Episode 02: Choose Your Own Adventure

In this episode of Midlife Circus, Brent and Rob crack open the Choose Your Own Adventure theme of midlife—where you get to decide what comes next. They explore what it means to rewrite the script, embrace curiosity, and step off autopilot to direct your next great act.

From motorcycles and model cars to 3D printing and solo adventures, this conversation blends humor, nostalgia, and introspection to show that midlife isn’t a crisis—it’s a creative rewrite. Rob and Brent share personal stories, lessons learned, and the joy of rediscovering hands-on passions while reimagining purpose beyond the career grind.

Whether you’re rebuilding, reinventing, or just wondering what’s next, this episode will remind you that it’s never too late to choose your own adventure.

Topics we are covering in this episode:

• Midlife as an opportunity to rewrite your own script.

• How curiosity can replace the need for constant productivity.

• The difference between being scripted and unscripted in your 30s vs. 50s.

• Why small steps—like fixing an e-bike or learning 3D printing—can spark big change.

• Reclaiming hands-on creativity and joy from childhood passions.

• The balance between freedom, purpose, and reinvention.

• How Gen X is redefining midlife on its own terms.

• Simple ways to start crafting your next great act today.

• Midlife as a time to choose growth, not crisis.

• Becoming the director—and hero—of your own story.

Transcript:

Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.

Lena: Remember those choose your own adventure books from when you were a kid and how fun they were? Midlife works the same way. Today on Midlife Circus, Brent and Rob, two Gen Xers rewriting the script, dig into saying yes to curiosity, no to autopilot, and yes to directing your next great act. It's not a crisis. It's a choice.

Let's dive in to choosing your own adventure.

Rob: Brent, what chapter in your life would you like to have as a do over?

Brent: You know, there was a stage in my life, and I'll go back to when I was much younger, kind of still living at home growing up, and I was super hands on and mechanical. And I think about this often because I really enjoyed that period of my life where I was a tinker. I was always working on something. So, if I give you kind of this progression is I started out building model cars, model airplanes, things like that. So those little plastic ones that you'd paint and you kind of build them out with price sniffing glue along the way.

Rob: Least you didn't sound so much like a dork of putting models together. So sniffing glue made it a little bit more interesting. Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. No. I wasn't too big on that part of it, but yes, as you look in hindsight. And then I progressed into doing RC cars and RC planes. So those were and I had gas powered ones, had electric powered ones and so forth.

And then the next step was I was working on motorcycles. And then the next step was working on cars. And all of it was something that I really enjoyed doing. So, from a redo perspective, and I think about it often now, is that was a happy place for me. I loved working on things, mostly fixing things.

And I have a funny story for you. My parents were pretty much against me getting a motorcycle, and I understand why. And I wanted one of those dirt bikes. And I had friends that had them, but my parents were like, no way.

Rob: Death trap. Right? Death trap. What my mom

Brent: said. You're

Rob: kill yourself. Yeah. Which probably is Yeah.

Brent: Oh, absolutely. So, I had this good friend that had a motorcycle in the shed that his parents had had been there. And I don't think it worked for ten or fifteen years. And it was a dirt bike. It was pretty cool looking, but they're like, it doesn't work.

And so they said, you can have it. So, then I talked my parents into it. I said, well, if I fix it and make it work, can I take it on? And they're like, sure. Because they looked at it.

It hadn't worked for, like, ten or fifteen years.

Rob: They didn't think you'd it running.

Brent: So I took it completely apart. I stripped it down. No manual at all. I just intuitively just said, take it apart. So I did.

And what was really interesting about it is I got it to work. So I think it was my parents' work

But they weren't home when I got it running. So I got it running. I sat on it. I revved it. I was so proud of myself.

So I put it in first gear. I gave it a little gas, and all of sudden, the throttle went full bore. It took off like a rocket. I jumped off the back. It went down the street and crashed on the other side of the street.

Rob: You mean it kept going? Like, the throttle went on and kept the throttle running.

Brent: It got stuck open. So I went down. It freaked me out. I was probably 13 years old at the time, 14 years old. It freaked me out so bad that I went down.

I pushed it back up the street. I put it in front of the house. I went and grabbed a piece of paper, put free on it, and somebody else picked it up.

tell me you fixed it or not? Oh, absolutely. I said, yeah.

Yeah. But I'm going to give it away. But it was it was it was hilarious because I was so proud of myself. First maiden voyage. I'm going to take this thing out.

I'm going to just go off and, you know, make this thing work, and it's going to be amazing. I now have a motorcycle, and that freaked me out so much, I gave away my motorcycle.

Rob: So you went from putting together models in your bedroom Yeah. Being kind of a dork to super cool 13 year old with a motorcycle

Back to putting models together in your bedroom and making your mom happy that you weren't out riding a motorcycle around the neighborhood?

Brent: Absolutely. But the swan song of all this was my dad and I went to an auction when I was probably, like, 16 or 17, And we bought an old Jeep from the University of Colorado because I grew up in Boulder and they had their utility vehicles and it was one of those Jeep Scramblers. So it had a little truck bed and the thing, they were auctioning off all their old work And so we bought one. It needed so much work, but that was so much fun. I bought a manual for that.

