Transcript of my Talk with Jacob
All right. So I'm happy to have my friend Jacob join me today. Jacob and I have known each other, what? It's been about a year. Two years, close to two years now? We met at Hallmark. Um, Jacob works in IT with me at Hallmark. So, Jacob's been really helping me figure out how to get some podcast stuff. Microphone. He's been texting me all the sorts of stuff to look at. But you have not done a podcast?
No, I'm an avid consumer of podcasts. Um, but other than, you know, I've been into music for a while and did some recording in a band when I was younger and stuff like that, but not a podcast.
What did you do in the band?
I played the drums.
You still play the drums?
Occasionally. We just moved into a place that's actually big enough to put drums up in, not break our lease.
So you keep up with and all that.
Yeah. I mean, I'm not a, you know, professionally trained player or anything. But I really enjoy it. So that's, um, you know kind of a hobby side of things.
Yeah, so if you if you've done podcasts then this should be the best podcast I've done right, because I have no idea what I'm doing. I, basically, just sit around. We're not drinking today, but, you know, usually just sit around with my friends and bullshit and see what happens.
That's when you get a lot of good content, though, Alexs.
Yeah, you know, some of the conversations they have all been good, but there's just been moments in each of them when you know my friends who I hang out with, talking with and just sort of live life. There have been these moments when they asked me these questions that were really… that make me think about my life in a different way, you know? And so it's been, um, it has been much better and a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I just sort of on a whim, decided to do these and then I don't know where they're really…they've been really good, really good for me to think about the book and about my life.
So yeah, I think I don't know if it's a unique perspective, but at least a different perspective that I have of you because, you know, I know Office Alexs and Suburban Alexs. You know, uh, two years of Alexs usually in an office setting. So I don't know. You know, we've talked a little bit about your previous work experience and some things like that. But we really haven't dug into the details or had extended talks about either one of our pasts and I’m coming in pretty fresh to the book as well. I know that you've been writing it and working on it, but I haven't read any of it, so yeah, no, it'll be interesting.
Jacob, I don't know if you wanna tell us any more about you.
I've been at Hallmark about four years working in IT. For about four or five years. I'm still pretty new in the career space. But, I've been kind of building relationships with Alexs and people like Alexs in the mentor space and I'd consider you a thought leader. You know, you're not afraid to take a stand and push for new things or things that need to be done. And surrounding yourself with people like that, I think is really important if you're wanting to make change.
Yeah, I mean, for me, you know, working at Hallmark has been such a great experience. And, you know, one of things that I write about in my book is meeting young people who embark on a new career or a new adventure. And in the book, I wrote specifically about young marines who barely graduate high school…and, for example, when I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, they take on this challenge and they say, “Yeah, I'm from…I don't know where…a little small town in the middle of nowhere. I never thought I would get out of my small town.” And when they wind up on the dusty streets of some town in Fallujah or in Helmand province, they attack it. They get after it right there, like I know what my job is, and I'm gonna excel at it. And rather than just, you know, hopping in their trucks and driving around and doing what they're told. You know, they try to learn the language. They tried to learn the culture.
Um, and obviously it's a very different environment. But I've seen the same thing at Hallmark. You know, I see people who are trying to embark on a new career or trying new challenges or look for new ways to live out their dream. You know? And when we first met, Jacob, there were a few people at Hallmark who were like, “Oh, you gotta meet Jacob. He's really working his way up in IT, trying to challenge himself.” So that was, you know, for me, sort of the first encounter with you, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, And it's been a journey for me, you know, as far as career wise. I've spent four years at Hallmark. I was at UPS previously, it was a great experience, but, you know, it was all about production value…a replaceable cog in a machine, you know, “results, results results”. Then I came into Hallmark, in air quotes the “Caring Company”. They have a caring culture. It was a 180-degree shift and I had to adjust to that for sure. But there's still the trappings of corporate culture, and there's a way to navigate that. So I've been really thankful for people like you, Alexs, and others to help me kind of learn how to navigate that.
Yeah, I mean, it also invigorates me when I see people like you, Jacob, who are working their hardest to bring about change. You know, it's so… like you said…it’s like that anywhere. There are the trappings of corporate culture and lots of people are trying to figure out how to get ahead, get promotions, get raises. And the temptation is to just fall in line, right? The temptation is to say, “Well, I know this leader likes this or that person. This VP wants things done that way, So I better just do what they say and think like they think. And everybody has to do that in some way. But you have to find a way to really, um, you know, I guess the way I would say it is identify what the right thing is and stand up for it.
And you have to, you know, find a way to talk about it so you don't alienate people, but to figure out what's the right thing to do and then stand up for it.
I agree Alexs, and that applies to people, culture, technologies, all of the above.
So, yeah, it's been a theme throughout my life: I wanted to say struggling, but really identifying the things that matter for me and not being distracted by what's going on in the world around me. To keep moving in that direction. Like you said, we've talked a little bit about my life and your life, so this will be an interesting conversation to really sort of dig into it.
So, I'm interested… looking at the clock, but not to put you under pressure, but I'd be interested in a 10 minute Alexs history lesson.
Sure, Alexs 10 minute history lesson. I'm gonna look at the clock and see what it says. Yeah, um, so I tend to really describe my life chronologically and the reason is that the moments of my life really build on themselves. And so, you know, my earliest memories, like complete memories, revolve around growing up in a house with my mom and my step dad and feeling like the world was against me. It was a really terrible way to live and to grow up. I didn't understand that I was supposed to feel loved and safe at home. I felt completely out of place, like a misfit. I felt like there was a world out there that existed, and in that world there was, love and happiness and security. And I did not have access to it at all. And so that created a couple of really important components to my personality and probably the first thing that it created within me was this fight. This undying, unwavering commitment to myself.
