Matthew Temple: Building Great Relationships, Learning from Others, & Leaving the Baggage Behind | Episode 55

EPISODE OVERVIEW:
So what happens when a film-maker, director, actor, screenwriter, and author meets the love of his life? Well, that would be an easy question if this was a perfect world and it happened when he was 18 and they had healthy models of what a family should be. What if the same man though was raised in a home that ended in divorce, he himself entered into a marriage that ended in divorce, and his life was filled with pain and emotional baggage?

Watch or listen to this incredible episode of the Remarkable People Podcast and see how today's guest not only survived emotionally, but learned to thrive relationally from his environment, journey, and experiences in order to be teaching others how to be Building Great Relationships in their lives too. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Matthew Temple story!

GUEST BIO:
Starting my career as an accidental filmmaker, I wanted to learn screenwriting, so I wrote a "practice script". That script became my first film, the award-winning "Senses of Place." I have since made nine feature films, a series, and more. I've worked with actors Carrie-Anne Moss, Zac Efron, Edi Gathegi, Melora Hardin. I worked with producers Kevin Costner, Bill Borden - Academy Award winner Francis Ford Coppola and Oscar-nominated director Mike Johnson. I've shared the screen with Josh Brolin, Neil Patrick Harris, and Naveen Andrews, among others. Last year, I released the documentary film, "Hardball: The Girls of Summer" and this year will release the psychological thriller, "Caged."

FEATURED QUOTE(S):
"Wherever you go, there you are. You take your baggage with you." - Matthew C. Temple

EPISODE PROUDLY SPONSORED BY:

• Pam Heinold, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate - Pensacola, FL | Phone 850.232.2332

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, CONTACT INFO, SPECIAL OFFERS, & RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Contact Matthew:

• Website: http://www.theloversjournal.com
• Instagram: journalforlovers
• Animal Cookies: The stop motion short film Matthew made with his daughter

Special Offer(s):
15 percent off any copies of The Lover's Jour

Transcript

Matthew Temple: Building Great Relationships, Learning from Others, & Leaving the Baggage Behind | Episode 55

Hello friends. I'm David Pasqualone and welcome to the Remarkable People Podcast! This week, we have a special guest Matthew temple. Matthew is a producer, a filmmaker. And a romantic, he talks about his life story and not just what he learned from his own experiences, but what he learned wisely through his mother and father and then his own experiences.

And like all of us were on our journey through life and we're in different places and we're growing and we're [00:01:00] helping one another grow. So this is an episode that like a lot of our episodes goes deep into the. Guest's story, but it has a lot of practical pieces. We can pull out into our own lives. And then Matt's just a cool guy and a remarkable friend.

He's got a great story to share. And as we're listening, We're not only going to be entertained, but we can check out some of his work. I'll put links in the show notes, and then you can glean what he's communicating to you about life and love in our journey together. So my name's David Pascoe alone.

Thank you for being here today and in the theme of love. And today when I'm recording this, it's my daughter's 17th birthday. Take a few seconds, text somebody. You love them. Write them, call them up. If you haven't spoken with him and just say, Hey, I was just thinking you you're on my heart. I love you. And if you have extra time, [00:02:00] go on to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, leave us a five star rating and comment subscribe if you haven't already.

And that's it, I'm going to stop talking. Enjoy this episode. The remarkable people podcast with our guest and friend, the remarkable Matthew temple. 

PART 3a EPISODE RPP Matthew Templem: [00:02:17] Hey, Matthew, how are you today? Brother? Life is good. Life is really good. Thank you. Yeah. And where, yeah, where are you today? Where are we speaking to you? Out of I'm in Petaluma, California. Very nice. Yeah. Where we've probably about 15 minutes to the beach and about 45 minutes North of San Francisco.

A beautiful, beautiful space to be. Yeah. So we're going to start our interview today and we're going to go off into your story. And just like, as our listeners know, we have listeners from all over the globe and the journey we're going to take today is go through your past the journey to where you are today and [00:03:00] then where you're headed in the future.

So you hope us at the beginning, what did you face? What did you have to overcome in your life and the practical steps, how you did it, and then we'll transition to where you today. So we, as the listeners can get behind you and help you get there. Sound good. I love it. All right, man. Then let's go deep.

You were born. What time and where? No, I'm just kidding. Let's start off in your childhood. Cause that's what forms us. So tell us, how did Matthew temple get formed? You know I was born, so my, I was born in Los Angeles to a Jewish mother and a Christian father. And I was the first born and I learned recently actually I was doing some biography work and I just had this kind of like I had a really good childhood, I should say, but there was this at one point, I thought, you know what, there, when I think back of everything that I remember, [00:04:00] things were really good, but I also know there were traumas or there were things that were going on that I didn't understand.

And I was like, well, from the time when I can understand, I can process that stuff. But then there's things that came before I had, was fully aware or conscious. And there were things there. And I was wondering like, what was that? And this was actually after my mother had passed away and I called my dad and I was like, I just need to spend some time on the phone with you getting to know about what was going on in basically in my life from conception until my, my next brother was born.

When I really started having memories. And one of the things that he filled in for me was that right. I think it was during my, when my mother was pregnant my grandmother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. And so all of a sudden there was this wait, in some ways on who I was in, you know, to my family, to my mother, to my grandmother.

And, [00:05:00] and, and I kind of, I guess I would say that, that, that, wait, there was a responsibility around that. There was, I was this joy, right? I was like, thank God that the son is coming to us, you know and in the Jewish tradition, the you're named after the dead commonly, but using just the first, the first letter.

So my, my mother's father had already passed away. His name was Moisha or Morris and I'm Matthew. And so I was kind of brought, I was brought into the world as this great gift. But obviously there's, there's expectation with that gift, right. To perform, to be something. And then after my grandmother passed away In some ways, there was a sense of that.

Oh, my mom also like that, that she was missing her mother so much almost put this outsized proportion of love and veneration on me. [00:06:00] And as an oldest son of a Jewish mother and this whole story, this whole story was something that that I know impacted me in so many ways of like really just wanting to be of service, to be there.

And I see that as you know, it has all these amazing impact or I love being of service, but then there were also times in my life where I kind of forgot that, you know, there's a reason why on an airplane, you put on the, your oxygen mask before you put on the ones sitting next to you, you want to make sure that you're safe and healthy or whatever, and that you're going to survive the difficulties.

So that way you have what you need to help others. And I think that was one thing that when I got to go back into my biography, I was like, Oh, it took me many, many years to finally come around to realize I actually have to take care of myself to take care of others. So that was where I came in. And I lived in Los Angeles until I was nine.

And at that point, then I kind of started a series [00:07:00] of a lot of moves. My dad moved the family to, to Denver for four years. I joked that he tried to postpone his midlife crisis by moving the family to Mexico for a year. I in all earnestness say he succeeded in postponing it, he didn't eradicate it, but he postponed it.

Which was great. But I had this amazing experience of living in Mexico and then moved back to Northern California and then kind of since then continued to live around the globe and and even around the United States. So, yeah. Awesome. Now how many brothers and sisters did you have total? I have two younger brothers, two younger brothers.

And then how long was it before the next brother was born? So my next brother is almost four years younger than me. And then the next one came two years out, about two years after that. Okay. So you can have some clear memories up to four years old. And a lot of the forming. I know my grandmother died when I was four and a half, but I still remember her vividly [00:08:00] and lots of accounts or so it's like you did have that just impressionable state.

So the relationship with your mom and dad, how was that in the home? Like looking back now, did they have a good relationship? Was it strained? How, how was that? That it formed you without you even knowing it? Yeah, you know, well, my right before my next brother was born, my parents just about didn't make it.

