This week, the fascinating Jeff Rasley joins your hosts, Dirty Skittles and G-Rex. Dive into this chaotic yet insightful circus as Jeff shares his journey from the legal world to adventurous escapades. Jeff, hailing from Indianapolis, takes us through his career as a lawyer, the challenges, and the moral dilemmas he faced, including defending complex criminal cases. He opens up about his struggle with depression and how exercise and adventure became his tools for mental wellness.
Discover the turning points in Jeff's life, such as his midlife crisis that led him to trek the Mount Everest Base Camp and how this adventure fueled his passion for travel and philanthropy. Learn about his hitchhiking adventures, including a narrow escape from a cult, and how these experiences shaped his perspective on life. Jeff also shares his thoughts on humility, the importance of giving back, and how he continues to make a difference through various foundations. He reflects on how these experiences have strengthened his relationship with his wife and family.
Join us for an episode filled with gripping stories, life lessons, and a deep dive into what keeps Jeff going. Take advantage of this inspiring conversation!
- Jeff Rasley is a lawyer.
- Author of fourteen books and over 90 articles in academic and mainstream periodicals.
- Award-winning photographer with published pictures from the Himalayas, Caribbean, and Pacific islands.
- Founder and president of the Basa Village Foundation.
- President of the Scientech Foundation of Indiana.
- US liaison for Nepal-based Adventure GeoTreks.
- Partner in Midsummer Books.
- Director of the Indianapolis Peace and Justice Center.
- Co-founder of the Jeff & Alicia Rasley Internship Program for ACLU of Indiana.
- Visit his website at jeffreyrasley.com
- Twitter
- Instagram
- Facebook
- YouTube
This episode is brought to you by Heather Grace Skincare. Use the code STGOIOH for a 10% discount at Heather Grace Skincare - https://heathergraceskincare.com/
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, reach out to the 988 crisis hotline. You can call, text, or chat with a counselor ready to listen and help—your mental health matters. Let's break the stigma and normalize seeking help. Remember, it's OK not to be OK—make sure you're talking to someone.
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00:00:00
Music.
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Three three two one one
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welcome back to another episode of shit
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that goes on in our heads i'm part of this dynamic duo dirty skittles and i'm
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joined with my co-host g-rex g-refs and our amazing guest jeff welcome to this
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chaotic circus jeff how are you doing today,
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Thank you, Dirty Skittles. Good to be with you.
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I'm just fine. How are the two of you?
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Fucking hanging in there. We're living the dream, man. You know,
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we record one Saturday a month and we've already, this is episode number three.
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So, but I'm, I'm getting a little bit more giddy as the day goes on.
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So we're good. Yeah, you've caught us at primetime.
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Not sure if it's the best end of primetime, but. but we're here.
00:01:37
Good to know. And before we went on, I already introduced the subject of the reverse up years.
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So, you know, that should set the tone. It should. It should.
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I'm going to figure out how to
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put that in my show notes. Did you see me hesitate when we did the three?
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And then I was like, oh, no, no, this means. No, I closed my eyes.
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Because you could have stopped it too and given the English reverse double down
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yeah I doubled down I was like I don't know how to count.
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Yeah I know 3, 2, 2 and then we say it yeah it's all threes 3, 2, 1, done,
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You look kind of like one of those rappers, you know? Yeah.
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Throwing up gang signals all the time. Yeah. Oh, my word.
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So are you drinking coffee? Are you a coffee drinker or a tea drinker? Nice.
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Love it. Where are you based out of? I'm in Indianapolis.
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And we live on the White River in an area called Broad Ripple,
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which is an old part of town.
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It actually was a village, so it's called Broad Ripple Village,
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and we're really lucky to live here. It's a beautiful area.
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I look out my back door windows,
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and I see a river and trees, and yet we're inside a big city with over a million
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people in an urban area and all the advantages of a big urban area.
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But, you know, it looks like we're out in the country, so it couldn't be better.
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That sounds so beautiful.
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Beautiful. I know, right? Yeah. Picturesque, if you will. Is that where you grew up?
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I grew up in northern Indiana. So Indianapolis is in the center of the state.
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And my hometown was Goshen, which is up just below the Michigan line. Oh.
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I was just thinking, I'm like, I feel like this is one of those areas where,
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like, you don't know it's there unless you're there.
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But I've never been to Indianapolis, so no idea.