You know, I wasn't very old when I had to realize…I was way too young when I had to realize that no one was gonna help me in this life. Even as a kid, I had to realize that if I wanted to get good grades in school…and not just tangible things like grades… or I wanted to buy the clothes that I wanted or eat the food that I wanted. But if I wanted to have the right, if I even wanted to be able to think about myself in any way that wasn't negative. I had to do that for myself. No one was gonna cuddle me. No one was gonna take me in their arms and comfort me and tell me that life was good and I was good. I had to do that all myself, you know?
So, you know, one of the most important things was I developed this fight on the other side of it. It also created this urge to run. This need to constantly push away from whatever was sort of holding me in, whatever I perceived, what's holding me. So if I was living somewhere, as a let's say, as a teenager, a 20-something… if I was living somewhere and doing something and it started to feel comfortable, you know, if I started to lose the need for that fight that had been instilled within me, then I would run. And that was running away from relationships. It was running away from places, um, challenges. Thankfully, that running away from...I ultimately learned how to turn that into drive.
Do you mean running to something to something, Alexs?
Yes, running to something. So now I would say the “running from” was really in my early twenties and the “running to” … as I started to mature a little bit and I joined the Navy. I joined the Navy, 1996 so I would have been 21. And there was a period of time when I was in the Navy where I was still running from and while I was in the Navy, I, um… you know…
I'm sort of shaking my head just because I'm putting it into this framework of running from and running to. And when I was in the Navy, I became Catholic. Right before the navy, I became Catholic, and while I was in the Navy, I found this Catholic silent monastery that I started to go to and spend a lot of time at. And we've been talking for just a few minutes now and you know and the amount of time that we've talked in this conversation is probably as much as I would have talked in half a day or three quarters of a day. We spent your days praying and working, doing chores and going to Mass etcetera. And I think that was probably around the time that I started to realize that I was running from the pain of my childhood and started to identify what I could run towards. And it really ties in with this idea of “this hero life” that I talk about.
It's probably one of the first concrete times in my life when I said, you know, when I was younger, I realized that I had to be my own protector. I had to be my own support system and that sustained me. But there came a point where it started to propel me forward. I stopped needing to support myself and love myself in order just exist, and to stay alive and not kill myself. It went from just sustainment to propelling forward, you know, And so, um, partially through when I was in the Navy, like I said, I went to this monastery and I started to really reach outside of myself. Then I got out of the Navy after four years and I went to grad school and I really started to excel in my grades and I was able to start thinking more clearly and in more complex ways about who I wanted to be and the life I want to live. And I thought about becoming a university professor.
And then 9/11 happened. And 9/11 is one of the most important watershed moments of my life. 9/11 happened, and I was dumbfounded that something like this could happen in the U.S. Like a lot of Americans, I was just not very well educated about the Middle East. And so, I immediately started asking myself, “Who did this? Why did they do this?” In the book, I wrote about how this thought kept going through my head, which is, “who are they? Who are these people who would do such a thing”? And I had no idea. I couldn’t have point to Saudi Arabia or Yemen or anything like that on a map if somebody handed it to me.
And, so Alexs, were you thinking it was an individual or a culture?
At that point, it was an individual. I could only imagine that there were specific people. I didn't know anything about Islam, fundamentalists, or anything like that. You know, I was just like, there must be some crazy people. And so, 9/11 happened, and I, on a dime changed my entire life. I was in graduate school in Boulder and I was studying Buddhism and international politics. Immediately I changed and I started studying Arabic and Islamic studies and one of my friends said when I was in graduate school … about a year later we ran into each other and he said, “I couldn't believe how quickly you changed. The very next day you were carrying around an Arabic vocabulary book! He said, “you carried it every day.”
And that's another theme of my life: it's an example of that change from the “running from” migrating to the “running to”. And so rather, in that moment I started running towards my new future I created this new hero of my life, which was me. And that hero could solve US Middle Eastern policy.
Yeah, no small undertaking, Alexs.
Not a small undertaking. It was full hardy. But it was exactly who I am. It was the exact thing that I needed to do, and there was no turning back. And so, um, obviously that was 2001. By 2003 I was in the Middle East for the first time, and from then on, I was back and forth to the Middle East until 2014. I lived with and searched for Muslim fundamentalists all over the Middle East. I was very successful at it. I was in Syria. I was in Yemen. I was in Egypt. Jordan, all over the Persian Gulf, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Dubai. In taxis, on motorcycles, walking in the desert, sleeping on the beach. Just wherever I could find Muslim fundamentalist. I lived with them in order to understand 9/11.
And in the book, I talk a lot about how there were these really two important moments. There was a moment when I learned how to think like a Muslim fundamentalist even though I'm not Muslim. I spent so much time memorizing the Qur’an and memorizing religious law that I could recite it off the top of my head. I could have conversations and just repeat it and recite it. And in those moments, it stopped being an academic pursuit. It was just part of my life, spending so much time in the Middle East, I wasn't really listening to music. I wasn't going to watch movies. I was studying the Qur’an, memorizing the Qur’an. And so that was one moment: when I started to think like a Muslim fundamentalist.
And then there was another moment, some years later, when I was living in Oman, in the Gulf and I was wearing the traditional garb. I was living with, devout conservative Muslims. I was praying in the mosque as an observer. I wasn't Muslims still, but I was trying to understand how they did the movements and why they did them. I was fasting Ramadan, you know, so I wasn't eating anything, drinking water or anything, you know, for the month of Ramadan during the day. And in that moment I felt like I did it. I didn’t just think like a Muslim fundamentalist. I acted like one, and it was like my entire life. And it was almost like it was a moment when I realized that dream that I had in in 2001. This dream of understanding who “they” were. And so soon thereafter, when I had this what I would call a really important transformation, I got a call from a civilian consulting firm to go work with the military.