And. And so, and I, once again, I've also recognized that in more of my research in, in development, mental psychology and I say this not as a, as a, as a academic student, but as a life student and as, or as a, as a reader you know, some of the, you know, the impact of, you know, my, the, I wouldn't maybe say some of the emotional connection missing from my parents.

And so how I picked up some of [00:09:00] that it to serve that, you know, to be this emotional, you know, I might have this emotional connection to my mother. But you know, my parents also have functioned very well together. And there was generally, there was peace in the households and But not necessarily, you know, it was, it was almost like I could say my parents had a, had a fraternal type of love, not necessarily an arrows type of love, you know?

So there was definitely you know, some of the passion might not have been there or whatever, but they, they functioned well and they were so different that those compliments were also, it could be both, it was stratifying, but also like I got these two very, very different ways of approaching the world.

You know, my mother was very phlegmatic. She spent a lot of her life, very overweight and was really hard to budge to do something she didn't want to do. But once she [00:10:00] got into going, she really like, she was one of the most adaptable malleable people I ever knew. But she resisted any change in her life, you know, kicking and screaming.

So it, for example, when when my dad wanted to move the family to Mexico, my mother definitely was like, you know, did not want to do it. This is crazy busy. But then she went and she was, you know, everywhere when my people loved my mother, because she was so easy when we moved to Denver, even before that, she didn't really want to go.

She had family, she was close to both of her brothers were in Los Angeles, cousins were there. She didn't want to go. And then she stepped in and into a world there and was just such a beacon of light to so many people. So I had that. And then a father that, you know, is kind of on the opposite side, very sort of sanguine, very interested in a lot of things like to start things, but it wasn't necessarily a follow through her, you know?

So but yeah, just, I mean, my childhood was [00:11:00] pretty special. Just a lot of adventure. Yeah. And also a ton of freedom. My parents gave me so much freedom and you know, when I think back to the things that my parents let me do both as a preteen and as a younger boy, boy, then even as a teenager, like I hitchhiked, I reach out to all over the globe as a teenager.

I mean, that's crazy. And the fact that my parents let me do that was bonkers. But the experiences that I had and the people that I met in the innate trust that I built in the world is something that serves me so well today. And I'm, so I'm just so grateful for that, you know, and and this is going to sort of veer off from that.

But when I was nine years old, my best friend died. And and the became my true spiritual guide for the next about four years of my [00:12:00] life. And one of the great things that I got from that experience was I lost my fear of death because Jesse was not afraid of death. And he was talking about it in the weeks, leading up to his death.

He had talked about death a lot and how he wasn't afraid to go. And that relationship and that connection that then I then had with, with Jesse was then allowed me to leave life fully in this, where I realized the most scary part of life is death. And if I'm not afraid to die, then I'm also not afraid to live fully.

And my parents supported that in a way that was kind of beyond comprehension. And I am just forever grateful that they gave him me that, that freedom and that trust. And it made me into this. Unusually competent human being. [00:13:00] Because I loved the challenge. I loved it and I didn't nobody ever said, wait, you don't know how to do that.

Or no one ever said to me, be careful, you know? And I hear like that all the time with parents these days be careful, be careful, be careful, you know, we don't do that. Don't eat this don't whatever, you know, and, and I never had any of that. And the brilliance of that was that, did I get burned? Sometimes? Of course I did.

Was I in danger? Sometimes of course I was, but we're in danger anyways. Like life, the earth is not a safe place. And so I think that was this thing that I really got from my parents that was so beautiful was, you know, they trusted me and they trusted the world. And sometimes even now, when I look at my dad, he's the most trusting of the world person I've ever met to the point where Aaron wants.

I'm like, my dad is just an idiot. Like you've got to pay more attention to like crap. You gotta be ready to, you know, you've gotta be ready for the [00:14:00] worst. And my dad is never ready for the worst and he's only ready for the good. And when the worst comes, it's just not the worst for him. He's just like, well, this is what, this is what my karma, this is what my destiny, this is what God had in store for me.

This is, this is my life. And so there's never any desire that things are different and it is. Beautiful to watch. And I definitely forget that at times. And I love it. So, you know, I was, I may have mentioned I lived in, I was living in Kenya for a couple of years before this just recently. And, and when I was, I had my first child, I just turned 20.

So it was basically on, you know, I was, my, my ex was pregnant all the way through being 19. And and even when I was 16, I went and lived abroad for a semester or 15, I guess. Yeah. It was 15 when I left. So I [00:15:00] was, I never really lived close to my family since I was a kid. And even during my childhood, during my teen years, I spent a lot of time traveling on my own.

And just six months ago, seven months ago, I moved back to when COVID hit and I was living in Kenya and I moved back and living close to my dad and my brothers. And this were a minder of the way my dad is like, sometimes, you know, he's getting older and and there's, you know, his, wife's having some, some health issues and I'm like, you gotta be more worried.

You gotta do more. You gotta do more. And he's so happy, go lucky. And then he finally goes to the doctor and deals with the doctor's like, we are actually doing everything you can be doing. And he just doesn't worry about anything. And it's man, like if everybody was like my dad, like a lot of stuff wouldn't get done, but we'd be much happier people.

He's the most generous person I've ever met. Both of my parents. Like they were so, so different, but the one thing they had in common is they were insanely [00:16:00] generous. I remember when early two thousands was when my parents got divorced. So I had already, you know, it was after I was married. I had, you know, all my children at that point.

And you know, my my mother lost her. She like, all of her kids had finally moved out. The dog died. My dad moved out. She lost her job. She was going on a hike. She broke her ankle, you know, like in the woods said to have paramedics come and holler out. And she was unemployed for over a year. But yet my mother, when she w she went to these old folks homes and donated her time to take old people to go shopping she knew there was this old, old older woman who lived there, who, who loved certain things from different places.

My mother would drive to like five different stores to make sure this woman got all the things she wanted. Well, my mother had no money and it was crazy. And that was something [00:17:00] both of my parents had was this innate trust in the world and this generosity that, you know, that. Like, you know, that mother Teresa would have something to learn from, well, let's do this.

We covered a lot of ground. We sure did. We have some gaps? Yeah, man, that was awesome. We had some gaps in the story and we have listeners from all different cultures and nations. I want to hit a couple things before we go on. You talked about the main three types of love. Some people aren't familiar with that.

So go ahead and cover the  and arrows love. I think you mentioned two, but just cover real quick, those three. So people understand that background you were talking about. Yeah. Well, you know, to the arrows, slub obviously being the passion and the passion love which in some ways also is a love that is temporal, right?

It doesn't exist [00:18:00] usually forever sexual desires in that kind of fashion. Right. It's the thing that kind of gets us in, right. The, a GAAP Bay love as being this sort of this higher love, this one that's sort of permeates all, all things you mentioned. The second one I'd mentioned for eternal love, which is, you know, the, the love between siblings as it were.

Yup. Yup. So I just want to get him to understand that they had that frame of reference in what you're doing. And then let's talk a little bit with your dad. How old is he now? He is 71 years old and in relatively good health. Yes. Yeah. Shockingly I mean, maybe not shockingly, it takes care of himself, but yeah, no it's because everybody I've ever met that has what you're describing personality as a father and mother, anybody, they usually live without any injuries, without any fear.

They have no diseases, they just enjoy life and they live long happy lives. So that's why I was [00:19:00] guessing your dad's going to be older and healthy and probably live longer than we will maybe. Yeah, he's got it. It's, it's pretty phenomenal. Which since you asked that, I'm just going to follow that up with my mother spent most of her life overweight, as I mentioned.