I learned how to change, you know, rebuild the alternator motor. I would did some welding work with a buddy of mine because there's a lot of rust on it. It was awesome. And that was one that I really, really enjoyed. My parents were kind enough.

We had a two-car garage. They gave me one of the bays to work on it. And I just spent a ton of time tinkering with it. But the cool thing about a vehicle back then is it didn't have a whole lot of electronic components to it. It was very

Rob: You could actually fix them.

Brent: You could totally fix it. It. So there's only a couple of things I couldn't do. Like it needed a new clutch and we had somebody to do that because I didn't have the right tools for it. But my parents were very supportive of letting me explore my curiosities and I was a very mechanical kid.

I loved taking things apart, putting it back together, fixing things, building things from scratch. And so that was a fun one for me. And I did that kind of the last couple of years of high school. I would work on it and I had a couple of friends that like working on it with me. So yeah, a little bit dorky for sure when I was a kid.

I mean, I was doing a lot of model airplanes and RC cars and all that, but I made a business out of that side of it too, Rob, is I actually would buy RC cars, those electric cars on the want ads, and I would buy them and then I would fix them up and I would sell them for more. So that was a business that I did probably when I was in that, I don't know, 12 to 15 range.

Rob: Very entrepreneurial.

Brent: Yes. I enjoyed it a lot. So I think back, that is when you said a do over. Yeah. It's a redo for me.

Like, I actually really enjoy that. And I have this quest for getting back to that. But what I would tell you, the gap that I have right now is I think in my career, I've always been so efficient, efficient, efficient. Use your time wisely. A lot of those things take patience.

Like, you need to sit down and just do it and not have this time bound nature of I need to do it in two hours. What if it takes four hours? What if it takes two days? And I tested that out recently. I have a ebike, and it needed fixing.

And so I fixed it, but it took me a couple of days to fix it. And I said, be patient, Brent. Be patient. So that was something that I'm starting to get back into on the mechanical side, but I'm trying to also curb some of my bad habits from my career where it's like, go fast, go fast, do a lot.

Rob: Get it done. Yep. Yeah. So not initially a do over, but a redo, something you're going to bring back into your life now going forward. I'm guessing when the boys were growing up, you had a replacement for the model cars with Lego.

Correct? I mean, there you have tons of Lego structures, I know, in your in your basement. I've seen them. They're incredible. And the boys you and the boys would do one regularly putting those things together.

I think you work with them for a while, and then they probably got a little too complicated for you, the boys just did them themselves. So are you thinking that you're, you're going to start doing model cars again or RC cars again? What's the what's going to be the replacement, or is it going to be fixing mechanical things around the house?

Brent: It is 3D printing.

Rob: Okay.

Brent: Because one of my kids has a really cool 3D printer, and it's just collecting dust. And I've been thinking about the whole idea of building model cars, but I'm 3D printing those cars. And so I like certain classic cars. And so I was like, what if I could create like a shelf of classic cars that I built with a 3D printer. So it's like a bit of a quest.

So I have this tool available. I like that idea because it integrates both the software side, which I like the technical aspect and then the creative side. So I'm going to play around with that because we have it. And I'm just I've always been curious about 3D printing, but I never did it. One of my kids is is quite good at it, and he really enjoyed it.

Actually, they're both really good at it because this middle school they went to had 3D printers, and so they took classes and stuff on it. So I got to see some of the work that they did. And I'm like, it will probably help me with that creative hands on, but it's a different it's more modern. Right? Because you're using software and different programs to do it, and there's a lot of trial and error.

So I'm excited to try that. I just need to sit down and do it, and I have to be patient with myself, Rob.

Rob: Good luck. Yes. Good luck with that. Well, that gives us a really nice segue, Brent, as you started talking about a redo versus a do over and thinking about what you can bring back as you move forward. I don't if you remember this or not, but growing up, do you remember those books called Choose Your Own Adventure?

Brent: I do. Those are fun.

Rob: So at the end of each section or chapter, chapter, you had a choice to make or a couple different choices to make. And depending on what choice we made, it took us to a different section in the book. So if it said, if you if you want to go down the hallway, go to page 35. If you want to turn around and get back in your car, go to page 37. Right?

And it took you to a different chapter or a different section of the book where the adventure continued. And today we're talking about just that. Midlife is a chance to really begin to choose our own adventure again and really write the next section in the next chapter of our books. Why do you think midlife feels such a transitional or pivot point, Brent, for writing our own next chapter?

Brent: It's a big change that we're going through. And I think about this in my own situation as an example, thirty-year career, decided to step away from that career and explore what my next great act is. But that's such a big change because I spent thirty plus years of building up my career. And so it's a big transformation. And then on top of that is for me, I've got two kids.

One is in college. The other one is going to is a senior in high school right now. So he'll go off to college. I'll be an empty nester next year. So it's like all this change happening.