And then I spent, you know, time working and living in Iraq and Afghanistan, Central and East Africa. And for about 13 years, I was obsessed, completely obsessed with the Middle East and spent most all of my time there, most all of my time in the Middle East. And then in 2014 I grew severely depressed. It was sort of like a cumulative trauma, you know, lots of bad stuff happened in Iraq. Lots of bad stuff happened in Afghanistan that I never really processed. And so after that long period of time, I couldn't take it anymore. And I came back. I was living in D.C at the time. That's where my permanent house was.
And when I came back, I said, I need to settle down. I made three promises to myself: one was I'm never going back to the Middle East, two: I'm gonna finish my dissertation, get my PhD and three: I said I needed to settle down. Thank God, not long after that, I met Jeremy. We met online and that started the next chapter of my life. And then in 2015 um, I said Jeremy and I met. And then, some time after that, I moved to Kansas City and started working at Hallmark.
So that's close to the 10 minutes.
Thanks, Alexs. I want to talk more about this transition from Middle East to IT, but first, I just want to make some observations that are really interesting that I could tie parallels to from my life. It seems that your life, or at least the major points of your life tend to be pretty cyclic.
What do you mean by that?
So you know, you say you're running to and from but it also seems to me that there's an element of chaos or unstructured and moving towards a structured environment. This may be just a generalization: your childhood at first, then moving into the military. A lot of structure in the military. And in your childhood moving into religion. Once you're done with the military, you move into the structured environment of graduate studies. Then after that, you move into I guess you could say more religious structure as well. But just having a mission structure, And then once you've accomplished that mission, or at least had that personal transformation, you say, “What's next?”
You say you're gonna settle town. That's more structure. You end up with a partner that seems pretty structured. And that's personally something I've noticed in myself as well. I wouldn't draw direct lines between our upbringing, but there was a lot of chaos in my childhood and shifting and moving and in order for me to succeed, I've noticed that I have to build structure for myself. I live from a calendar. My wife is very structured and I thank her for that all the time. I don't say it enough, but, umm surrounding and building this structure around yourself, it's almost like an armor.
It is. It is, Jacob. You know, it's something I have thought about before. I don't know that I've put all the pieces together like you have, you know, And I think part of the cycle for me has been relying less and less on external structures, so I think you're right.
You know, when I was younger, obviously my childhood there was so much chaos in my life. And kids need structure in some ways, at least, you know. And so, the military helped me get that. And I think as I went through my life, the structure stopped being really important, externally, and I had to internalize that somehow, you know, because it's easy to get addicted to the chaos as a way of avoiding life in some ways. And so that's probably the phase of my life now is, “How doe I internalize this if I want to settle down?”
You know, one of things I write about in the book is how I didn't know what it meant when I said I needed to settle down. I didn't know exactly what that would mean. You know, I figured part of it would be a 9 to 5 job, you know. But other than that, I don't think I really got it. And you know, the more I've been here in Kansas City, the more I've developed a relationship with Jeremy, probably the more I understand the value of it. But also, the enormity of the task hits me. You know, when I first moved here Jeremy and I used to sort of laugh because it's like if I had known what I was getting myself into, I might not have moved here. I may not have moved because I'd never been in a long, any long-term relationship, you know, and it's hard work, you know. It's obviously worth it, especially for me. For someone who has been single most of his life and traveled the world doing basically whatever I wanted, you know that chaos is really comfortable you know, and not knowing exactly the benefit of putting down that chaos is scary.
Yep. Yep, that’s right, Alexs. And I mean, that chaos could be benefit too. I think you learn a lot like you said earlier. You learn a lot; you learn how to deal with high pressure situations and remain calm in situations where others may not. You know, just logically prioritize actions that need to be taken in situations instead of thinking and feeling; about exactly how to to compartmentalize your logical decisions and your feeling decisions. That could be really useful, especially in a corporate environment. But it does have some bite, because when you're in a relationship with somebody and you start logically prioritizing things or not thinking about how a decision would impact somebody else because you're being very logical. The outcome doesn't tend to work out too well.
Yeah, Jacob. You know, and for me, I think of things in very stark terms, like, this is the right thing to do. You know, it could be whether we should go to this restaurant or that restaurant; like, no, that's the wrong thing to do. And this is the right thing that because I'm so used to needing to be decisive in moments and to completely ignore emotions. And for me, it hasn't just been a desire to avoid emotion, it's been a need. Because, growing up, I don't know if it was the same for you, but succumbing to the emotions that were going on inside of me would have been death.
In the worst case, it would have been death. I would have succumbed to my own internal self-doubt, etcetera.
It's a spiral, and if you get caught up in it, you don't get out of it. And so that ignoring of emotions has been a defense mechanism. A vital defense mechanism
Right, Alexs. To the point where, I don't know if it's the same with you, but I have to think of it like a switch or a lever; I have to turn it on. The norm is not deal with that and then when you're having those heart-to-heart conversations or whatever… it's gotten better over the year…but having to consciously make the decision to be, you know…“Okay, this is a time to actually have emotions” to have a stake in the conversation.
Yeah, yeah, and it's not easy. Like I said, I think it's tough because part of me wants to say, If I had known what I was getting myself into it, I wouldn't have moved to Kansas City. But there's another part of me that has always known that the constant moving around from place to place was not sustainable for me. You know, there was something more out of life that I wanted.