And when even when my oldest daughter was born, she ended up in the hospital twice during my oldest daughter's first year of life. And I remember my mother said, you know, what? If I don't get my act together, I am I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna not going to get to see my grandchildren grow up. And somehow she couldn't get her act together until my dad left her.

And then she went into this deep spiral and just like one thing after the other, just everything was going wrong. It was as though the world had been saying for a long time, Annie, you got to get your crap together. Like, come on, like level up level up. We know you can do it. And she couldn't. And then there was this period of time where he just truly hit rock [00:20:00] bottom.

And when she did her life just. Turned around, you know, she lost almost all the weight. I mean, my mother was I think 320 pounds that are heaviest. And, you know, in her last years of life, she was, you know, she was a perfectly normal weight. My mother was someone who just carried, you know, she was so gregarious and joyful and happy, but, you know, there was, there's nothing like that much weight to say, there's something going on underneath that I haven't processed.

And she did process that. And then, so she became this incredible inspiration to so many people, not because she lost so much weight, which of course is inspirational, but, but kind of who she became in her community, in the world and what the losing of the weight represented, which was finding our joy, taking care of herself.

And when I was younger, she lived, she tried to live vicariously through her sons. And then at a certain [00:21:00] point, she was like, you know what, no I'm living for myself. And she just found these ways to get through it that were so beautiful that, and she had found so much joy in her life that she died of lung cancer.

She had terminal lung cancer, but she had so much joy that she had no idea. She went into the hospital on a Friday. Thinking she had pneumonia, they gave her some medicine. So you know what? You seem, you don't seem like you're in great shape. Spend the night, the next day gave her medication. She wasn't better.

10 days after checking into the hospital, my mother died of terminal lung cancer. When they, when they finally found the cancer through a cat scan, which took them three times to find it, cause for some reason they couldn't find it. They also found that her spine was basically completely destroyed by the cancer as well.

They couldn't believe that my mother could still stand. So, [00:22:00] you know, and I'm just bringing that up because this joy that she had finally found. And when you talk about this, you know, my dad living on my mother didn't live long. And I think the toll of so much stuff earlier in her life eventually caught up with her.

But she, when I, when she died that week was one of the most beautiful weeks of my life, the way my brain others. And I connected and being with my mother as she was departing, there was not, not to say we didn't cry our eyes out and everything, but, but we,

there was this recognition that she had come to the earth and done what she came for. That she didn't need to stay around any longer because she had actually done it. She got to the point where she had healed this, this stuff she had. And, you know, she [00:23:00] carried grudges, not many, but a few. And those few were really, really deep, deep grudges.

And I remember when I walked into the room just a couple of days before she died and she was basically holding on to say goodbye to me because within an hour after I got there, she went into, she basically went into a coma and was gone. And I'll get emotional too talking about it a bit. It was a, she was just waiting for me to say goodbye.

And I came and I read, I said, goodbye. And I, my daughters had written her a get well, soon card. Cause none of us knew she was dying. We all thought that I was going to go, we're going to go talk to the doctors about a treatment plan. And I just like talked to her for a few minutes. I read the, the three the three letters.

And as soon as I was done, I sensed her. She was slipping away and I was like, Oh, and I want to show you, we made you a little [00:24:00] movie. Me and my daughters made her a stop motion film, and I can, I can give it to you. You can put it in the show notes. It was this little, two minutes, stop animation, short film I made with my kids that it ended up actually playing in festivals, film festivals, over all over the world.

But I was like, Oh mom. And like, we did this and I want to show it. I want to show you. It's not quite ready yet. But I want to show it to you. And I pulled out my laptop and I realize I pulled it out and I was out hit play, or maybe I've been hit play. And I looked over and her eyes were closed.

And I realized that the reason why I wanted to show her now is I knew she was leaving. And I, I, you just feel it go, I can feel it going. I just wanted to hold onto it for a little bit longer, but, but she was done. She had done what she had come for. And so that's part of what made this such a beautiful thing such a beautiful week was she had done it.

And when she did, I just felt in the room, [00:25:00] she had forgiven everybody. She'd forgiven. Those who had aggrieved, who had trespassed against her. And, and that was one of those beautiful feelings in the world. And I think that's why it was also so amazing. It's like, I felt the way she let that go. And I often think that we think of love as sort of the, the sort of the highest what the word is sort of the highest state that we as human beings can aspire to.

Is this great love is a God Bay love this godly veneration love. I was like, wait, you know, That's actually easy love is not hard. What was easy. It's the getting there, that's hard. And it's all the stuff that we build up. And I think it's Rumi, even who said, right. It's that love is that we're not here. You know, that, that our sort of our task is not necessarily to find love too, but to break down the barriers that we built against it.

And, [00:26:00] and so I kind of feel that actually forgiveness is this sort of the greatest capacity for human beings, because yeah, you could say it's love, but love is actually innate, but forgiveness takes true, true effort. And when we get there, then the loves comes pouring in, you know? And so they're getting it, living in this space, being in a space with my mother, you know, and on the, just that, that Le that last day, Mo almost everyone come and said their goodbyes and, and they moved my mother into palliative care and it was just me and my, my two brothers and I, and we, they brought us in a bed.

I don't even know if we slept that night. We might have taken turns, but we just sat there and we like played guitar and sang her songs and made fun of her and teased her and told jokes. And Yeah, it was really beautiful. It was really beautiful. Oh, I'm sorry. Go on, go on. I have a, there's a [00:27:00] slight lag.

So listeners, please forgive me if I'm cutting you off. Matthew, what were you going to say? Finish that? Yeah. I was just gonna, you know, and I think I was going to passing that on and sharing that in part, because we talk about this and we hear this so often that when people get to the end of their lives, all those things that they thought were still important, or aren't the grudges, the anger, the, the holding onto what other people think of me, all that stuff.

And there's actually something like that that we don't actually have to wait until we're dead or someone close to us dies. We will generally, like, we generally like to be in a lot of pain before we finally learn our lessons. So in some ways we do have to, but in other ways, the, those who come before us, those who pass away before us have something to teach us.

And if we can [00:28:00] really pull in that lesson, if we can really pull that in, we get to live such, such fuller lives without having to wait until your mom dies, or my mom dies, or until I'm on my death better, I'm faced with terminal cancer, you know, That's all I have. Yeah. Now at that point, how old was your mom when she was, when she passed?

Oh, a seven and a half years ago. She would've been 72. So I guess she was 65. Yeah, 65. Okay. And then how do you, how so many of us struggle with forgiveness because we've been hurt so bad or so deeply? Is it something she did between her and God alone? Or did she share with you how she finally let it go?

Like how can our listeners let that go in our lives? So we don't get eaten up from the inside out? Well, I think one of the things that is can often get missed is that, is that there's some sort of [00:29:00] trick. Or if I learn something that I can figure this out and, and I don't think there is, I think, you know, we actually do need to go through life.

We need to have our experiences. So we do need to suffer on our own as much as I it's too bad, we just do. And, and we know we do because we all do. So if we do it, it must be the way it, it is, you know? But one of the things was that, that summer before she passed away, my brothers and I sat down with her and we had kind of been coddling her, particularly around my father and his, and his, and his, and his new wife was we had sort of like jumped on the.

Bandwagon of, she was aggrieved and therefore she needed petty and she needed defending and, and she needed us to come to her aid or whatever. And, and we were kind of hurting our lives in order to maintain her, [00:30:00] her her, her grudge, her grievance. We were enabling her. We were enabling her sort of bad behavior as it were.