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It used to be
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called india no place because it was really
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a pretty boring city 30 years ago or so but in the last few decades it's really
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has grown it's got a very vibrant cultural light and so yeah it's a much better
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place to live now than when i first moved here when i went to law
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school oh law school nice yeah that's what brought me here that's what's brought
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you to indiana or to us it's such a fascinating yeah he has such a fascinating story i can't wait,
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okay well before you get into it can i tell you that i always fantasize
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that i instead of going to school so i went to
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school for baking and pastry arts don't ask
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why anyways but it was between law school and baking and pastry arts and I chose
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cakes and cupcakes and I think I regret it to be honest like I'm like I want
00:04:53
to be a lawyer it would have been fun but it sounds like maybe not fun so tell us your story Jeff,
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I would not recommend law to most people.
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It's got law school is difficult, boring, annoying, filled with boring and annoying people.
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So, you know, the thing is, you can do a lot of very good things as a lawyer.
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You can, you know, change people's lives for the better or for the worse.
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You can change your community for the better or the worse.
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And sometimes in really big cases, the whole nation or the world.
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So, you know, that part of it, and I was able to do some important social justice
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cases and also a lot of individual cases where,
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you know, it seemed like I helped people, got them out of a jam or,
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you know, worked a problem out for them.
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But, you know, you take your clients and your cases as they come in.
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And so I was not always on the side of truth, justice, and the American way.
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And that can be sort of awful.
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But the process of litigation is just, it's painfully slow and frustrating.
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And I was very glad when I could leave the law behind, which I was in it for 30 years.
00:06:26
Yeah a long time yeah am i allowed to ask like questions about that career,
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about sexist no about your career oh about a lawyer why did i hear yeah sure
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i mean i'm you know we're the three of us are here to talk about whatever the
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two of you I do want to talk about.
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I'm just curious. So I like will kind of go off on side missions is what I call
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it. But so you practice for 30 years.
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You said that sometimes you got to choose. Well, sometimes you were on the side
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of justice in the American way. But then you mentioned that.
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Does that mean that you would sometimes practice?
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Represent somebody that maybe you don't want to? Or what does that mean?
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What's the other side of it?
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Well, I can give you two extreme examples. The very first case that was assigned to me.
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So right out of law school, and I was working initially for a legal services
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organization, which is a poverty law, social justice organization.
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And I was assigned a case to represent a mother whose two young children had
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been sexually abused, tied up with hangers by her boyfriend and abused.
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And it was my job to try to prevent her from losing her parental rights because
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the state not only had criminally prosecuted both her and her boyfriend,
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but But there was a civil administrative proceeding to take away her parental rights.
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And so, you know, she was kind of a pathetic person who was just, you know, not.
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She was in those days we would have said she was retarded, but mentally deficient,
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who was led by a much stronger personality boyfriend who was an awful criminal person.
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And on the one hand, I didn't think she really, it would be the best thing for
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her rights to be totally terminated.
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On the other hand, I wasn't sure that maybe these two kids might be better off
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to just cut the strings entirely and get away from her.
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But I fought for her and we worked at a deal where she had very limited visitation initially.
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And then eventually if all things went well, the kids could come back and live
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with her and it would take a minimum of a two-year process for that to happen.
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So, you know, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
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I also, in later years, defended sort of the other side, the boyfriend who had
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sexually abused, raped a 9 and 11 year old girl.
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And I ended up getting a better plea deal for him than the mother got.
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He got six years in prison. She got eight years in prison.
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She didn't participate, but she was aware of it.
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Somehow that doesn't seem quite fair, but it was my job to get him the best
00:09:41
deal I could, but I was not going to get him off.
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And that was one thing in the criminal cases I did, which I only about 10% of
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my practice was criminal.
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I always told the person, the defendant, that if you did it,
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you're going to tell me and I'll try to work out the best plea deal for you I can,
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but I'm not going to try to get you off if you're guilty because it's your responsibility
00:10:06
to accept responsibility for what you did.
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And then we'll try to help you out from
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that point on so that which is unusual most
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criminal defense lawyers would tell their clients don't tell me if you did it
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i don't want to know all i want to know is your alibi so yeah yeah that's how
00:10:30
do you so at the end okay when you're in those those types of scenarios,
00:10:37
you had mentioned it's painfully slow.