Yeah, that’s right, Alexs. And maybe I’m getting a little too deep here. But even being… I don't know, I'd call myself relatively young 27.
Yes, you are.
I’m having some of those existential thoughts about, like, what is my impact on the world and what really is valuable? You know, thinking long term, not just, um, you know, 25 years, 100 years, talk about thousands of years. It's really the relationships. And I think that's that the most valuable portion of our lives. That's the most difficult portion of our lives. And it's definitely gonna be the most challenging part of our lives. And I think it's interesting that you've kind of landed on that as your next challenge. Um, and, uh, you know, I'd be interested to see what you think: are you ever gonna be comfortable settled down? But that's just part of the ongoing challenge. I think it is.
You know, I want to answer that question about being comfortable settled down, but you know, one of the other things that you said was about the kind of the difference that we make, right? And so, I told you I made these three promises or sort of ultimatums to myself, and I think the reason I was able to do that is because I had exhausted my need to…I'm gonna say it this way, and then I want to explain it. I exhausted my need to have the impact on the world that I wanted. So when 9/11 happened, I was like, I have to change the world and in some ways I did. Quite honestly, there are ways that I had an impact on US foreign policy: specific Iraqis or Afghans or people in various African countries. And had an impact on how they thought about me as a person or how they thought about the United States or our policy or how we implemented policy in places.
So, there was there was a… what would you call it…there was a terminus to the need to have global impact.
My question, Alexs, is: Was it a run out of steam or was it fulfilled the need?
Great, question, Jacob, and that's why I think I've been really choosing my words carefully because it's a combination of both. I think there's a part of it where there's a bunch of stories in the book where I talk about I had an experience, which is a real experience that I had dreamed about for years: someone rushes into my office and says, “Hey, we need somebody who understands religion and who understands fundamentalist Muslims!” And we hop into a Humvee and we drive out into the middle of the dusty roads of Fallujah.
And so those moments or…you know, I was sitting in Baghdad International Airport and these young… younger than you…22/23 year old Marines who are living out in the middle of nowhere. They don't have running water, they don't have electricity they’re eating out of bags, you know, and they run up to me and they say, “Hey, we remember you. You came and talked to us about gender roles in Islam, or you talked to us about fasting. You know, we were able to use that when we were interacting with our tribal leaders!” So I've had those moments when the thing that I dreamed about doing and being, I was doing and being that. That's the part of it where I fulfilled my mission.
But there's another part of it where…you said ran out of steam. And I think I think that's probably an accurate phrase. I would I would think of it for me that I was getting closer and closer to creating the self that I wanted to live for the long term. And so that self that needed to fix US Middle East policy transformed in some way. But I don't want to take away from the fact that I was spent. Yeah, I was spent emotionally, psychologically.
Maybe it's ….running out of steam isn't the best term, Alexs. Because I guess it's kind of one of those things where you really…Maybe it's…I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but maybe it's that you realize that it's an unending mission. It is going to continue. I don't know if there is a terminus for that mission.
Yeah, I mean for, you know, for the policy side of it, there is no end, right? It is something that will continue, and there will be generations after me who take on that mantle to solve that problem, right? But as we talk about it, and I haven't really thought about it in this way in particular, but it's like I said, there was a transformation inside of me that I was not conscious of. Part of the impetus for that transformation was suffering through trauma, right? And so, you know, in Iraq, I lost a dear friend of mine, Um, and, you know, experienced all sorts of things in Afghanistan and other places, and that had an impact on me, which again was subconscious. So that's probably one thing.
There's another part of it where I saw other people who were on the same path that I was, but five or 10 years ahead of me. They had been doing it for longer than I had been doing. And I never met someone who was full of joy and happiness and was creating the kinds of relationships that I wanted to be creating. And so, I'm sure those people existed. I just never met them. Someone who had been at that, you know, for a long as I had, you know, a decade 12-15 years really focused on the Middle East. I didn't meet anybody who was full of joy. As I would say. It's someone who was being the hero of their narrative, who was directing their lives explicitly. Most of the people who I had met who had been doing it that long were bitter, disenfranchised and compensating for that disconnectedness by focusing on money.
That’s right, Alexs. Because money is tangible, it's an achievement that you can make. It’s a number that you can aim for. A shift in cultural expectations or religion is not. It's not a defined point, you know?
Yeah. And even on that side of it, I felt like most people were delusional, you know. Most of the people who were doing the work that I was doing, you know, there were people making a lot more money than me. And I looked at them and I said, You should be retired by now. If you've been doing this for 10 years and you're making more, you know, all this money, you should be retired. You should have the house you need; the car you need. You know, education should be paid for, etcetera, etcetera, and you should be home, you know.
And I think underneath the surface of all of this is a really good conversation, because I think it is something that I've kind of thought about, but I have not really put it into words. Um, but, you know, I met all these people who were not putting it all together for their good, their family’s good. And I was like, I don't wanna live that way. And thank God…this is not something I've ever said…but thank God there was this trigger inside of me that refused to keep going. I'm thinking in my head…I have this image of somebody trying to walk a dog down the street and in this case, it would be like the dog senses danger at the end of the block. And the dog just lays down. He's got his paws spread out, you know, and the owners trying to drag him down the street. And that's basically what it was for me. My conscious self was like, “No, we're doing this. We're gonna keep doing this. We're gonna keep making money. We're gonna keep working in the Middle East.”