And did she have a right to be angry? Absolutely. But it wasn't helping her. It wasn't helping anyone around her. And so we finally said, I was like, I am done playing this game. I, you are my parents. You are not my child. I am not treating you like one anymore. I'm doing things for the family now, because for years it would be, we do something that my dad, just for my mom kind of, you know, move on to all these chess pieces, making my family, my life crazy to try and basically placate my mother's like a grudge or her grievance or whatever it was or her pain fair enough.

It was pain. But at a certain point it's like, So people make mistakes and you, you got to be, and it's not helping [00:31:00] you. Right? Like you holding onto this, it's not helping you, it's hurting us. Your children it's hurting you. It's the one thing I, my mother, as I'd mentioned, she had gone from a life that was really far from enviable to a life that was truly profound and beautiful.

And she had, you know, she had joined food addicts anonymous and she was doing Marianne. Williamson's a course in miracles. And as like a study group and it was just really beautiful work she was doing. And it was really wonderful. And but we were enabling her to hold on to this last piece that wasn't serving her.

So we were like, I'm done with that. And, and it was funny because she said at that point, she was like, okay, fine. I'll, I'll forgive your father, but I will not, I'm not ready to forgive his wife. I was like, you know what, we'll start with that. But we were pretty adamant about it. And that whole thing changed.

Even during that visit, she invited her friend over, over I, one of her best friends to [00:32:00] basically try and tell me. To like support my mother still, or that she was perfectly justified in where she was at or whatever. And so her friend comes over and we're having this conversation and then things. And then my mom brings up, her friend brings it up and things start getting a little heated.

And then my mom leaves the room, basically being like here, friend, you deal with my son and tell him. And I was like, I start arguing with her. I'm like, and then I find out that this is the setup. When my mom has brought this person in here to try and convince me, I'm like, no, like, mom, get your butts back in here.

This is not how this is going down. I get that you're in pain. I get it. Like, that's fine. But you're being angry is not healing your pain, you know, is this grudges that we hold onto their people somehow it's can be cathartic in a certain sense, but certainly not healing nor beneficial. It basically it's like it, it triggers something in me.

And if we go back to, you know, the [00:33:00] way our neurology works, we actually can get addicted to certain neurochemistry. And so if we have in our childhood particularly. Stress or, or, or pain, the hormones that are released in our brain, we can actually get addicted to those the same way we can also get addicted to to different endorphins or why people, why people might be sort of serial daters.

Cause I always want that feeling of new, whatever, or people like jumping out of airplanes or whatever. Like those things are fun. I love doing all that stuff. But but it can also be addictive and you can be as addicted to jumping out of an airplane as you can be addicted to having consternation and conflict in your life.

Cause that's, it's, it's, it's reactivating these neurochemicals that, that are familiar, therefore comforting, even though it's miserable. And I was like, I'm done with that mom. And so kind of coming all the way [00:34:00] back to answer your question, that process started. And then I can't tell you for sure. My mother never said, Hey, I've let everything go.

But the feeling in that room during her last three days of life where like, it was like the angels were there, it was, God was there. It was, it was my, my mother had, she had done what she had come four. And she had like, and I got the sense too, that she realized that she knew she was going. She knew she was dying before we did, because she lost the ability to speak.

And even though my brother was there during all the doctor's visits, She knew. And my brother said afterwards, Oh, I, she knew four days before we did two days later, she died. So it wasn't that it wasn't this big thing, but, but she knew. And my brother's like, Oh, she got it. And I believe it was also in that moment where she's psyched.

I have these grandchildren who I love. I've got these amazing friends. I have [00:35:00] this amazing life. I've got these amazing children. And yet I've given my energy to being angry at people. And that same energy I could have put into the love I have for my children, my grandchildren, my community, everything, my family, the world love God, everything.

Why in the world am I putting it into this other place? And you just felt it in the room. And it made walk, walking into that room, such that three days of being in a room or two and a half days, being in a room with, with my dying mother where the most profound days of my life. But you couldn't tell me that with her words, you know?

Yeah. So the actual process, like, you know, what happened and why, and the result it brought, but you don't technically know that how she did it, but that's okay. Because acknowledging that it's there and acknowledging why waste that [00:36:00] time. Like why waste his time in our lives, but it's not that easy. Like I, that's something I struggle with and people all around the world struggle with is you forgive, but how do you forget?

And just really let it go forever. So that's cool that, you know, it's not how you start. It's how you finish and your mom finished strong. Right. So that's fantastic. You guys get to have that beautiful experience. One more thing to you. She died of lung cancer. So that's kind of rigorous. She has smoker or does she?

She was not, her mother was a smoker. Her mother died of lung cancer. So she grew up, but my mother was to her smoking was the biggest no-no in the world. So it was a little bit ironic that she died of lung cancer. Yeah. Cause that's where I was wondering. Cause you never mentioned that earlier and then lung cancer, you know, there's all different causes, but sometimes it just happens.

I know a kid right now, 23 years old, healthy as a horse, got scholarship to play baseball in college. Never [00:37:00] smoked, never dipped, never doesn't drink. I mean, he's clean as can be. You've got tongue cancer and they had to remove like the majority of his tongue and it's just how it happens sometimes. So yeah.

All right. Well, Matthew, so we got you're born the first few years were forming with like your grandmother and then your mother and your father. And then you kind of talked about your childhood a little bit. You got two brothers. And then we jumped ahead to your parents. What happened in between that significant, what did Matthew have to face and overcome to learn and grow from that our audience can too well, when you get to be 44 years old you have you know, the challenges they are many you know, and, and so it's almost hard to know is kind of where, you know, where to start.

When I was 15 [00:38:00] years old it was right after I turned, there was a summer after ninth grade. And as I mentioned, you know, when a good part of eighth grade algebra in Mexico, then we moved back into a new school in ninth grade. I'm like, you know what? I was really just had this feeling. I got to leave the country again.

I want to do an exchange semester and I came from a fairly poor fan lane. And my mother just laughed and said, you better go get a job. And that's exactly what I did. I went and I got a job and saved up enough money and through personal connections and was able to go and spend this semester living in Germany.

And remember when I arrived in my first. Cut my first week there, my host mom. So I lived in the castle by the way, which was kinda cool. And the, you know, the, the, the floors were, were flagstone [00:39:00] floors. And my host mother was pulling a milk container out of their fridge and it was in a glass container.

It slipped out of her hand and it shattered and milk spilled all over the floor and it was flagstone spores. So cleaning wasn't it's because we're a modern, it was not a modern kitchen. It's like, it goes everywhere and it gets in the cracks between the, you know, the stones and everything. And I just expected this, you know you know a reaction of anger and my whole body seized up intense.

And she said, Oh my look at the beautiful milk. And she might as well have slapped me on the face with that. I was shocked, you know, did not see that coming. And I was like, Oh my God, like, there's a, there's another way to react [00:40:00] to something bad happening. And I was like, Oh, like, let me help you clean it up.

And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, I've got it. And I immediately went into my room. I grabbed my journal. And I flipped it over and I wrote on the back and I wrote parenting journal and I started from the back moving towards the front. And I just started writing about things that I wanted to do as a parent things that I didn't want to do, things that I loved, that my parents did things that I wish that they hadn't done.

One of the things that I was going to do is not, you know, curse or get angry when bad things happen. Now, Lord knows that I have failed mostly my life at, at emulating my host mother on a regular basis, but at least I had that as a foundation to work, work with and work towards. And so that was the age of 15, the age of 17.