00:10:40
So it doesn't sound like, you know, you're kind of just there for a couple of
00:10:43
hours and then you get to go home and it's all done and over with. These take time, right?
00:10:47
Like you're spending a lot of your time in that moment or in that awful scenario.
00:10:53
Well, yeah, yes and no. I mean, at the height of my practice,
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I had something like 170 cases.
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So I'm juggling many balls, jumping from one case to another.
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So if a case is going to trial, then it gets my full attention.
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I was totally focused on it for hours, days, weeks.
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But when I'm not in trial, then I've got all these other things,
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the discovery investigation interviews on
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and on and that that's the painfully slow
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process is after a case gets filed moving it through like in indianapolis once
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a case a civil case is filed it's two years before it gets to a jury trial a
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year before we get to a bench trial criminal cases Places tend to move quicker, but not a lot quicker.
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So, you know, that's the painfully slow part when you can see how a case should work out.
00:11:57
And, you know, and it's like, okay, I see how this should work out for justice to be done.
00:12:04
But we have to go through all these hoops and it takes forever and ever to get there.
00:12:11
And then sometimes you don't even get there, which is really frustrating.
00:12:16
How did you care for yourself during that time? Because I feel like that would take a huge mental toll.
00:12:23
Yeah, well, actually, you know, this kind of goes back to what G-Rex and I talked about,
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which now seems like a long time ago, and it was painfully slow to get to this
00:12:36
interview from our initial chat months ago.
00:12:40
But I, from my teenage years, actually, when I first experienced depression,
00:12:48
my sort of self-help remedy was exercise.
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And so I played a lot of sports growing up and all through college and adult
00:13:00
recreational leagues and so forth.
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And I would work out. I exercise every day and I've been doing that,
00:13:08
you know, since I was a young and early adolescence.
00:13:12
And that's, you know, that's one of the sort of basic regimens that I've always
00:13:19
used to deal with anything that's depressing, annoying.
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And so that and then another thing that, you know, hopefully is available to most people.
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I know it's not available to everybody, but to be part of a loving family and
00:13:37
a positive community, you know, to have people near you that you love and that love you.
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And then also to have friends that are a positive influence as opposed to dragging you down,
00:13:52
which as a lawyer, that means don't hang out all the time with lawyers because
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they tend to be annoying.
00:14:01
Friggish and self-centered and with big egos.
00:14:05
So, which is not fair to all lawyers, because, you know, take me,
00:14:09
for example, I'm not that way at all.
00:14:11
But the T-Rex might disagree with that from our previous conversation.
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But I'm going to keep talking so she can't say that.
00:14:19
I know. I actually I loved our first conversation and I just loved your journey. So I'm good anyway.
00:14:26
So so those are sort of the two basic things I did. And as T-Rex and I talked
00:14:32
about, depression has been a...
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An ugly black cloud that's followed me since early adolescence that I've had
00:14:43
to figure out ways to deal with it over time.
00:14:47
And one of our interesting points of conversation was I've written 14 books.
00:14:55
And so the last book that I wrote that was published back in December was about,
00:15:02
it's actually, it's a fictionalized memoir.
00:15:05
So it's a novel based on an actual experience of mine, which was hitchhiking
00:15:12
from my hometown in Northern Indiana to Key West and then over to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
00:15:19
But what inspired me to do that was to get out of a depressing situation.
00:15:26
I was stuck in my hometown. I dropped out of college.
00:15:30
I was working in a truly awful factory that Charles Dickens could have described
00:15:36
as a hellhole from the 19th century, but was still there.
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And so I just, I hit the road to have a big adventure.
00:15:47
And that, so it was, you know i'm
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in this awful situation what can i do
00:15:54
to get out of it so i'll hitchhike across
00:15:57
the country and that kind of that started another i guess you could call it
00:16:03
therapy that i've employed my whole life i've traveled to over 40 foreign countries
00:16:10
been in 49 states and when i was
00:16:14
40, when I hit 40 and was experiencing a midlife crisis, which is a,
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it's just sort of an age focused form of depression.
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Recognized the symptoms and knew what
00:16:31
the cure should be and he told me to go take
00:16:34
a hike and then threw down
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in front of me a brochure of trekking the
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mount everest base camp trail and so i went off to nepal the mount everest base
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camp trail fell in love with nepal and the Himalayan mountains and the people
00:16:55
that live in the high Himalayas.