But, you know, like I said, it was 2014 and I was in Bahrain living what should have been my best life. I had a great job making decent money. The place where I lived had a rooftop pool and Ihad friends over. I played rugby. I had lots of friends. Even though I was in Middle East, it wasn't a combat zone. But every day I would go home and I would sit in the dark and turn the lights off. I wouldn't eat. I would just sit there all night and…
Sometimes I describe myself as a dog with a bone. Like I have a mission in life. I have a goal, something I want to accomplish, and no one can knock me off of it. And it was the same thing in that time period. In those moments, there was something inside of me which would not let go of the fact that I was done. That would not let me ignore the need to go back home.
So can you...do you recall the moment that that subconscious became conscious, Alexs?
Well, Yeah. I mean, it was very visceral because I was so depressed. I think the moment that matters really is when I heard it. And maybe that's what you mean about when it became conscious. I mean, when I noticed it was when I couldn't…I was still going to work, but I couldn't force myself to spend time with friends or go out or anything like that. But the moment it became really unavoidable was there was a voice. I don't know how far into this Depression it was, but there was a voice that said, “Go home”. Now, normally my internal voice is like a drill instructor. You know, it's like, “Get off your ass!”, “Let's go!” Like if I'm riding my bike or on the rowing machine or in the gym or something like that, there is the voice of let's move faster. You know, it's loud, it's obnoxious.
But the voice in 2014 was very quiet and very, powerful and said, “Go home”. First of all, it was so different from my normal internal voice which is always motivated and always pushing me to move faster and to do or lift more heavy things. I mean that voice, it was so different from that. But it was also so assured and assuring and comforting that the moment … It wasn’t that I heard it for days and days and days before I finally…it was like the moment that calm, serene, comforting voice emerged in that darkness I knew right away. And in that moment I changed the course of my life again.
So was it similar to what occurred on September 11th, 2001. Except it was internal?
Yeah, you know it. There are a number of moments in my life. One of the experiences that I talk about and it's a transition from being really “running from” and “running to” is there was another period of my life when I was, um, depressed, and I didn't know why. I was very religious. I was Protestant. I was in a Baptist undergraduate college studying to be a minister. And, you know, looking back, it's no surprise that I suffered with depression through various periods of my life, but in that moment I didn't understand it. You know, in that moment, just like when I was in Bahrain, I was oblivious to the deep impact of how I grew up.
Obviously, I knew I had a terrible upbringing, but because I was already starting to build this hero image of myself. And I had already figured out that I had to save myself from my own Hell, I pushed … like lots of people just pushed that all into my subconscious. And there was a moment I was in Wisconsin and I was at a friend's church. It was empty. I was just there praying by myself and like, you know, it was like a scene from the Old Testament or something like that. I'm laying on the floor. I've got my hands spread out. I've got my head buried into the carpet and I'm just praying to God, you know? And I'm like heal me from this sadness That's, you know, making me feel like I'm further away from you. God. And I heard this voice. It was external, right? It was an external voice, but it was as real as anything ever, you know. And the voice said St Francis. It created a created a reality for me. I didn't know who St Francis was. I hopped up and the voice repeated a few times. I'm like, This is really strange, you know? You know, I talked about how I believe that God talks to people, but I didn't believe he talked to me. And in that moment, this person who I probably had heard of at some point in life but didn't know anything about, you know, and so I start to go read about this person St Francis, and again transformed my life, you know?
So that's another moment where this voice reaches down and grabs me in one of my lowest moments. And what happened in Bahrain was very similar. And there are other moments in my life where things like that happen and you know, I'm not tied to how people explain it. I'm not really tied to whether people believe it's divine intervention or not. What matters is that it had a life changing impact on me and part of it was subconscious. You know, there's part of my subconscious, which is reaching out to the conscious and saying, “Get your shit together”. And it's the nicer, calmer voice right, But it's okay we can do this. We can figure this out too. This also has a solution. And those moments have been lifesaving and transformational for me.
So, Alexs, you view the… it's interesting that there are a few occurrences. that might be more of instigating major change in your life. Seems like earlier in the timeline these are external forces and, you know, more current or in Bahrain, it was, you know, you perceived it as an internal force.
Yeah, that's … you're bringing out some really good cycle sorts of things and I think that's a good observation. You know, it's moving more and more internal. And like I said, there's probably all sorts of different explanations for it, and it's probably really tied to self-awareness: my ability to own the course of my life and not needing to externalize it. Or another way of saying it: maybe I've grown deaf to the voice of God and just interpret it in psychological terms.
But like I said, no matter how you explain it, the important thing is that I've been able to hold on to this theme of I've never said this expression, but like self-salvation. The ability...and I can't stress enough the importance of this term like “this hero life”. You know the ability for all of us to conceptualize, to take that time to stop and think about where we are in our lives, so conceptualize. And then so you take that who we are and turn that into who we want to be. And we, in our minds, we create who we wanna be, and then we go about doing the things that will allow us to bring that conception into reality. And that is, if not THE, one of the most core themes in my life. And it's a really important theme in the book.
I talk a lot. I mean, again I talk a lot about not wanting to fetishize combat, you know, not wanting to be like, “Oh, I'm this badass Navy seal or Green Beret. And look how many guys I killed. Look, how many bullets I dodged and how many places I've been.” There is some of that normal combat stuff in my book explosions and death/destruction. But the point is not to glorify war. The point is to create a context that allows for a discussion about the impacts of combat and how those of us who come back struggle to reacclimate. And that there is hope that there is a way to do that and to incorporate both components of our lives, right? Being in combat and being not in combat and how we accomplish those things.
Yeah, because I mean, without glorifying combat situations, Alexs, and I've never been in a situation like that. So, you know, this is coming from, I guess, a different perspective. They're still experiences that you've been through, you know, dodging a bullet, or even in, uh, I guess non-combat life. A life-threatening situation or near-death experience? Um, those are going to shape how you live the rest of your life.