And it's one point in time in my life where I can start to look at it and say, what do I actually want to do? Because for so many years, was the career. Like keep building up your career more and more and more and take on the next big challenge. But also raising a family was a big priority as well. So now there's so much change happening.

It's, you know, when you get in your 50s, that's what kind of happens in your life is change comes in and you start to challenge those assumptions or those kind of like, work, work, work. Is that what I want to do? And I've said, no. I don't want to just be work, work, work. I want to actually navigate and explore other things.

And we just talked about 3D printing. Four years ago, I wouldn't even considered it because I was so knee deep in my work.

Rob: Now that you have the time that you can dedicate to what you want to do. Now you liked what you did for work, so it wasn't that you didn't like doing the work. It's just that now you're in a transitional state where you are almost an empty nester. You have significantly more time on your hands right now. They were in a semi-retirement state.

You're now thinking about how you fill that time more purposely with the end in mind?

Brent: Yeah, absolutely. It's really interesting for me in my own personal experience here is, you said it, I enjoyed my work, but I understand that I was going through a transition. And I started to see things that I was enjoying beyond my work. And the first thing was doing endurance events and, you know, challenging myself physically and mentally to do things that pushes myself outside of work related activities. Then I started to pick up more on the creativity side and exploring, wow, this is kind of cool, where it wasn't monetarily driven.

It was more curiosity driven. And, you know, me doing 3D printing as an example, I'm not doing it for anybody else. It's just purely a curiosity that I have. So it's a moment in time where I am considering alternatives to how I spend my time. But I was in default mode for thirty years.

Thirty years of and twenty of that was raising kids. So, you know, you just kind of two big priorities there. Work, family, work, family. And now that there's changes happening on the family side as the kids, you know, go off to college and kind of grow in their own way for their own lives. Okay.

That's a significant change. But now on the work side, it's challenging myself to say, well, do I want to do something different? You know, what else is out there? And what is what is my curiosity at this moment in time?

Rob: And I'm guessing for you, raising kids, since I don't have any, part of it was they were writing chapters for you. Right? They were defining what was next for you and what was next for the family based upon their activities, their interests, their hobbies, those types of things. They you didn't have control over what was the next chapter or where were you guys going to be heading.

Brent: 100%. Especially with kids that active in sports as an example. Both my kids were always active in sports growing up. One of them is still very active. Well, they're both still very active in running.

One's a collegiate runner. So all of our life was surrounding their activities. And then it's not even just their sports as an example, but, okay, spring break's coming up or fall break or winter break or summer break. So it was building our lives around their lives because that was just the stage of life that we were in. Were very We've always My wife and I have always been very active parents, meaning we don't like to miss any of their sporting events.

If there's an academic event, we're always going to be a part of that. If we can help out in certain things, we're going to help out in certain things. So being hands on as parents was always a priority for us. And it certainly dictated a lot of our daily lives and our weekends were generally absorbed by kid activities.

Rob: And a lot of people, as we hit midlife, start thinking about or getting anxious about or experience what they're calling a midlife crisis, that change moment that you mentioned. Chip Connolly calls it a midlife chrysalis, which I tend to like a little bit better, which is the change that we go through, the change of a of a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly. So I like the metaphor Chip uses of calling it a midlife chrysalis where we make an evolutional change into something greater. You and I decided to call our podcast the Midlife Circus. Tell us a little bit more about why Midlife Circus, Brent.

Brent: If you think of a circus, and we can go back to our childhood, if you had a chance to do like Barnum and Bailey as an example. One thing you notice about a circus is when you walk in, there is a tremendous amount of activity taking place. It's pure entertainment. And the circus has a conductor. We call it in our world of midlife circus, we call it a director.

And the director is keeping everybody engaged for different activities. Oh, look. The elephants are coming in. Oh, look. The person over there spending 10 plates at a time.

Oh, look. Right over there, we've got the lions. Oh, look over here. You've got jugglers. Oh, now you've got the clowns.

There's so much activity going on. It's orchestrated, but it's a bit chaotic. As we think about the word circus, midlife circus, it's a bit of a circus in your midlife. There's so much activities going on. These aren't bad things.

It's just lots of changes, a lot of things coming and going. So we've talked about children. We've talked about careers. We've talked about people as they age, they start to look at their health differently. They don't take it for granted.

That's at least what I've experienced personally, but also going across our friend group as an example. People are generally more active saying, I longevity out of this. So they're looking at their diets, they're looking at their exercise routines, they're signing up for that 5 K’s, and they're doing things because they can do it. And so it's a circus because there's a lot of activities. But if you're the director of your own circus, it can be a coordinated endeavor.

So when I look at my own personal situation, look at the number of plates that I've got spinning in the air, you know, or on the sticks. And it's one of those things where how many plates do I want to have active right now? And which ones are most important to me? And what am I going to do to ensure that I've got the things in my circus that I enjoy, that I want out of my life? And it's the people, it's the things that I have, it's the adventures that I take.

It's all part of my own personal midlife circus, and I believe I'm truly the director of my circus.

