I’ve reached that magical age where I can hurt myself sleeping, get excited about a new shop vac, and spend an unreasonable amount of time wondering why my washing machine needs Wi-Fi.
I’m 54 years old.
And apparently this is normal.
Somewhere along the way, the world got weird.
Not necessarily worse. Not necessarily better. Just weird.
I remember when buying something meant you gave somebody money and they gave you the thing.
That was pretty much the entire transaction.
Now I buy a light bulb and apparently we’re starting a long-term relationship.
Download the app.
Create an account.
Verify your email.
Create a password containing seventeen characters, a capital letter, a hieroglyphic and the blood
type of your firstborn child.
Connect to Bluetooth.
Connect to Wi-Fi.
Install an update.
Accept the terms and conditions.
Motherfucker, I’m trying to turn on a lamp.
Thomas Edison had this shit figured out more than a hundred years ago.
Switch.
Light.
Done.
We’ve somehow taken one of mankind’s greatest inventions and added technical support.
And that’s basically how the idea for my new YouTube channel started.
Apparently This Is Normal
I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of videos I wanted to make for a while.
Leadership videos.
Educational videos.
Animated videos.
Serious videos.
Useful videos.
All perfectly reasonable ideas.
There was just one problem.
They all sounded like work.
And I already have a fucking job.
Then I started thinking about the conversations I actually enjoy having.
The ones where somebody says something like:
“You ever notice how…”
And twenty minutes later everybody is laughing because we’ve somehow ended up discussing self-checkout machines, corporate meetings, lawn darts and why standing up after 50 apparently requires an audible sound effect.
That sounds a hell of a lot more fun.
So that’s what I’m going to do.
I’m going to make videos about all the ridiculous things we’ve somehow agreed are completely normal.
Technology.
Work.
Getting older.
Corporate bullshit.
Gen-X childhood.
Customer service.
Subscriptions.
Apps.
Marriage.
Money.
Retirement.
People.
My own stupidity.
Basically anything that makes me stop for a second and think:
Who the hell asked for this?
This isn’t a “back in my day” channel
And I want to be clear about something.
This isn’t going to be one of those “everything was better back in my day” channels.
It wasn’t.
We did plenty of stupid shit too.
My generation spent most of childhood completely unsupervised.
Our parents would throw us outside Saturday morning and basically say:
“Try not to die. Dinner’s at six.”
Nobody had GPS.
Nobody had cell phones.
Half the time our parents had absolutely no idea where we were.
Come to think of it, neither did we.
Somehow we survived.
Mostly.
So I’m not interested in spending the next ten years yelling about younger generations.
That’s boring.
Besides, every generation thinks the generation behind them has lost its mind.
I’d rather make fun of everybody.
Especially us.
Getting older is funnier than anybody admits
Because getting older is fucking hilarious if you’re willing to admit it.
Nobody tells you that one day you’ll become genuinely excited about going to Costco.
Nobody explains that sleeping will eventually become an injury risk.
At 25 you can fall asleep upside down on somebody’s couch after drinking twelve beers and wake up ready to play softball.
At 54?
Use the wrong pillow and apparently you’re going to physical therapy.
These are the things we need to discuss.
Corporate Bullshit Translator
Then there’s work.
I’ve spent almost three decades in the railroad industry and a good chunk of that time in management.
Which means I have heard enough corporate terminology to qualify as bilingual.
For instance:
“We need to circle back.”
Translation:
Nobody knows what the fuck we’re doing, so we’re going to talk about it Thursday.
“We’re looking for opportunities.”
Translation:
Something went terribly wrong and management is currently trying to determine whose fault it was.
“We value your feedback.”
Come on.
We both know what that means.
There may eventually be an entire segment called Corporate Bullshit Translator because I could probably make those videos until I’m 90.
The part underneath the jokes
But underneath all the jokes, there’s another reason I want to do this.
I’m in my 50s now.
That sentence sounds strange even writing it.
When you’re 25, life feels enormous.
There’s always next year.
Someday.
Eventually.
Then suddenly you look around and thirty years disappeared somewhere between going to work, raising kids, paying mortgages, fixing shit around the house and trying to remember your Amazon password.
And you start looking at things differently.
I certainly have.
Some things that seemed incredibly important when I was 35 don’t mean much to me anymore.
Some things I barely thought about back then mean everything now.
Time changes value.
So occasionally I might actually get serious.
Not motivational-speaker serious.
I’m not going to stand on a stage and tell you to wake up at 4:17 every morning, take an ice bath and journal about abundance.
Fuck that.
I mean conversations about work.
Kids.
Purpose.
Regret.
Money.
Getting older.
What matters.
What doesn’t.
And what you eventually realize wasn’t worth worrying about in the first place.
Mostly, though, I want it to be funny
But mostly?
I want this thing to be funny.
I want somebody sitting on their couch after a shitty day at work to stumble across one of my videos and think:
“Holy shit. I thought I was the only person who noticed that.”
That’s the goal.
Not outrage.
Not politics every five minutes.
Not pretending I have all the answers.
Just looking around at ordinary life and occasionally asking how in the hell we ended up here.
Because somehow my television needs an operating system.
My truck needs software updates.
The grocery store has decided I’m an employee.
Every restaurant wants me to scan a QR code.
My refrigerator may know more about me than some members of my family.
And somewhere, someone looked at all of this and said:
“Yep. This seems reasonable.”
So I’m going to talk about it.
The channel is called Apparently This Is Normal.
And the philosophy behind it is pretty simple:
I’m not saying the old days were better.
I’m saying some of this shit is stupid.
I think we’re going to have some fun with this.
The handle is @ApparentlyThisisNormalNow. Nothing is up there yet — subscribe and you’ll catch the first one.