I was hitchhiking around Europe that summer. And [00:41:00] I was on the Island of Iona in Western Hebrides and stuff Island. And I was just this magical place. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna, I have a daughter soon and I'm going to name her Iona. And sure enough, two years after that, I was back on the Island of Ireland and with my with my then girlfriend later wife now ex-wife and there we conceived my first daughter.

I own them. So, you know, in my biography there was you know, there was. There was always something in my biography of, I'm not necessarily here to go the easy way. I had a full scholarship to Oberlin college, by the way. I, some graduated I'd graduated top in my class. I had the president's scholarship.

I had all this stuff. It was like, basically, if you go to Oberlin college for free, instead, I decided not to go and I was gonna have a baby [00:42:00] and continued making music at that point. And a year later I found a way to take my acapella group and my, and my wife and my daughter. And we went toward Europe and got a grant and and rented a place in Northern Germany where we used our grant money to rent a couple of rooms and a, in a studio space and made music.

And and during that time, my wife got pregnant with twins and we came back to the States and I was like, well, I had twins and I was 22 years old with three kids. And just decided that if I don't go to college now I never will. And fortunately I was in the state of Vermont, which had a lot of social programs that made it possible for me to work nights and go to school during the day and, you know, be you know, really be there for my kids on the weekends and, and, you know, in between break times.

And I, you know, my, my college [00:43:00] career was going to school, going to work and the restaurants coming home late at night Cleaning the kitchen then the twins would wake up and walk them back to sleep. You know, put them down, wake up at seven in the morning, take the bus to to college, do that, you know, hitchhiked back to work because the bus schedule didn't work with when I needed to be at work and when my last class was over.

So I'd hitchhiked back into town you know work, you know, and then get, make sure that I was caught up during the week. That way my weekends were basically free to be with the kids. And so you know, that, you know, it was talking about, you know, struggle. There was, you know, there was that.

And you know, and you know, my, my ex and I, we got together really young. I mean, we had our, we were, she was 13. I was 14. [00:44:00] The first time we had a role in that, Hey and you know, throughout high school, we weren't really together. We didn't really get together until our senior year year, but but from the very beginning, when we first met in ninth grade, there was, was, there was you know, there was this attraction.

And, and it was profound, you know, the, it was profound and it was challenging and those challenges were at times disheartening, but they were also. Pretty phenomenal. You know, the person that I had to become, the growth that I had to go through to, you know, basically where, you know, my, like I said, my teenage years were so profound in like, yeah, I lived in Mexico and in Germany.

And in those years I hitchhiked tens of thousands of miles around Latin America, [00:45:00] the United States, Europe. I went to these international youth conferences all over the world. I had this incredible time of year finding myself and speaking new languages and kind of blowing my mind with this, with, with learning, how other languages sort of expand your way of seeing different things.

It was, it was incredible. Yeah. And now all of a sudden I'm confronted with, I don't really know myself, I'm in a marriage before I could know who I was. I was a father before I could know who I was. I was a father of three just as I was, you know, getting the, the very first touches of being able to understand who I was.

Meanwhile, I have somebody else who's so, so different from me basically, you know, kind of tempering me as it were, you know? So my, you know, we were together for nearly 20 years and [00:46:00] you know, I feel like during those times I became like a, a, a. You know a Ninja sword of being, you know, 200 folds or whatever they say, no, it's just like, you know, the hammer and the anvil.

And there I am this like piece of metal just getting hammered between the and bill and the hammer. But you know, the forging of what that took and something that really sort of culminated in my, in my mid thirties with where with really with, you know, there was a series of, of lessons that came, that I had been gathering over my lifetime and paying attention, and the lessons were finally, I finally sort of had the maturity and the breadth of experiences and and really the knowledge to, to now kind of put those pieces together.

And in many ways, culminated with the death of my [00:47:00] mother, which was sort of the this kind of like final piece of my youth. I was 30 that 36 when my mother died. I think it was 36 when my mother died. And that was kind of like this emphatic end to my youth. Because I really was young in so many ways for so long.

And with that stamp, it was like, Oh, I, I just, I grew up so much and all of that forging and all of those challenges. Brought me into this place where I didn't, I, I, every challenge, every difficulty finally became clear what it was there for. And, you know, and, and it was, it was, I feel like in some ways it really came, you know, there was probably between ages of 33 or 34 [00:48:00] to 36.

Those things were becoming really, really clear, but that was this final thing of every difficult thing or quote unquote, bad thing that's ever happened to me. At some point I could look back and I had enough distance from it or separation from it that I could look back and say, Oh, now I see why that happened.

And it was at that moment where I said, you know what? There are times where I can't see why it happened in the moment, but I know a hundred percent of the time, every time, because I'm a curious person and I pay attention at some point, I'll get to the point where I can say, Oh, now I see why that happened.

Yeah. There's a verse in the Bible that says all things work together for good to those that love God. Those are called according to his purpose. And even when we're in our deepest, darkest days, seasons, even months, years, it all works out for God's lawyer for pursuing him. Exactly. That's exactly right.

And that's, that is so easy to lose sight of. [00:49:00] When things are challenging. But when you've lived long enough and you see that that's happened every time, then, then you can also say, you know what, Oh, I just made this huge mistake. I just made a $10,000 mistake or I made a, you know, I, I can't believe I did that.

I, I swerved and I hit the, you know, and I, I hit this other car because I thought to avoid hitting a squirrel or whatever, you know, like, you know, there are all these, all these things, you'd say, Oh man, why did I do that? And it's just that, you know what, at some point it's going to become really clear why that happened.

So why don't I just, instead of beating up on myself or hating myself for being angry with myself for that mistake, say, you know what, I'm going to immediately get curious, to find, figure out why did that happen? Not, Oh, why did that happen? But why did that happen? And that [00:50:00] intonation, like, then that was what happened during those period of times was if I changed my intonation with this question, why is this happening to me?

Or why did that happen to me then? I will be a happy person. And so, you know, so I, I, I S I strayed a little bit from, from that initial kind of your initial question, but you know, that those, there were so many experiences in my life that were deeply, deeply challenging. And yet at the same time, those challenges are, you know, were vital.

They were totally vital each and every one from the things that other people did, to me, that felt where I felt wronged to the times where I just did something knuckleheaded, or the times where I was actually, you know, where I hurt someone else, you know? So, yeah. [00:51:00] And then one thing is you skipped, you said how you had a choice between going to college for music, and then you moved, but talk about quickly your passion for music and how that ties into today.

Got it. Well, you know, my passion for music was almost accidental. I, and I think my passion for music was actually a little bit more in my passion for performance, cause I'm not a good musician. At some point I've been thinking about remastering my first, my first CD and, and kind of rereleasing it.

And putting up on SoundCloud or, or Spotify or something. I I wasn't that great. I was never a very good singer. I was an, I was an acapella group. We're not a great singer, not a great musician. There was this period of my life where I was writing songs and I don't know how I was doing it, but I was writing songs that really [00:52:00] resonated with people such that I was invited to go perform all over the U S and Europe and was able to make a living for a year, touring Europe and getting a grant for my music and all this stuff.

So so it was, in some ways it was, it was like, it was just part of the thing that pulled me. Maybe a, you know, away from going to maybe away from going to college, into being exactly where I needed to be for when my first daughter was born for, you know, and my ex and I had been pretty much broken up right before, you know, before she got pregnant with the twins, we were like, know what, we're 21 years old or something, what are we doing where we're not happy together, this isn't working out.