So yeah, good point, Jacob. It becomes a question of whether those experiences are the hero of your life or whether you are the hero of your life. And so many people talk about my parents did this or that to me or this or that happened to me when I was in combat. Or whatever, whoever person has done this or that thing to me, or taken something from me or given me something I didn't want. And in those moments, that thing or that person becomes the hero because we relinquish control of our ability to define who we are. Because someone else has that ability. And so shitty things happen to all of us, right? And so the answer isn't simply to identify the cause of the shiftiness. The answer is to identify the path forward to living that hero life that we conceptualized. We conceptualize this person that we wanna be. And then the task is to figure out how to accomplish that, regardless of what has been given or taken away from us.
So, Alexs, you mean your reaction to that to the shooting, or whatever?
Yeah. And also, I mean…it is definitely the reaction, but it's also the tenacity to not lose sight of that fantasy. One of the things I talk about in the book is how when I was a kid, I created this fantasy of being a hero, you know? And so, yes, it's true that we need to react to situations. Sorry. It is true that that we own our reactions to situations. That's true, I think, but more importantly than that is our ability to hold onto who we are without wavering our conception of our hero self: the best that we can be. We cannot lose sight of that based on the shit that happens in the world around us. And so it changes from, “well, I better just hold on to life, right? And I'll just react well to situations.” It converts it from that almost like reactionary, and turns it into an explosive, principled focus on how we get to be who we believe we truly are.
Thanks, Alexs. So, people like myself or veterans, and other individuals with, you know, the ability to compartmentalize some of those things are able to say “that situation sucked”. In situations where one is able to look at it like a disconnection of emotions to be able to make sure that they get what they need out of this situation. But how do you translate to individuals that may not have that skill or learning that skill or, you know, may not have had traumatic experiences in their past, you know? Is this message for them too…or how do you bridge that gap?
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, for better or worse, my story has a lot of extreme experiences, but I think the principles remain the same. And you don't have to have gone through the worst that life has to offer in order to live this hero life and to find the techniques needed to realize one's true self. So what I would say is that the first part of hero work is that conceptualization and I really can't overemphasize how critical it is to stop and think about who you are. Many of us are really action-oriented, tangible.
Like you said, Jacob, we're focused on…and I'm the same way…how much money we make, our title, the car we drive, our houses all that kind of stuff. What's next? What am I running towards, right? What's the next adventure? The next challenge. Next opportunity, etcetera. And that is what makes it difficult to take that time to stop and say, “who is my true self? Who am I?” And it can be scary and it can take a lot of time. It can take time for an individual to, in their mind, divest themselves of the things, the material things that matter most. And in those moments when we're able to encounter our true self, then it becomes compelling in and of itself. We find the thing that really motivates us.
So, Jacob, you know, you're asking the question around. What about people who are not combat veterans. They haven't experienced all sorts of trauma. What applicability does this have? And I would say there's a couple of hard parts of this hero work, but one of the hardest things is to take the time to stop and think.
I agree, Alexs. And I think it also comes from a cultural side too. We’re taught that if you're not being productive then you're not adding value.
Absolutely, Jacob, and productive is defined in usually very materialistic ways.
Right, Alexs. Taking action. And I'll be honest, I'm on the other side of this, you know, I have not, whether it's because I haven't had the chance or I haven't decided to or what, but I just haven't found it yet. I haven't found that base non-material drive yet. That's something that I've really been grappling with the last years.
But you're what, you're 18-19 or something like that?
I mean, I'm young, but this is, I feel and I think, this is gonna happen to people at different points in their lives and it should probably happen multiple times in their life. It's not a static image.
Absolutely. And your drive is gonna change. I mean, take you, for example, you know, 9/11 and Bahrain are drastically different images of a hero.
Sure, Definitely for yourself.
Um, but still driving towards those things and it’s an Interesting exercise to try to divest yourself and look at what your core motivations are as an individual.
That’s true, Jacob. It's really difficult to do. And like you said, I mean a couple of reasons it’s difficult is because: one it's not seen as productive. And two: it's just not something that we find a lot of. We're not giving the techniques to do it. We're not given the time to do it. Or congratulated when we accomplish it. But the outcome is… it doesn't solve all of life's problems, right? But the outcome of that work is to be internally motivated. And it's hard to overstate the value of being grounded in that way. And so when someone says, “you may not go left, you must go right.” You may have no power to say “I'm going left because I want to go left,” but even as you're going right, you are still able to hold on to who you are; to the hero within. And you have the ability to identify every opportunity to turn left, to turn back left. And so even, like said, when we're not in control of our environment completely, there's still that fire, that passion that exist within us, and we recognize it and are able to activate it when the opportunity arises.
It's also, tying back to structure, it's a way of creating structure for how you deal with situations and your path forward.
That's absolutely right. You know, for someone like me who grew up in a very chaotic emotional environment, it's another defense mechanism, right, because as a kid, I didn't have much control at all. And, you know, as an adult, we don't have absolute control over everything going on around us. But a way for me to manage my emotions is to be able to say to myself, I know who I am. The fact that I can't live that out because of x, y or z is irrelevant to who I am as a person. And when you have the power to disregard the outside world in moments of spiritual, mental, and psychological health, I don't know of anything more powerful than that. When you're able to stand up within yourself for yourself, regardless of what the outside world says, I don't know of much more powerful than that.
Yep, And like you said, I mean, it makes sense that someone like me, someone who's had the experiences that I've had, um, values, that kind of freedom values, that ability to disconnect because I spent so much time in environments where I didn't have control. And as a kid, you know, I wish I could have disconnected.