00:16:57
And that became a whole new theme in my life as I started a foundation that
00:17:04
I'm still running that works in a remote area in Nepal.
00:17:08
And I became a trekking and mountaineering group leader and have been over there, you know, 14 times.
00:17:17
So that and so, you know, it's kind of getting out of situations where normal life just is,
00:17:28
you know, allows that black cloud to start closing in has been the other way I've dealt with it.
00:17:38
I love that. What do you think it is about being active for you that works when
00:17:44
you're feeling depressed and sort of getting you out of that headspace?
00:17:47
Well, I think there's at least two aspects to it.
00:17:51
I think there's a chemical neurological aspect that your body is moving or your
00:18:00
brain is excited because you're in a new different
00:18:02
place or you're, you know, you're running or biking or kayaking or,
00:18:06
you know, doing some physical exercise or trekking or,
00:18:10
you know, whatever that there's just, there's a physiological charge that overcomes
00:18:16
that, you know, the depressing,
00:18:18
whatever the chemistry is that causes the physiological feeling and effect of depression.
00:18:25
And I think the other thing is that if you're doing something that you enjoy,
00:18:31
I mean, even if it's painful like you know
00:18:35
running or swimming long distance can be
00:18:37
painful but at the same time it's like yeah this feels good especially if you
00:18:44
hit that second wind or you're just you know you're fit and so it feels good
00:18:49
to be able to do something where you're you know your body is just maxing out.
00:18:56
It gives you a sort of charge.
00:18:59
And, you know, I mean, I know that it's partly genetic and it's just partly
00:19:05
brain chemistry, why some people are prone to depression and other people aren't.
00:19:12
And so those of us who are, you know, those are the sorts of simple things that
00:19:18
we can do without taking drugs and without seeing a psychotherapist.
00:19:25
Yeah. So, Jeff, I have a question to ask you. When we first met,
00:19:30
you were getting ready for hip surgery.
00:19:33
And did that, when you were having that downtime, what did you do to keep your
00:19:37
mental state at kind of status quo?
00:19:42
Yeah, it was a really interesting experience.
00:19:47
Maybe even worse than litigation as a lawyer, because it seemed like it was
00:19:54
long and painful and annoying.
00:19:57
But the really interesting part of that experience in terms of the subject of
00:20:05
your podcast was because I've always been so active and I'm involved with a
00:20:11
lot of organizations and I'm a president of a couple of foundations,
00:20:16
and just sort of have things on my calendar every day.
00:20:21
And now I've had the surgery and I'm told, you have to stay in bed for a week.
00:20:29
And then the second week you have to use
00:20:32
a walker or a cane and then the
00:20:35
third week you can you know you
00:20:38
can get out you got to be really careful and so the
00:20:40
first few days it was so i mean
00:20:44
i was lonely i mean that that was the
00:20:47
strange experience for me
00:20:50
is like i'm cut off from all of
00:20:53
my social connections my you
00:20:57
know the business stuff stuff that i do
00:20:59
in terms of the foundations and i couldn't exercise at
00:21:03
all i mean and that lasted for you know
00:21:06
several weeks well there was physical therapy that
00:21:09
started but you know i mean that's doesn't really qualify as the kind of exercise
00:21:15
i was used to doing but so experiencing this loneliness was really interesting
00:21:22
and kind of painful and then when friends started contact,
00:21:28
me, I was so grateful for any contact, whether it was by phone or by email or
00:21:34
somebody coming over to see me and just sit with me and share a cup of coffee or something like that.
00:21:41
And the positive effect this had is I, you know, realizing how,
00:21:47
for me, this was a very temporary situation and I knew it would only be last
00:21:54
for a short period of time.
00:21:56
I thought that there's other people that it's not such a short situation,
00:22:04
maybe, and other people that it is.
00:22:06
And so I made a commitment that every week I was going to reach out to somebody
00:22:14
that I knew of who was in a spot in life, a place in life that was lonely.
00:22:23
And so I've maintained that commitment and my surgery was February 21st.
00:22:30
So this is almost, you know, getting close to three months later.
00:22:35
And I, you know, tried to be very programmatic about that.
00:22:40
Finding, thinking of somebody, at least one person each week to reach out to.