Why should we just make each other miserable? And, and but we were still committed to co-parenting and and we had, actually, we were [00:53:00] living in this in this big community and it was an eight, no converted train station in Germany. And I had moved out into another room, but we were still co-parenting.

And so we started a daughter together and we were very committed to that. And during that period of time, she got pregnant with, with, with the twins and yeah, it was so like, you know, it was so magical in so many ways. I twins are these amazing children and, you know, and when I look at okay, you know, we're in the middle, cause what brought us there and these twins needed to be in my life.

They were there. You know, in, you know, I'm sure there'll be, probably have listeners sometimes too, who were thinking, you know what, man, like Sometimes marriage just gets really, really hard. And we, we live in a world where we have a choice. Do we stay, or do we not stay? And there are consequences to those, to [00:54:00] those choices.

And and one of the things that a mentor of mine shared with me when I was going through a really difficult period of time in, in, in, in my first marriage was she was like, you can't leave angry, don't leave. You can't leave angry and you can't leave for someone else. So since you're angry, you can't leave yet.

You have to go, you have to make sure that you've had the best year or two of your life. And if you still want to go or not the best year of your life, best of year two of your marriage. And if it's still not right, then you'll know you're doing it on a freedom and you're not being controlled by your anger.

And but one of, one of these like huge lessons was that I actually needed to, to heal the part of me that that was so hard that was making that my marriage difficult. And so I know asked about this music, but it's something that [00:55:00] The, the it's something that when I kind of see it, was, it just, it was a, it was a flash in the pan, but it served its purpose.

You know, it served its purpose to get me into these places, to bring certain challenges into my life, to bring certain joys into my life, to keep certain passion alive in my life. So it was this very brief thing that happened for just for a few years. And I moved back when we, when that our year in Europe was over, we came back my ex was, was pregnant with the twins and I thought life of a traveling musician, isn't gonna work with this many kids.

We could barely do it with one, but doing it with three, not going to happen. And that's where I kind of, you know, then switched my focus into, into filmmaking. And that was really what became my, my career after that. And now, what was it that you were struggling with? It was making you angry in the marriage.

And then how did you overcome it? Because I know we have listeners all over the world who are struggling with anger and frustration and marriage. So what did you specifically face and how [00:56:00] did you get through it? Got it, man. That's such a huge question. That's that's podcast, that's that's podcasts worth.

To me it's one of my favorite sort of stories of my life. In part, because it was so difficult, but also because it was so rewarding for me personally, for the growth that I had to go through for the, for what I was able to, you know, where I was able to go with it. And also because actually even at the end of that, I I knew actually that it became a true choice because at the end it was, you know what, I can, I could do this for the rest of my life.

I could do this. But I also know that it's not actually what's right. It was just, so there was so, so much clarity, but like, I still love my ex you know [00:57:00] she's, you know, she's a great human being. And so that's, it's not like I don't love her anymore. And even at the time when that came, it was like, you know, our needs as individuals are.

So how much different that for sure us to stay together? The tragedy is that one of us has to make huge sacrifices to what is our sort of our, our core importance in life or what, what we truly feel we need. And therefore it's actually just not. Fair, you know, I, I, well, I'm going to go do my thing and the love can still weak.

I can still have an enormous amount of love for you and, you know, and in your difficulties, I can have an enormous amount of compassion for you, but I don't have to own it. I don't have to take it on and I don't have to basic, I don't have to, you know, the depth of the depth of my sacrifice gets to sort of end here with that.

[00:58:00] Now the process, some of that was I need to know who I am and I need to basically be confident. And I guess this is one of the big things that I realized was we did fight quite a bit. And at one point I remember my oldest daughter said to me, she said, you know, Paul, like you're, if you're the year it's it's within your power to stop fighting, it was you're basically, I don't believe it's in my mother's power to stop fighting, but it's within your power.

So you have to do it. And she kind of shared this with me in a moment where I was realized I do have that power and I could stop being triggered, you know? And I was like, Oh, I could actually work. And it was, you know, someone said, I believe that you can not be triggered. And I was able to live into that belief of that person, who I cared for [00:59:00] and.

And then it also became this thing where I, and I've seen this so often when, when people would get in arguments is that if there's a people will stop arguing with you. If there is, if they know that there's no chance of like, of changing your mind, you know, it's like when I'm certain about something, people don't fight with me now getting to that certainty.

And how do you get there in a way where you also need to be malleable and open, particularly in a marriage, right? In a marriage. It's not a one-way street. We need to be able to move back and forth and, and compromise as this beautiful thing in marriage. You know, compromise sometimes can be like, Oh, it's this dirty word.

It's this negative thing. But no compromise is beautiful because compromise means I'm going to do something I wouldn't have otherwise. So I, I am, I'm this, I it's clear what I'm going to do. And the way that I do things, and someone comes along and says, no, we're not doing it that way. We're doing this way.

And I'm like, well, now I'm compromising this thing. It's important to me. [01:00:00] And for a long time, I resisted compromise. And then I realized, wow, I'm living this life. I would never live. Otherwise I get to experience new things. And that was beautiful. But if I wasn't also clear that I was making a choice to do that, right?

So the difference was not, am I going to compromise this, but am I going to choose this? And, and I mentioned before, this, this this mentor of mine who said to make, make sure to have the best year or two of your marriage, if you're going to leave, I decided I was never going to, to, I don't want to say, I never want to, I'm never going to give up what I I'm never going to be like, okay, fine.

I'll do it that way. Yeah. Every time I went to do something that was not my first choice. I would make the choice to choose that instead. So I won, you know, Chinese food in, [01:01:00] she wants Mexican food. I'm like, Oh fine, we'll go up Mexican food. Right. That would have been in my twenties. That was it. You know what?

I keep doing the things that you want to do, I'm not doing what I want to do. And now I can hold a grudge. I can hold resentment because I want to Chinese. And you wanted Mexican. And I keep compromising doing Mexican when I want Chinese. And therefore things never go my way. And all I do is I spend my life doing things your way and not my way.

And now I don't even know who I am anymore. I'm not happy anymore. Then I got to a point where I said, you know what? I want to Chinese food and you want Mexican food. There's only one way I'm going to do Mexican food. And that is if I choose to do it. Right. So now I can say, rather than being like, I'm compromising, I'm gonna do it this way.

It's like, you know what, I'm now choosing it. So now five days from now, I'm like, you know what? I want Chinese food and you're like, you want Mexican food again? It's not like, well, last time [01:02:00] I compromised and did a year away this time you compromise and do it my way. I don't have bring any of that stank.

Any of that score-keeping any of that grudge, we talked about grudges earlier. I'm not bringing any of that into it, but instead I got to say, you know what, Nope, this is this time I'm having Chinese. Well, I really want Mexican food. Well, if you really want Mexican food, you should, by all means, have Mexican food, but I'm going to have Chinese food.

So we can either stop by and pick up Chinese on the way, or we can go pick up Mexican food on the way, and however we're going to do it. But this is now important to me. And I don't have any attitude about it. I'm not holding any grudges. So if I don't have any attitude about it, she doesn't have to have any attitude about it.

And now we actually get to that harmony. Right? And so it's basically choosing constantly choosing. And and that was, is like this magical understanding for me to come to. And I don't, my compromises aren't really compromises anymore. It's that somebody else [01:03:00] is my, you know, my, my partner, whoever that happens to be whoever I'm dealing with, and this is also sometimes with my kids or with friends or whatever, I'm not going to begrudgingly.

Doug, are you fine? We'll do it your way. If there's something that's really important to me, I stayed it and it doesn't mean that I won't do the other, but I'm going to choose the other way. I'm not going to compromise until the other way. Yeah. And I do, actually, I do want to talk about that because what you're describing is like a paradigm shift or a mental choice.