You bring out some good questions, Jacob. Great conversation. So we'll see. We'll see what the people say about whether it's the best podcast ever.
You wanna take a break, Jacob?
I'm good, but let's change topics a little: how do you apply this in a corporate environment; in a career environment.
Yeah, that's a good question. I think probably the first thing for me, especially in a corporate environment, is that there are parts of the culture which are productive and healthy, and there are parts which are not. And so it is in any environment. But in the corporate world particularly, you know, you're constantly being judged by what you do, how you carry yourself, how you interact with people, and so it has helped me, and this is really kind of repeating what we just said, but it's helped me to stay centered and focused on who I am, rather than trying to figure out what I need to do and say to fit in and sort of toe the company line. And that's fine, right? It's fine to toe the company line. You know, we both work at Hallmark and Hallmark cares about building relationships, so there's a lot about the company line at Hallmark that makes you feel good and you don't need to resist that. But you know, like any place, there are cliques. There are trends in the way that people want to think. There are just things about corporate life that you don't want to fall into. And so you know, my insistence on holding onto my hero self allows me to be very precise about what parts of the corporate culture I dive headlong into. And what parts of it I worked either avoid or change, you know, And so that's one thing.
The second thing is really around being an example for others who are trying to live their best self. So lots of people are like I said, just trying to get ahead. They are really focused on the material components of the corporate world and so I love connecting with people who see the work as a way of expressing who they truly are. And it can be really difficult to do that when so many people are not. That's another thing I do. And that also keeps me motivated. Being able to find people that I connect with. Those are the ways that I bring my perspective about life to work.
So, Alexs, how do you take the internal drive, internal motivation, the hero self that defines the way that you move forward. And how do you convert that into external change in any type of organization?
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the one of the most important things is to be really focused on including everyone in the conversation, and I'll give you a couple of examples. So one of the ways I think that I can really encourage everyone to bring their hero self is to advocate for people I don't like. You know, there are people that I've worked with who I don't like. I don't like the way they express their opinions. I don't like the way they develop relationships. I don't like whatever. Whatever it is I don't like about that. But I try to be very deliberate about separating what I like about them and what they bring to the table. And so I've worked with people who I know they talk bad about me behind my back. They talk bad about me to my boss and again if they have valid points... I'm not saying you advocate for everyone…but I've had people that I work with that I don't like that I know don't like me. But I still advocate for them because I believe that the substance of what they're saying is valuable. And we, as an organization, needs to bring that to bear. So that's one area where I think it's really important.
You know, Hallmark is really good about ensuring that women have a voice in a somewhat male dominated environment, not necessarily at Hallmark in particular, but, you know, identifying broader groups of people who don't have a voice and ensuring again when they have something that can move the conversation forward that we create space. And again, this goes back to corporate culture. You know, if we see a culture that implicitly ignores or devalues people of color women, trans people, whoever it is, then we have an opportunity to elevate those voices. And so again, that's one of the things. And another thing for me is, you know, I worked in the military and those kinds of environments are really focused on who's able to play the game the best. And so I really try to advocate for new/young/non-tenured people, right? Who, again, even if just implicitly, will be ignored because they don't have the status that other people might have.
And so again, I guess, you know, the main thing I would say for me is that we ensure we don't say heroes look like this and they always look like that. Or they always talk this way or they care about these things. Even if there are things that I don't care about and things that I don't like, I want to ensure that I'm not stifling that person's ability to live their true self. So that's one thing that's really important to me.
So. what got you into IT, Alexs? That's a pretty big change. I'm sure there's definitely parallels between political policies and foreign policies and the political landscape of the corporate environment. There's some parallels there, but what made you choose IT and data. I'm interested particularly in why you chose Hallmark for IT and data.
Yeah. So the story for me is it's fairly progressive over time. And maybe this will fit into your cycle theory about my life. I was in the middle of my PhD work when I went to Iraq, and when I got to Iraq, the Marine Corps leaders…one of the first things they said to me was: religious leaders are bad and religion is bad. Islam, the religion of Islam is bad.
And, you know, I'd spent the previous five years or so studying Islam and spending time with religious leaders so I was like: that's not right. I don't know where you got that information, but I don't think that's right. So, I realized very quickly that I was not gonna be able to convince them they were wrong by citing the Qur’an or talking about my experiences, so I found this database of transcribed sermons for the previous, I think, five years. There were tens of thousands of these reports and I started doing all sorts of analysis on him. I did word counting and topic modeling. It was basic modeling on this data and I happen to know ArcGIS. I knew how to build geospatial maps and I started getting more and more into it. I coded all these reports. I started building maps for our Marine Corps leaders, and I was able to show them that from the data we had, which was a small subset and there were all sorts of issues with it. But of the data we had, less than 2% of the religious leaders were saying things negative about the United States or the Iraqi government or anything like that. And so that was sort of like my foot in the door.
And they're like, Well, how do you know that? Well, I have these 20,000 reports. I can either walk you through all of them, or I can show you the highlights. I can show you the number of religious leaders who've moved around the province and what they're talking about. So that was sort of my foot in, and that sort of got their heads scratching and thinking, well, if there's so few of them that are negative, then what are they talking about? Well, you know, 80 plus percent of them are talking about how to make sure you take care of the poor and the hungry. Treat your family right. Make sure you go to prayer, you know, just normal mainstream religious principles.