00:22:46
That's been very gratifying in a lot of ways. I mean, sometimes I feel like,
00:22:50
you know, I'm busy and I don't want to bother with this, but no, I made that resolution.
00:22:55
So I'm going to do it. And each time I do, you know, that thing about doing
00:23:01
good for somebody else does good for you.
00:23:06
I mean, And there's this mutuality that's uplifting, even when it's like,
00:23:10
you know, it's going to just feel like work.
00:23:13
And then you let go and you do it. Oh, no. Okay.
00:23:17
That was really gratifying. I'm glad I did that.
00:23:20
Yeah. Feeds the soul. Yeah. Feeds the soul. Right. I have a random question.
00:23:27
What has been the hardest lesson you've learned so far in your life?
00:23:31
Can I take the Fifth Amendment on that?
00:23:34
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The hardest lesson, you know, nothing is coming to mind.
00:23:42
I mean, there's a lot of hard lessons I've learned.
00:23:46
I mean, I've had several near-death experiences,
00:23:50
like hit on a motorcycle down in, way down in Mexico and being operated on in
00:23:59
this Red Cross hospital with a lizard running across
00:24:03
the ceiling and blood and guts and bandages all over the floor.
00:24:08
But, you know, the thing is the situations like that. And I've.
00:24:13
You know, encounter because of living a fairly adventurous life.
00:24:17
The situations like that can bring out the best or the survival instinct as
00:24:25
opposed to wilting and, you know, just kind of curling up in a fetal position
00:24:30
because you have to cope.
00:24:33
If you don't cope, you're going down and not just you're going to be depressed and lonely.
00:24:38
It's, you know, it's a really crucial situation. I got very sick once on a 21 foot high mountain,
00:24:47
and I had barely moved because the third stage of high mountain sickness is
00:24:54
ataxia, where you lose control of your muscles. You just sort of turn to rubber.
00:24:59
And so, okay, you have to go down, but you can't even walk.
00:25:04
How are you going to do this? And so I made sort of a commitment that I would,
00:25:11
no matter what happened to me,
00:25:13
I would never call for a rescue for me because that puts up in the mountains
00:25:19
because that puts the rescuers in danger.
00:25:21
So you know i did so i
00:25:24
mean i managed somehow putting one
00:25:27
foot in front of the other to make it down and there's a medical clinic at 14
00:25:33
000 feet so i got you know managed to get there and and got taken care of so
00:25:39
but i'll tell you i mean this is kind of just slightly off the
00:25:46
question you asked,
00:25:48
it reminded me of something, which is actually a chapter in that last book I mentioned.
00:25:58
So I had gotten to Key West, sort of reached my hitchhiking goal, and I was heading back.
00:26:08
I was in a place where I was feeling very lonely. Key West turned out to be sort of disappointing.
00:26:15
And I had a really awful experience there because I hooked up with a guy who
00:26:21
was coming out of combat in Vietnam. This is in 1972.
00:26:27
And he had PTSD and he was a heroin addict and he had gone in cold turkey and
00:26:34
he was having DTs and it was just awful, but we got him home.
00:26:40
And then instead of staying around to try to help him out, which he really didn't
00:26:46
need any help from me, I fled.
00:26:48
I just basically ran away from that situation instead of sticking around in Key West like I planned.
00:26:56
So I hitchhiked to University of Miami.
00:27:00
I'm sitting there and I've been there a couple of days. I'm all by myself and
00:27:06
I'm feeling lonely and sad.
00:27:09
And these two very pretty young women all of a sudden just appeared and sat down beside me.
00:27:17
And one of them had a guitar and she's strumming this guitar and they both look
00:27:23
at me and give me these beautific smiles and start talking and after a while
00:27:30
they say, would you like to come with us?
00:27:33
And I'm like, would I?
00:27:35
It's like, talk about angels from heaven. So I said, yeah.
00:27:40
And I followed them and instead of, and they started, they talked about a commune,
00:27:46
that they lived in a commune and I'm starting I'm thinking, oh, wow,
00:27:49
you know, people running around naked and growing vegetables and living off
00:27:54
the land and hippies and, you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll in a commute.
00:28:00
And but instead, we get on this old school bus and it drives for about an hour
00:28:08
and there's a whole bunch of other people on the bus.
00:28:10
And it turns out they're taking me to a Children of God compound.
00:28:18
The Children of God, it's still around, but it's a cult, which its leaders were
00:28:24
accused of sexual abuse.