Rob: I think back way back to our thirties and forties, you know, so long ago thinking back to the thirties and forties. It was chaotic back then too, though, Brent. Why is it different in midlife?

Brent: I'm going to ask you that question back, but I'm going to ask you it back, and then I have an answer to it. I want to see how you answer it because I think the important thing here is let's make sure we get your definition of the midlife circus as well because we're in this together. But I want to see how you respond to that because I have a very I have a way of answering it, but I want to see how you answer it first.

Rob: How I how I would define it though, and how I think about it being different is, for me personally, I feel like I was let in less control during my thirties and early forties of the decisions that I was making. That sounds kind of weird. Right? I was making decisions, but it was almost I was following a script or reading the book or watching the movie as we just think about it, but I wasn't in charge of the movie. I was following out a prescribed process to get ahead, right?

So if you want to move up into your career, you got to work harder, you get outperform and that moves up. That wasn't my story. That was maybe somebody else's story that I was following, not directing it myself, not defining it myself. Even though we moved a bunch and I took on different roles and I was defining those opportunities as I moved to different geographies, as I took on different roles within an organization. It was maybe it felt less, what's the word I'm looking for?

Conscious of the choices I was making and the impact that they were having on different parts of my life. Maybe that's the way I would think about it. Not having kids. I don't have, you know, the poll of kids where the chaotic happened at 30, but it was less in your control. It happened what the kids wanted to go and do.

Do they want to go skiing that weekend or do they have a sporting event going on? Mine, I would say, maybe more career driven. And there was a progression I was following, not as sure the progression that I was defining for myself.

Brent: I'm 100% aligned with you. I feel like there's this version of in your thirties, you've got a script that you're following. In your fifties, you're a bit unscripted. Because your thirties is you're making progress in your career. You may decide to start a family.

You may have started in your 20s. You may start in your 30s. You can start in your 40s too. But a lot of times people start their families in their 30s in this current generation. There's this script and it goes back to that you know, little

Rob: Get house married, buy a house, have a child, have two children, Get pet a too. Right.

Brent: Yeah. So it's this script that we've been handed to us. And a lot of times it's handed to us from the prior generations. And you look at how did my mom and dad do it. So my mom and dad, they, you know, got married really young.

But then it was very career driven for my father, my mother as well, and then three kids. And we want to give our kids these experiences in their life. We want to give them the opportunity to go to college. And it's a script. And it's a bit of a script that they learned from their parents.

So to me, twenties is a little bit of the exploration, trying to figure out what do you want to do in your career, and you're trying different jobs and so forth, and you're exploring relationships and so forth. Then your thirties, you're starting to solidify. And you're starting to understand the importance of saving money as an example. A lot of times that starts more in your thirties and your twenties. And you're starting to understand progression in your career.

And then you establish if you decide to have a family, you establish responsibilities of raising a family. And then 40 is playing that script out. And then 50, when you hit your fifties or what we call our midlife is you have that opportunity to be unscripted. What do I actually want to do? What story am I now going to write?

Because you've finished we'll call it a book. We'll call it a chapter. Whatever the metaphor or the correlation you want to make with it is you finished something or some things. Now what do you want to do next? What's your next great act?

And that's how I look at it, scripted versus unscripted.

Rob: And it's interesting you talk about the script being different for our generation, as Gen Xers compared to the previous generation with boomers. The script is quite a bit different as we get into midlife, as you as it just kind of had that moment is prior generations, the script was you work at a current job until you're 62 or 65 and that's your retirement date. You have a guaranteed income for the rest of your life, maybe even for the rest of your spouse's life, and we're defining that quite a bit different. So when I think about midlife circus and why the name midlife circus to come back to that is it you're absolutely right, Brennan. It is somewhat chaotic.

It is unknown for us as we move forward because we're unable to follow a previous generation. There's so many different things going on, so many different acts that we can go and follow. We get a chance to build our own circus going forward. We get a chance to build our own next great act that maybe prior generations didn't have the opportunity to have or do. And we have a chance to move forward in a way that maybe aligns more with who we were when we were 12 or 13 years old.

Brent: Yeah. And that goes back to your original question when you opened up our conversation today is I'm starting to explore some of the things I did as a kid. I'm excited to get mechanical again, use my hands, do things because I've been so focused on the computer and the different things that we have. And that's how communication takes place and, you know, whether it's spreadsheets and Word documents and things that we did throughout our career. And now it's like, let's step back and actually do some things that I enjoy doing, and that's mechanical.

No system required. I mean, I talked about 3D printing, but I'm still trying to create a product at the end, something that's tangible that I can hold with my hands.

Rob: And unlike prior generations, ours is going to start doing it in their late forties, their fifties, not wait until they're 65 to try and go back and do all those things. We're going to have those experiences earlier. I think about my parents hitting that age, my dad started doing a lot more woodworking. It's something he liked to do, you know, whittling as a kid. He turned into a pretty significant hobby as an adult, but he rarely waited to go deep into it until he got into his I think it was in his mid-sixties before he really got into woodworking.