And you said, you know, you don't want to hold on to bitterness and keep score. That would be a compromise and negotiates where you talk through it and you both come to mutual terms. So you found a very unique and healthy way where you're not compromising. Like, I don't feel like compromised at work because you're not compromised.

You're holding that bitterness and grudge, and you're not having to go through a full-blown three-hour negotiation over what to have for dinner, but you're [01:04:00] making a mental switch. You're almost like, I don't want to say talking yourself through it, but that's what you're saying, if I'm hearing you correctly, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And it, yeah, like in the even, you know, during that period of time where I was saying I had the best like year and a half of my marriage was I could say, you know what, that's not my first choice. I would rather do it the other way. But, you know, just so that I'm, it's just so that we're clear, that's not really my first choice, but I'm going to choose it.

You know, and early on, it was a little bit more like, excuse me. I. Yeah, it wasn't even really just kind of a, just, just to name it. You know, I need to be clear that it's not my first choice, but I'm still going by doing it. I'm not compromising into, I'm choosing into it as a second choice and everyone has a plan B that's totally fine.

You know, there's nothing wrong. We've been, you know, at the end of the day, most of the things don't [01:05:00] matter. But at a certain point in life, those things might add up and you say, you know what? And really kind of, one of the big shifts came was in order to maintain peace. I'm I'm, my life is now becoming about my second choice as always.

And that's not a way I felt that I could truly thrive. My thriving was going to be able to be really in flow. And that was when it was just, okay, this is it's it's time to move on, but it wasn't for lack of real effort. And the amazing thing was is that if I look back and this is since you talked about challenges and then we get to move on to more fun things, I guess then, you know, my, my, my former marriage, but the, the amazing thing is that because I, I did so much of the healing, then I didn't have to bring that same crap with me.

You know, and so often, you know, there's the saying, right? Wherever you go, there you are, [01:06:00] you, we take our stuff with us until we heal it. And if we don't heal it, it comes with us because the difficulty in my, in my first marriage, we're, we're not like because of her, you know, it w and it wasn't necessarily because of me, but a lot of it was because of me.

And I could say a lot of us because of her, but that doesn't help me at all. Like, what did I do? And how did I react when she did this? You know, could I be, could I have been like a Kung Fu man? Could I have been like a, you know, Quito master, deflecting stuff off. And that's ultimately where I came to. It was like, you know what?

I don't need to, I don't need to fight. You know, and it's not to say that I, that I have a conflict free relationship at this point. Cause that would be not true. Cause there is conflict. I think that's part of life, but the beauty he's living together, we'll always have conflict at some point going to happen.

I'd like to say that it, it, you know, she used to, my fiance used to joke with me, she'd say, you know, she called me the prophet of doom [01:07:00] because I was like, well, you know what? This, this honeymoon feeling that we have it ain't gonna last forever. Like I know that and I don't want to pretend like we'll we'll here we are like, you know, going on five years in, into our, our relationship and it's still pretty much feels like the honeymoon phase.

And so I have to say, you know what? This takes effort. We, we have to work on it. We, and we do. We definitely put in a lot of effort. And it's not always, it's not always fun in games necessarily, but but I, but that the, that, that arrows love that passion crazily enough is still there. But I say crazily enough, because just because like.

Even in, like in whether it's books, relationships, psychology, I've read, or even if it's cow neuro, our neurology works in the way our, our hormones work in the way that, you know, that, that those things shift within us. I'm not supposed to feel this way [01:08:00] five years into a relationship. And I do. But that does come from a certain amount of, yeah, there's there's effort that that goes into it, but it's also the work that, you know, that, that, that that my fiance and I have done both together, but also individually coming into this.

So therefore we have this amazing foundation that we can, that we can work from. And I just say that because, you know, we talk about this where there's no sort of like shying away from the reality that, that the past, that the past that we had deeply informed the human being is that we have become, and therefore the past that we had were also beautiful and we really honor those pasts and we're grateful for our, for everything that, that we each had separately.

[01:09:00] Because that's, it's given us a, you know, it's given us so much. So yeah, there was a lot of this healing, you know, th this healing and And I think that that can sometimes take time. And I, and I, I always like to sort of be a little careful in when I talk about this because, you know, Sarah and I, we do have a relationship podcast called the interracial couple podcast.

And you know, is that, you know, the effort and the work is so vital. But there are definitely times when, you know, there are people who are abusive. There are people who are abusive in different ways. There are different ways of being abusive. There are deeply, deeply unhealthy relationships and those can be healed.

And there are also times when those can't be healed. You know, one person can definitely do the work. It doesn't take two people to do the work, but at a certain point, [01:10:00] you know, if only one person is doing the work and you know, there may get come to that point where it just, it just doesn't, it doesn't suffice anymore.

And so I just like to sort of put a caveat because I feel like I remember going through this period of time where I felt like I was a deep failure because I wasn't able to, because it was like this, this, this marriage is over and I felt like a failure and it took me. And even like afterwards, I was like, I was disappointed, even though I worked so hard and I did so much for it.

And it was, and it was one of the most, it's one of those beautiful things in the world. But I also had to, you know, it was, you know, allow it to be what it was going to be and not try and force something that just wasn't going, that, that didn't serve anyone anymore. You know, like life is just so long now and, and we do grow and yeah.

And and [01:11:00] you know, and just to sort of like, actually really respect that we are here on this planet for something that has that as a purpose, beyond our comprehension or our capabilities to, to fully recognize or realize. So it's to come into with curiosity and it's oftentimes of without judgment and, and around marriage and relationships, there can easily be so much judgment.

And that kind of, that that's a bummer, you know, that we put so much judgment on ourselves, as opposed to, I think when we can let some of the judgment go, then we can also actually say, you know what, also, when I like made a big mistake or if I screwed something up or whatever it was that I'm not bad because of that, you know, I'm not, I'm not wicked.

I'm not all these other things. I'm, I'm a human being and, and like, Jesus made mistakes. You know, like Jesus had [01:12:00] to be tempted. Jesus had like all of these things, you know, it's like, you know, these are, this is part of being on this planet. You know, we are all children of God and, and, you know, God, you know, I've looked at it several ways.

Like either God doesn't make mistakes or then therefore what happens here is perfectly okay. Or God does make mistakes. And if God makes mistakes, then we're allowed to do. And by that, I mean that, you know, I mean, we can, can all be semantics, but you know, but I do, you know, as a, as a, as a filmmaker and as a writer and I also, I, I, and coach with people, I say, you know, when you're creating something, we want it to be perfect, but like God made this amazing planet.

And yet people like children die young and there's terrible diseases. And, and the, if that's, if the world doesn't go perfectly, according to plan all the [01:13:00] time or things don't seem perfect. Well, if God doesn't do it perfectly without diseases or without oil spills or, you know, without malaria and hundreds of thousands of children dying every year and Sub-Saharan Africa from, you know, from communicable diseases, like.

You're probably not going to make it write a perfect script either. So, so let that be okay. Forgive yourself. Honor yourself, honor. I agree with what you're saying in the concept. I just have a different perspective on it. So what you're saying with is are we going to make mistakes? Yes. Are we going to consciously make horrible choices in sin?

Yes. I personally believe God is perfect. I believe that he doesn't sin or make mistakes, but I think this is the only difference in what we're saying is I believe he gives us free will as men mankind and we choose to be selfish and we choose to be corrupt. And then you have other things, like you said, some things just [01:14:00] happen.