And so I got more of a foot in the door and they're like, Well, what's left? There are people who are saying the Americans are here to help us and that we should support them and work with them. And, you know, that sort of got their eyes wide open and asked, well, give us the names of these people that we can build positive relationships with. And so, you know, more and more I got my foot in the door and I saw the power of data to change lives at that point. So now I've got a regiment of Marines who are starting to focus rather than saying we should not talk to religious leaders to thinking about religion. They're starting to say we need to be engaging with religious leaders who, oh, by the way, are some of the most important people in their communities. In these rural communities. And so I really got to see the power of data transform lives.
From there I started to just get more and more into data. A few jobs later, I worked for a company that basically systematized what I had done in Iraq. They built a platform, it's called Palantir, and it combined data management. So it is a data warehouse. It combined geospatial, so it had maps and it combined network analysis. So you could say: I know this person is this person's brother and this person's cousin, and you were able to identify whole networks of people. All the work I did when I was deployed was about building positive relationships with locals. There's obviously tons of people part of the U. S. Military structure who are trying to find the bad guys and kill them. But that was not my job. You know, my job was to say, as an anthropologist: I think we could build a relationship with this person and help build more stable communities. And so I did that in Central and East Africa. I also did that in Bahrain.
And when I came back from Bahrain I got a job as a data scientist at FEMA where, again, we built this platform using Tableau which has geospatial. You could do some network analysis a lot more of statistical analysis. I started learning SQL, so I started to learn how to manipulate databases. I started learning R, a statistical programming language. I started being able to build my own models, statistical models, and so with FEMA, we were really looking at how do we deliver assistance to people in need more quickly? How do we ensure that we know in the moment how much money is left on particular grants that could be given out people in need. And so, during that time is when I realized that I gotta figure out how to settle down. I was looking at opportunities in Kansas City. I had a couple opportunities come up. But the mission at Hallmark about building relationships really struck a chord with me. And so I got a job as a data scientist at Hallmark.
So what's next? we talked about cyclic. You may never accomplish “settled down”. We never answered that question. It's hard to define “settled down”. Yeah, but what's your next mission? What's your aim?
Yeah. So I think there's… let me answer the question about will I ever feel comfortable about being settled down? I don't know why I just said, “let me answer that” because I don't know what the answer is. Um, I don't think …I think there will always be a fire…passion in my belly. There's something about me that is constantly at 11 you know, like the scale is from 1 to 10 and I'm always at 11. I think that will always be the case. But, you know, in one of the other podcasts, we talked about the challenge of living in the suburbs and living a different life. And I think the thing that will be easier about it is that I am learning things about myself that I could not have learned otherwise. That's probably one thing. The kinds of things that I can learn about myself being settled down I would never have been able to learn when I was constantly on the go. That's one thing.
The second thing is that the things I thought I could never have if I was settled down some of those things I can have. And so you know, one of things. I talked about a lot in my book, and I talk a lot about in these podcasts is that the camaraderie I developed playing rugby, being a firefighter, being in combat, I was in a fraternity Alpha Phi Delta. You know, the camaraderie that I developed in the close friendships that I have until today, I would have thought that I could never develop really deep, meaningful relationships when I was settled down. I had the sort of stereotypical perspective of the suburbs. Um, it's all superficial. The only thing people care about is like whether your lawn is mowed and how nice your houses. The car in your driveway. You know, people don't connect with each other. They don't build real relationships. They're just, not alive. It's like if you're not running into burning buildings then how are you alive as a person?
And, you know, I've been really fortunate. We had a conversation with our friend Katie, and we call her the couple matchmaker. She really connected us with, you know, 10 other couples that we are really close with. We have neighbors here that, it's not just a superficial wave in the driveway. Hi. How are you? We're really building relationships. The kinds of relationships I honestly never thought would be possible. And so I think in those ways settling down is a new adventure. I'm learning more about myself. Obviously, it's not the same as jaunting off to Syria or Yemen, but it has a lot to offer, and honestly, it's clearly something I needed.
And so you say, What's next for me? I think from a work perspective, I love the work I do. I stopped being a data scientist and moved more into the data engineering space and working on data strategy. That's really challenging. And there's a lot of opportunity to help a place like Hallmark enter the digital age and transform the systems it uses to engage with consumers and build relationships. So I think from a work space, I'll continue to go down that path. From another personal perspective, I think this project that you and I are talking about right now is a big deal for me. You know, there was a moment when I really had to decide how I define success when it comes to this book, and there was a long period of time where I just listened to what everybody else said. You gotta find an agent, you gotta find a publisher, you get an advance and then you publish your book and that's how we define success.
And I've had to wrestle with that. I never found an agent. And the question is, are you gonna be one of these fabled authors who spends five years or six years living in their car? Eventually, one day some agent finds them and they go on to make millions of dollars. Or, is that how I define success? And I've decided that success for me is really about sharing my story. It's really about having these kinds of conversations because even just in the conversation that you and I are having Jacob, I have learned a lot about myself and put in to words things that I haven't before.
And we had dinner with a friend of ours last night and she's like, “Oh, I know the exact person who you should talk to about your story, about your project.” And there's an opportunity for me to share and this other person to share. And so it's created success for me which I would define as my ability to share my story and participate in other people's story as well. So yeah, I think that will be a big part of what's next for me.
Gotcha.
All right, well, there's been a great conversation, Jacob. Like I said, I mean, um, every time I sit and talk with friends of mine, I'm really surprised by the depth of the conversation, How real it is. So I just want to say thanks a lot for taking time out of your day to, talk with me.
Yeah, I appreciate it, too. I mean, like you said about depth, that you don't have these conversations every day. We’ve known each other for two years and I learned more today about you than I have learned in two years. And I just appreciate that you're willing to share your story and have these conversations because it's not easy to put yourself out there and talk about your truth and what you're looking for. Um, after the work that you've put in.
Yeah, I appreciate it. So thanks a lot.