And I see our generation doing that quite a bit earlier, in our forties and fifties because we are, at a point where things are less defined for us and the marketplace around us is significantly less defined.

Brent: And what brings you joy? Absolutely. What brings you the energy that a lot of times your career brings you energy. It's a different kind of energy. But when you're scripting something new, you can get energy from doing different things.

And so when you're not so focused, in my case, not so focused on my career anymore, then I have this new type of energy that comes in to say, well, what drives me from day to day? And usually for me, it boils down to what is my latest curiosity and am I willing to put time and effort towards that curiosity? So I had this curiosity about doing these big endurance events, and I still have that curiosity. It took a lot of time, a lot of energy. I did that.

Now I'm trying to get a little bit more mechanical. And how do I spend some of my time using my hands and using my brain in different ways? And I'm excited about that. But it's this curiosity driven, but it's not based on a career or raising young children because those are the two dominant things for a big portion of my adult life that are evolving.

Rob: When you think about it for our listeners, why is it important to start contemplating reinvention today?

Brent: It's because you have an opportunity, and it's an opportunity to step back from all of it. And I understand everybody's going to have different circumstances. So I don't want to say that I just leave your job and go off and be super creative. You may not have the means to do that today, but maybe it's how are you spending some of your free time. And you have the opportunity.

And what I find most interesting today that even our parents didn't have is they didn't have access to information that the we do today. They didn't have YouTube. So if you want to learn a skill, you can turn on your phone and you can learn that skill in a very rapid way. Or AI can assist you in today to learn a skill much more efficiently, but you can explore it from so many different angles. You don't have to go buy the book.

Don't have to go buy the manual. You don't have to necessarily take the week long class today. You can explore things. Your opportunities are endless. And this is me being the entrepreneur.

So I've started a handful of companies and I always loved the early stages of starting a company because it's like raw clay. And you have this block of clay that you can turn into whatever you want. You're the director here. And I find that if you take that on with that curiosity, you can do whatever you want. And I know I'm feeling it sounds like I'm a bit motivational at this moment in time.

But as per your question, It's like, why now? Because you can. What's holding you back? And that's the big question. But I am guilty of being held back from my own prior kind of things that I was engaged in from a career perspective and so forth.

Like, oh, it's not the right time to do it. Now I'm in the position as now is the absolute right time to do it because I can, and I'm going to go do it. But it takes that motivation every day to get up and say, okay. If you're going to do it, go do it. Not to think about it.

Rob: Take that list of bucket list items that you have, things you want to do or learn and start to go do them today. Don't wait till the end. Don't wait till you were, you get that diagnosis, that life changing event that happened to you. It's more taking the opportunity today to take what's on that list and start to do it because it's easier to do it today. That's what I'm hearing from you is that it's easier to do it today than it was when we were growing up where you had to read a book.

You had to get a manual, you said. I'm glad, you brought up AI and thinking about how to use chat or other AI tools to help you learn new traits or new skills faster or new things faster. We have a a a world where we grew up in a world where we just figured stuff out. We just we had to. Right?

There was we just we you did it with the motorcycle. You took it apart. You figure out how to put it back together. You didn't have the other resources around you that actually guide you in an easy way besides read a book or look at a manual to take it apart. And those manuals weren't easy for a I would guess for a 13 year old kid to figure out how to take something apart and then putting it back together.

Hence, the stuck throttle. But given where we're at today, we have the opportunity to speed up learning.

Brent: Well, take the e bike example that I recently fixed. It sat there. It the brakes neither the brakes one of my kids was using it a lot. And then I got on it, and I was like, there's no brakes.

Rob: I think he said he was using his feet to stop himself, like he's putting his feet down feet down like the Flintstones.

Brent: He's now driving, so that's a different story. So the ebike's not used as much now. But I noticed his shoes were just destroyed. And I'm like, they're so worn down. I'm like, what is going on here?

So I get on the ebike, and there is no brakes. Rob, like, no brakes. You pull it, nothing happens. And I'm like, are you aware that there's no brakes? Yeah.

How are you stopping? Oh, I just put my feet down. Those things go, like, 30 miles an hour, 25 miles an hour. I'm like, what? This is the most unsafe thing.

And so I took it on myself to say first, I decommissioned it. So I just basically took some parts off it so it wouldn't work. So nobody couldn't ride it anymore? No. Because I all

Rob: the fun. Come on. I mean, it's an ebike. It's not a motorcycle with a stuck throttle, Brent.

Brent: Rob, it is a motorcycle with a stuck throttle.

Rob: Yeah. Thanks, mom. Yeah.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. If you know the facts, then you have to respond to the facts. And I realized I needed to stop this activity, but he wasn't using it anymore because he now has his driver's license. So it was just sitting idle for the most part anyway.

So I was going to be the user of it. And I'm like, there's no way that I'm going to ride this without brakes. But what was fun about it is there's a few other things going on with it as well is I use current technology to help me solve some of the challenges. I took pictures, uploaded a chat saying this is what I'm trying to fix. It pointed me to websites.

