is kind of introverted and also an electrical engineer. And he really fits that stereotype compared to my chaotic, neutral living in a lawful good mechanical engineering world. So we go to Pamplona, Spain, and we wind up getting in with this really shabby hostel.

And they're throwing all of these you know, social gatherings. So they rent out a bar and they give us nothing but just super cheap sangria. And they feed us basically on drunken, hummingbird juice. It's just sugar and booze, but we had an unlimited pass. So it winds up being me and Richie and just a bunch of Australians hanging out in the middle of Pamplona, Spain at this bar that nobody's ever heard to.

And I don't think I could find it again if I tried, but this marching band, this high school marching band comes down the alley and they're wearing t-shirts and there's trombones and there's French horns. And there's a drum like a full, drummer trap set section. There's a kettle drum, trombones, trumpets, everything, and entire breath section comes down an alleyway of Pamplona Spain, and they start playing scum music and scum music is.

The beat that rides in my soul. Now Richie told me afterwards that he had been watching these Australians sitting on the street and they had been passing this gum wrapper back and forth and a straw. And it turns out it was a bunch of Australian 20 year olds doing cocaine and an alley of Spain. The scar band comes down, they let off and we all start dancing around and like people are spraying St.

Gloria up and down the streets there's cheering. The music is loud. Incredible. And I have just this weird Texan guy with a cowboy hat that I got off an Irishman from a French radio station and we're dancing and we're pumping and we're marching and we're like throwing elbows and spraying each other with sangria.

And at the end of it, end of the song. I am the last one, still jumping and cheering and having a great time. The band goes on, you know, I call them down from it. I reconnect with Richie and he said, dude, you just Outback a bunch of cocaine, laced, Australians in the middle of an alley. really proud of myself. So I don't know if that's, I don't know exactly what the lesson is just know that once in a while, you're going to hit that crux of whenever Scott and booze and a foreign location all comes together. And it's your time to shine. It's going to be you out there. It may not feel like it, but

Andrew: [00:54:46] I think that might be the definition of a don't mess with Texas. They just didn't realize it, you know, included dance battles.

Okay. Austin, before we wrap this up, and honestly, I was kind of hoping for a bull story in there because I, I was convinced that the parade was actually leading the bull charge, but

Austin: [00:55:03] I did get gored by a bull. I forgot about that, but I still chose the Australian story.

Andrew: [00:55:07] Good. So. We're trying to be better about asking about challenges. So since you're the guest, do you have a challenge for the audience?

Austin: [00:55:15] I do. I am a vehement list-maker. So sometime in the wee hours of the day, make a list either mentally or on paper. I really recommend on paper of everything that you want to do. Leather, working, learning acoustic guitar, writing letters, to your idols and all your role models woodworking, fly fishing, throwing axes, bow, and arrows, anything and everything that comes up.

And I want you to start scratching them off one by one, until you figure out what you want your top two to be. And for a month, for 30 days for four weeks, that gives you. 10 hours a week. If you abide by that 14th hour, Axiom that's 40 hours, what do you want to put a full work week into between two hobbies?

So make that list and as one famous writer or another said, kill your darlings, make a list of, or notate what you're going to sacrifice in order to have to have your hobbies or your crafts or your passions. Get the chance to bloom.

Andrew: [00:56:19] that is beautifully said,

well, guys, Austin did a great job here, so I don't really have anything else to add to that. Let's see what you guys can do with that challenge. I know I'm going to be taking it up. Hopefully Daniel will look at it. If he's, you know, he doesn't want to keep showing us up on what he's already doing.

So thank you guys for listening, Austin. Sincerely, thank you for giving Daniel and I some of your time. I know you're a busy guy, we're really happy you came on. We're really happy. Everybody tuned in. enjoy your day. And until next time we look forward to connecting with you all soon.

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