00:28:27
So it was a truly awful cult in a lot of ways.
00:28:32
It expected you to give all of your material wealth to the cult.
00:28:36
And then it would assign you menial tasks to do.
00:28:41
And if you were attractive, either male or female, in the leader's opinion,
00:28:47
it would send you out to do what they called flirty fishing.
00:28:52
And so I got flirty fished by these two pretty young women.
00:28:56
And once I discovered, realized what I got myself into was.
00:29:03
I was, okay, I got to get out of here.
00:29:06
And so I went from, okay, I'm sad, I'm depressed, to, oh, wow,
00:29:13
this is unbelievably lucky and beautiful to, oh, crap, I'm in a trap.
00:29:19
Because the compound was in Fort Lauderdale.
00:29:23
I didn't even, you know, I wasn't really paying attention to where we were going.
00:29:28
I didn't know where I was. But we were in this great big house and that had
00:29:32
two outbuildings of a male and female dormitories and a high wooden fence surrounding it.
00:29:39
So there was no obvious way. And with, you know, not exactly guards,
00:29:43
but people, two people were assigned to me to be my friends,
00:29:48
to be with me every minute of the day.
00:29:51
So I'm thinking, I got to get out of here, but I'm being watched the whole time.
00:29:55
Anyway so i waited till two eight
00:29:58
about two o'clock or so in the morning everybody's asleep
00:30:02
and i escaped but long
00:30:05
very long-winded answer to a bad
00:30:09
situation to in a problem to solve yeah i'm fascinated by that story the book
00:30:16
it's a chapter yes tell us the name of the book so we Any other listener besides
00:30:22
me that's fascinated by this story, where can we read it?
00:30:26
The title is A Hitchhiker's Big Adventure.
00:30:30
And the easiest way to get it is just go to Amazon and either input my name
00:30:39
or input the title of the book.
00:30:42
Or I have a website. You can go through the website, although it just takes
00:30:48
you to the Amazon buy page for it.
00:30:53
I have one more question, but you're actually, I don't want to keep hogging
00:30:56
up his time. Well, that's fine.
00:30:57
It's okay. Cause I got to have an amazing conversation with him.
00:31:00
So Jeff, what keeps you humble?
00:31:06
I'm not sure I am. People have told me that I come across that way.
00:31:12
Other people have told me I'm a conceited prick.
00:31:15
So I'm not sure that I can say I am humble to answer that question.
00:31:24
But I guess in a way, I recognize because I've tested my own limitations,
00:31:31
I definitely know I have limitations.
00:31:35
And as I'm getting older, the limit, you know, the sort of the end point is getting shorter.
00:31:42
So the limitations are getting more pronounced. But I was raised in a family
00:31:49
that was very committed to, I guess you could say philanthropy.
00:31:55
Very committed to, you've been given a lot.
00:31:59
You know, you didn't do anything to get born. That was a gift.
00:32:04
You didn't do anything to have this body, this brain, this consciousness.
00:32:09
It's all a gift. All of the things in the world that you get to experience and
00:32:15
benefit from, you didn't make them. It's a gift.
00:32:19
The egocentric people like our former president who claim that it's all about
00:32:25
them, they did it all, they're wrong.
00:32:28
Even the most brilliant minds,
00:32:31
the greatest athletes, the best musicians, sure, they have wonderful talents,
00:32:36
they worked really hard to master their craft,
00:32:40
and they contributed a tremendous amount to the world, but they were given so
00:32:46
much to get them started and to help them along the way.
00:32:50
And so, you know, I was taught that lesson by my family, by teachers,
00:32:57
by Sunday school and church.
00:33:01
And I take it seriously. And so I've always felt like I have an obligation to give back.
00:33:09
And like we were talking about nourishing the soul, it's not entirely unselfish because it feels good.
00:33:17
So I've, you know, I taught a class for a number of years about philanthropy
00:33:22
at two local universities here in Indianapolis. And that's important to me.
00:33:29
And to the extent that I can claim any modicum of humble modesty or humility,
00:33:39
I guess that's how I would put it.
00:33:42
That's a great answer and my one
00:33:45
final question i have is between your
00:33:49
midlife crisis and now did it strengthen the relationship with your wife and
00:33:55
did she notice those those changes within you seeing you be more happy seeing
00:34:01
a small glimmer in your eyes of something that made you happy versus was what was dragging you down?