It pointed me to YouTube videos. It gave me step by step instructions. It told me where to order parts from. And so I had this instructor right with me on my phone. And I actually enjoyed that process because I was learning again.

And so it was really fun to fix it, and there's a tremendous amount of gratitude to get it back up and running. It was only out of commission for a few days because I had to order some parts, but it was fun because I gave myself the time to fix it. But here's the funny part of this in hindsight is I started out and I actually scheduled a little bit of time on my calendar to work on it because that's what I was used to in the past. If I'm going to work on a project, needed to block out some time, so I did that. Now I'm trying to grow out of that, but that's that transition that I'm making for me personally is going from a very heavily scheduled life to now a very flexible life.

I just had to bring in a little discipline to say, hey. Why don't you just spend Saturday morning? I didn't say, you know, from eight to noon. I just said, Saturday morning, why don't you tackle the ebike? And I did.

I just didn't let anything else kind of creep in during that moment in time. So it was taking a bit of my old life, bringing it back in, using my hands. And I just feel like now's the opportunity because it's endless what we can do. Endless. I mean, you can learn so much if you put your mind to it.

There's no excuse. That's where my brain goes. No excuse.

Rob: And the way I think of it and why reinvention is so important today is that the world is changing faster today than it did, say, thirty years ago, forty years ago. And reinvention allows us to keep up with times and keep up with the changes that are happening around us. We're the generation where the Internet came out as we were young adults and we had to learn going from an analog life of calling a travel agent to now being able to book flights online. We had to learn all that stuff and we had to move down that path. And I was on a trip and with a with a young gentleman that told me that he booked this international trip using ChatGPT.

And the other couple that was with us on this trip, now the guy was 25 years old that was using Chat, the other couple that was with us were astounded that they used chat to book a trip and they were using AI to book a trip. Yet, I think back to our parents, that's the difference between us using Google or them using Rick Steves to research and start booking a trip and calling a travel agent. And so I think about the world changing so fast around us, we need to start reinventing ourselves, which is we we've had to do our entire lives. We're the generation that continually had to reinvent because the book kept getting changed on us. The script kept getting changed on us, not by our own direction, kept getting changed on us.

And now is a chance for us to go back and experiment, go back and look at opportunities, explore our curiosities, but doing it a different way, align more with the times today and the opportunities that are in front of us and the speed of which we can access information to do things differently and to learn new things.

Brent: What are some of the things that you opened up with the question to me, I'll play it back to you. What are things that you want to do over or redo? You know? And so when you talk about this, I shared, you know, getting mechanical, using my hands again, but what are some of the things that are boiling up for you that you're exploring because you have time to do that?

Rob: It's funny. I haven't been prepared to think about the redo. My answer was going to be, you know, what period of my life would I want to do over? And I would say it was going to be my twenties. And my twenties because I went directly from college, I got married about a month after I graduated and two weeks after my wedding, was starting a full time job working sixty plus hours a week.

And if you weren't successful, you had to work hours beyond that. And so that was my twenties. I didn't go out and party on Saturday night because I was exhausted from that type of a work week. I didn't go out on a Tuesday night to grab beers with the buddies. And I think, and I watched movies today about people in their twenties living in an apartment, you know, kind of transitioning that college life into a incomed college life.

Right? Is that they had some income, disposable income, because I didn't have any of that in college. They had disposable income and they could actually celebrate and party a little bit more. I missed some of that in my twenties. And not that I want to change where I'm at today because I love my life where I'm at today, and that took a long time for me to get to the place where I could say I love where I'm at today and I love my life, but I missed some of those opportunities.

So I think back to some of the activities that we're doing now, it's more aligned with that independence that I missed in my twenties that I'm now trying to enact again. It's trying to challenge myself and have experiences that I wish I had taken when I was younger. I'm leaving tomorrow on a four-day solo motorcycle trip around Colorado. That's more of an adventure I'm trying to fill my time with and experience that I would have. Solo is a different experience doing some of these things too, where I've always done them with somebody, whether it be my spouse or a friend.

So I'm trying to challenge myself to do some of these things and do them a little more solo today. Learning how to repair a motorcycles on my on my life list and on my learning list right now is to repair a motorcycle. So if I get out in the country or get out in the woods, my motorcycle breaks down. I can actually fix it. I don't have to call for help.

So there's some of the things I'm exploring right now. When I think about the redo, it's I would say it's more of the exciting fun things of my twenties that I feel like I missed and trying to do some of those things today in either terms of, lifeless items, bucket list type of things, or my learning things that I'm trying to go learn and explore that excite me today. Even just trying to answer your question, Brent, about, you know, what I wanted to re redo. I went back to my twenties, and I I go back to the earlier question. I was following a script.

I was following a story, which was you graduate from college, get married. Most people have kids. We decided not to Get a job, work that job, work lots of hours to try and get promoted and move up so you can earn more money, so you can buy a bigger house, so you can go on nicer vacations, drive a fancier car. Currently, where I'm at, it's my motivation has changed quite a bit. And, there is an end in sight.

There is a finite number of days we have left. And is this the script that I want to just continue? Do I need to keep climbing this corporate ladder, continue to earn money when I don't actually need to and I can actually begin to do the things in my life that purely just bring me joy or I'm curious about doing right now? So I was following a script for a long time, unconsciously. I was making choices along the way, but there wasn't the joy that I was seeking in life that I am today.

I think a lot of mid lifers end up starting to think about things differently, start to prioritize their life a little bit differently as people around us start to have health issues, as we start to see, our parents aging, or we see our parents pass away at a young age that we want to change where we're at and enjoy things at a younger age and start to, start to take control of our own script.

Brent: I have an uncle that was one of the most active people I've ever met. And whenever we did family vacations, he would always be lining up triathlons or big mountain bike or swim across a lake a mile and a half, or it was always an adventure. And he stayed so fit his entire life. And I saw him I hadn't seen him for a few years. I saw him last year down in Arizona.

One of my kids was racing in a cross-country race, he lives down in Arizona. So I picked him up, and he's in his kind of early mid-eighties and he's got two walking sticks and he just looks at me and goes, just this aging thing sucks. And I think it's that light bulb went off in my head is there is a finite amount of time when you can do things that you want to do. And then you get to a stage, as you mentioned a little bit earlier, you start to watch your parents age and you start to see some of the limitations that are introduced. That's a fact of life people.

That's just how life works. And so for me, I've got this sense of urgency to ensure that I'm living my life to its fullest, and I'm doing the things that I want to do. Because I do know at one point in time, those things may not be practical to do anymore. To go run the rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon that you and I did a few years ago, that is not something that I probably would sign up for in my mid-seventies. I just don't envision that.

Now there's still people that do it. I mean, I did an Xterra triathlon recently, and I was doing this hill climb on my mountain bike during the race. And I passed this guy. And when you do a triathlon, they write your age on your calf. And his age was 78.

And I am 53. So this dude was twenty-five years older than me. I was so proud of him at that moment in time, but it also gave me that drive to say, I want to be doing that. But I can tell you, he didn't just jump into that in his seventies. That's a muscle that he's been building for years, staying active, staying fit, doing as much as you can do.

So I but I understand, like, when you get to midlife, for me personally, there is that sense of urgency to say, keep doing what you love doing. You're a bit unscripted, so go for it. Don't just sit around and wait for things to happen to you. Go do the things you want to do because at one point in time, you may not be able to do those. That's just the fact of life that comes into play.

Rob: What are some easy first steps you would suggest for people as they're starting to contemplate the script that they're going to write for themselves going forward?

Brent: It's a really good question. I think we have to simplify things. If you want to run a marathon, don't just get stuck with, oh my gosh, I have to do a marathon. Start with running a mile. Take those first few steps.

If you want to learn a new skill, take an online class. If you want to make a major change in your life, like from a career perspective, be thoughtful about it. I remember this was earlier in my career. I had advice from a a friend of mine and I was stuck. And I was in my early 40s.

And I knew the place that I was at wasn't the right place for me. And I'd been there for three years. And he said something so profound to me and it's always stuck with me. And he said, if you know you're going to leave, you know you want to change in your life, put a date out there and work towards that date. Don't get stuck in this constant looping thought of like, I need to leave.

I need to leave. I need to leave. So what I did is I set a date for six months out. I said, I'm going to work towards that. I'm going to get my notification to this company in six months.

I'm going to be the best employee. I'm not going to pull back on my efforts and my drive, but I know I need to make a change. So it's the same thing per your question. It's like, what are the first steps? Start making little steps.

Start doing small things to work towards the big thing if it's the big thing, but don't always feel that you have to do the big thing either. Sometimes it's just small things. You know, if you want to read more, start reading more. If you want to learn a new skill, pull up YouTube and learn about that skill. You know, I want to learn more about photography, so I just downloaded an app that's photography training with an iPhone.

And I take little lessons periodically just because I want to be better at it. Little steps. I didn't sign up for the whole enchilada. I just signed up for just something small that's doable, and I can feel that I'm making some sort of progress.

Rob: I know this might surprise you when I set up the initial question, Brent, of what period of your life would you like to have as a do over, and I'm really glad you actually rephrased it into a redo. As I think about that question I just asked you is how to start. It's to think fifteen to twenty years from now and looking backwards, what would you wish you had done? That's how I start thinking about it too, is everybody waits, you know, you hear the story of the person on their deathbed saying, I wish I'd spent more time with my family. Don't go to that maybe morbid place of what you would do on your deathbed, but twenty years from now, looking back on your life, what did you, what would you think of, I wish I had done this.

I wish I had this experience. I wish I would have gone and learned the guitar. I wish I would have gone and changed my job sooner. I wish I would have actually gone after that promotion that I didn't know if I was qualified for. I wish I would have started that business that I had, or I wish I would have gone to that hobby and started to become maybe more artistic and use that side of my brain.