00:34:08
Yeah, I mean, she's a wonderful person in so many ways.
00:34:12
And my life has been so much improved and benefited by her.
00:34:20
I mean, so yeah, she knew that I needed something because at the time, we had two young kids.
00:34:29
I was the head of a small law firm and a real estate.
00:34:34
I was still trying to play sports and this was not the life I wanted. I had not...
00:34:41
I wanted to be a married middle-aged father focused on doing business and making money and all that.
00:34:49
I wanted to live the life of an adventurer.
00:34:53
And, well, I loved the life I had in all ways.
00:34:58
I mean, it was great doing good in law.
00:35:01
I loved being a dad. It was missing.
00:35:04
And it was that sense of adventure, because even though we would take trips
00:35:10
as a family, I hadn't had a big adventure in quite a few years since my boys were born.
00:35:19
And I didn't think I wanted to. You know, like I wanted to, as soon as I could,
00:35:23
I want to get home and be with my kids and be with my family.
00:35:26
And yet there was unconsciously this growing sense of this isn't exactly right.
00:35:35
And so Alicia recognized that, kind of kicked me in the butt and said, go do this.
00:35:42
And then after that, we both agreed we would travel separately every year.
00:35:47
I'd go to the Himalayas. She'd go to England. She loves England or Italy.
00:35:53
And then we'd take trips together
00:35:56
as a family and so it
00:36:00
definitely hurt my recognition of her
00:36:03
recognition I think helped
00:36:06
to bring us back together because we were growing apart even though we were
00:36:11
spending more time together than we had when we were younger and so it's A lot
00:36:19
of long-time married people will say this, but it's actually true.
00:36:24
I mean, the longer we've been married, the deeper and more loving our relationship
00:36:29
has been, has become, and is still becoming. So, yeah.
00:36:35
I love that. My last question for you is, what's next?
00:36:39
Do you have any goals you want to accomplish that you haven't done so already? ready?
00:36:44
Actually, my wife and I were just talking about this and she's still working.
00:36:51
I mean, I retired from the law 10 years ago and have done a lot of other things,
00:36:56
but she would ask me that, and I said, I don't know.
00:37:01
There's nothing more I want to do. I could die today and be happy.
00:37:06
I've lived the life I wanted, and it's not like I want to die.
00:37:13
But on the other hand, I wouldn't mind if I did, because what else is there? My kids are grown.
00:37:21
I've done all these wonderful adventures. The two foundations I've been very
00:37:26
involved with are very well.
00:37:28
They don't really look forward to a particular that are paid.
00:37:36
She'll join. Oh, she's back. Sorry. Something happened with my computer.
00:37:42
Are we good? You're fine. Can we all hear me? You're fine.
00:37:44
Yes. Yes. I stayed recording on my side, so you're good. Should I keep going?
00:37:49
Yeah, keep going. Keep picking up where you're going. Just this last year,
00:37:54
our big project was we endowed a scholarship at the little college in my hometown in my mom's name.
00:38:02
Because my mom was an early woman journalist when it was very tough to be a woman and a journalist.
00:38:10
And she rose up to become the city editor of the local newspaper.
00:38:16
And Goshen College has a very good journalism communications department.
00:38:22
So we've endowed a scholarship there every year.
00:38:26
At infinitum will fund one
00:38:29
student's or two students education through
00:38:33
college so that's you know very gratifying and that's so that's what i do look
00:38:37
forward to coming up with those you know discovering those sorts of things that
00:38:42
we can do with this big pile of money that the law gave me that's awesome i
00:38:50
love that though i love that that's what you're choosing to do next.
00:38:53
So thank you. I appreciate you taking the time and chatting with us and letting
00:38:56
me kind of poke your brain a little bit about just legal fun stuff.
00:39:01
Thank you so much, Jeff. I really appreciate it. Yeah.
00:39:05
Awesome. I hope you enjoy the rest of your Saturday. Yes. Enjoy your Saturday.
00:39:11
Thank you. Namaste. Namaste. Thank you. Bye. Bye, guys.
00:39:16
Bye, y'all. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I'm G-Rex.
00:39:20
And I'm Dirty Skittles. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.
00:39:25
We'd love to listen to your feedback.
00:39:28
We can't do this without you guys.
00:39:34
Music.
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