So I think about maybe the first step is not even a step at all, is to sit back and just think. What is twenty years from now going to look like for you and what are you going to wish you had done twenty years prior? What do you wish you had started doing today in your life?

Brent: That's such a that is such a cool way to look at it. And I find when I instantly think about that, Rob, is I think about in ten years from now, let's just use ten or twenty, it doesn't matter. But ten years from now, if I look back, I want to be proud of myself for not putting so much emphasis on my career. Like I'm moving into my next chapter, my next film. I'm the director here.

What do I want to do? And I want to look back and say, wow. You made that great transition because you were you went from just being study Eddie with work for thirty years, but you made a shift. And you started to do things that gave you more passion or more energy or purpose, and you've you kept at it. So that was cool.

Thanks for sharing that tip because I just I had that reflection. I was like, wow. That's something that hit me really quickly.

Rob: I think about this podcast as an example of that, Brent. You and I had these types of conversations out on bike rides, out on runs. These are the type of conversations that we've had, and I've always thought, oh, we'd be this would be kind of a fun podcast. I don't know if anybody will ever listen to it, but, I listen to this conversation over and over again because I enjoy you and I have, the fun banter we get to have, but also the depth of conversation that we that we have with each other around various topics. So this is kind of our leap into that, you know, ten, fifteen years from now is that, hey, we took the leap and did a podcast, and it actually impacted people's lives.

That's what I'm hoping, comes both out of this podcast, but where I could look backwards in my life and say, I'm glad I made that made that jump. Any final thoughts?

Brent: So I have two Carolines in my life. One Carolyn is my ma my mother-in-law, and the other Carolyn is my wife. And they're both really inspirational for me for two different reasons. So I'll start with my mother-in-law. She has they have my wife has three siblings.

There's four kids total. So three of them you know, my wife is the oldest. And when she was 20, her mom had her sister. So there's a twenty-year gap. And what it did for my mother-in-law is it just delayed some of her goals from a career perspective or things that she wanted to do, just pushed them out a little bit.

So my mother-in-law always wanted to be a nurse. And she knew that getting her nursing degree would take a little bit longer just because she was raising another child who's twenty years younger than my wife. And so she set a goal, say, I want to be a nurse by 60. She finished that goal and she worked for ten years of being a nurse. And it just shows that that was in her midlife when she made that decision.

And it wasn't that she had to do that. They were financially stable at that moment in time, but it was always something she wanted to do. And she went back to school in her fifties, her late fifties, got her nursing degree by 60, and she actually got a job and she was a nurse from 60 to 70. And I just find that so inspirational because that was her next grade.

Rob: That's really cool. That's really cool.

Brent: And then my wife, Carolyn, she did something very similar. It was creative. So she had her master's in information systems. She was a programmer early on in her career, and then we started a company together. She ran that company for a number of years.

We decided to sell that company a handful of years ago, and she had a little idea from a friend of, hey. They're offering this ceramics course at the local community college. Would you want to take it with me? So she said, sure. If we fast forward now six or seven years later, she's a full-on potter.

I mean, she's really good at her craft, super creative.

Rob: She's really good.

Brent: Yeah. And it's just amazing that that was her next great act. And she's using this creativity, but she's also taking advantage of her prior skills. So building a website and Instagram and all the things that she her undergrad was in marketing. So she's really good at kind of the creative and the marketing side, and she sells her products all over the place, and she loves it.

That's her next great act. And it's super inspirational because I would have never seen that coming ten years ago. Literally, never crossed my mind because she was very active as we were talking about, like her career, raising a family. She's a great mom. She's amazing with our kids.

She's also very talented in her profession. But when we made that decision, she also made a decision to make some changes in her life, and she wanted to get into something creative. And she's very self supporting with it. Like, her business does really well, and she loves it. So I'm just sharing two examples of people that created their next great act that are incredibly close to me and so inspirational, and it just shows that we can do whatever we want.

My mother-in-law had a goal. She never let it go. She just fulfilled that goal in her fifties and sixties. Carolyn took on my wife Carolyn took on this new adventure, this new journey. She didn't plan that years ago, but she always has this beautiful creative side, and she took advantage of it.

And she started with you'd asked earlier, like, how do we start? She took a class at a local community college just for fun. And then it turned into a full on, I'm going to do it every day, and I just love doing this. And I watch YouTube videos and taking online classes. She's gone to classes, and she's having so much fun with it.

So we all have that opportunity. I just wanted to share those two examples because they're super inspirational to me.

Rob: Our life is a book, but the book hasn't been fully written. It's truly for us in our generation is a choose your own adventure book where we get to make choices along the way. What I would say is be the hero of your own store story. You get a chance to write that. Nobody else can write that for you.

You get the chance to write the story of which you are your own hero, and now is the time to start taking control of the script that's being written. Remember, you're the director of your next great act.

Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an update. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss your next great act. Before we go, a quick reminder.

The opinions and stories shared here are just that, personal reflections and perspectives. We're not legal experts, medical professionals, or therapists. This show is for entertainment and inspiration only, so please seek the right professionals when you need guidance. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the big top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media Production.