Like why would a child be born with an illness? Why would it disease over empty earth? And that goes deep into a theological conversation where God doesn't cause any evil, but sometimes he allows it. So for instance, we made Joyce from the garden of Eden to sin against God, this obey. And now we have consequences of it as mankind as a whole.

But the good news is when this life is over, attorneys' perfect. If you're with heaven. So that's the good news. So I think we're seeing the same exact thing. Just have a different frame of reference and we can, you know, And, and, and, and I, and I'm actually with you there because because if you look at it that way too, I also don't actually think, I think that we make mistakes.

We might air, we may sin. We may we can put any word on that, that we want to, but the reality is is that as soon as we have done something, as soon as the action has happened, it was, there is actually benefit in the [01:15:00] world for that action because we get to grow, we get to grow from it. And when I say that, I will have to be careful because, you know, because then we can, you can also, you know, use that to sort of excused, torture or, or rape or murder or whatever.

So it's not that with others it's with, in ourselves, as soon as I've done something, I can say that was meant to be now, it may be my, my task to figure out why did I have to do that? Quote unquote knuckleheaded thing. And now I get to figure that out. So I actually don't actually even believe there's a mistake.

So when I, when I kind of bring these things up and hearing what you just said too, is the semantics around it. And I think this is actually one of my favorite things. We haven't really gotten much into a theological conversation yet, but. But, but that the, I had a, I had a spiritual teacher once who said, if you're going to do spiritual research, as it [01:16:00] were, you have to get really comfortable with paradox and ambiguity, because there is so much that, you know, in some of the deepest truths are our logical human bop brains.

Can't actually comprehend the vastness. And the vastness actually can contain two things that might seem diametrically opposed or totally opposite that are actually so deeply related. And that sort of this, you know, this grand view from the sort of the God's eye view as it were of, we don't necessarily understand how, you know, how two things can exist contradictory simultaneously at the same time.

And part of the beauty of that is that is that we actually can't, we can't, we're just, you know, and even sometimes I feel like the, the hubris of that is it is almost like it's, it can be problematic, you know? And [01:17:00] it's because like I just, in, in my, in my own sort of relationship with spirituality and religion and God and scripture it's like, I'm, I'm open to a lot of possibility because I just, I.

I don't think that I'm fully capable of understanding. And if I did, I would basically be thinking I'm a little closer to God than God would think that'd be like, yeah. You know, get back in your place. You know, you're a mere mortal. So there's this, this sort of this VAT, this vastness that, that I can, I love striving for is, and, and I think it kinda hit me in some ways, sometimes in my early to mid thirties when I was in my mid thirties, I guess.

And, and I remember calling my father cause I just had this and I wanted to share with him because my father, his his relationship with, [01:18:00] with with Christianity is, is quite deep and profound and quite different from mine. And he finds a certainty in a lot of ways in the way that his, that his relationship is.

And I remember calling him up and being like, I, I feel so free in my relationship to God and spirituality, because I realized that I'm actually wrong about everything that I believe. And that might be a slightly wrong, like a slightly definitive way of putting it, perhaps a more accurate way of which also might've elicited less of a pushback from him would have been, I.

Am not right about anything and that I'm wrong because, because I can't be right, because I can't see the whole picture because I'm not God. So therefore what I see is [01:19:00] what's been revealed to me until now up until this moment. And and so when and, and this kind of this piece came to me, which was that every few years I would, I would evolve into, Oh, like now I know I was confused.

I thought I knew, but now I know. And then I kept coming up to this thing where then I would have, I would, I would have read something or had this deep belief about, you know, something within my religious slash spiritual development. And then it would shift and it wouldn't be like, totally contradictory.

Right. But it'd be, Oh, wait, no, that wasn't quite right either. And this is, and as I grew, I realized, well, if I'm 34 now, and when I was 30, I was dang sure about this. And when I was 24, I was dang sure about that. And when I was 18, I was dang sure about that. That basically means that when I'm 44, 54, 64, 74, 84, 94, that'll keep happening [01:20:00] and I want to come, you know?

And so if I know that that means that I can step into all that I quote, unquote know, or I believe, or I. Perceive, I can hold that all with a sense of wonder and curiosity, knowing that I'm just scratching the surface and I'm going to keep scratching it and I'm going to keep going and it's not fruitless, but I'm never going to get there.

And that's okay. I'm just going to get a little bit closer each time with also the humility to know that the closer I get to God as it were the closer it gets to enlightenment or whatever. However, we want to name that. The closer that I get to it, I'm, I'm still always going to be ridiculously far away and that's okay.

Yeah. And I think that's scripturally supported because the closer we get to God, the more we realize how far away we are. And until [01:21:00] the attorney, when we're with him, we're not gonna understand everything, but it is a growth journey. Like you said, every 10 years, it seems like you learn something new or get sharper.

We're just refining and growing and we just have more of a love and appreciation towards God. And I was laughing earlier. I think I was off camera cause it switches back and forth, but you know, there's David and Joseph in the Bible. Two men, God love, but such different stories. You got David who screwed everything up and did everything wrong.

And here's a man after God's heart and he continued to learn and grow. And then you had Joseph who had everything. It seemed to go wrong to him and he didn't really do anything wrong. And it was years, not just days or months but years, but then at the end he didn't understand like, why is this happening?

Why is this happening? Why is it happening? But at the end he looks back and he's like, I can see everything got a loud, but the reason why. So yeah, for all our listeners out there, we don't know a lot of time what's going on. And a lot [01:22:00] of times we don't want to wait and be patient. We need to do an act and live, but we can't control everything.

And that's a big lesson I have to learn over and over again. I can't control everything. I just need to roll with it. Kind of like your father, you said, whatever happens. He just rolls with it. Right. Some of us have more of a problem than others. So, yeah. All right, man. Well, thanks for sharing so much, Matthew, so take us, you have a wife and three kids.

You get you get to the point where you're like, okay, it's time for us to separate and get a divorce. And then you mentioned many times your new fiance, bridges that gap and transitioning into where you are today. Yeah. Okay. So you know, ah, well there was after so I have, I have three biological children and then one who I acquired as a, as a very early teen around, she was around 12 or 13.

And [01:23:00] she didn't really have a father in her life and and I offered to be that, so I have I have a fourth. And and then, then she was, you know, yeah. She she was actually living with me for just, just until last month actually. When we came back from Kenya and then she moved out when traveling and came back and COVID, and also couldn't find a place to live.

So she lived with us for awhile and finally moved into her own place. So I've got, I have four adult grown daughters. My youngest children are 21 and the oldest is Push them 24. Yeah. I just turned 44. So she's right on my heels. So I, I had been divorced for two or three years. I forget exactly.

We didn't, you know, the, it was a slow separation cause I was in no rush when I knew [01:24:00] what needed to be. I was like, we'll just like, let's take our time. And and you know it wasn't like, Oh my God, I need to get out of here, whatever it was, this sense of, it was such a place of peace that we we're able to really go through a process and try and make it as, as smooth as we could for the kids and stuff who are already in it when that when, when that was happening.

And then I had spent, you know, so I'd been, but you know, I, I had basically been yeah, been single for a while and I knew that I was ready to find a, I was ready for a partnership. I was ready for, I was ready for that, but I was also aware that the people that we are attracted to as human beings aren't necessarily We're not necessarily attracted to people out of totally freewill.

We'd like to think that we [01:25:00] are, but we're just not interestingly enough, arranged marriages have a better success rate than non arranged marriages. Yeah, that's statistically through the years that's always held and now more so than, than ever, right. When we have a choice, right. In a, in an era where have a choice and now why is that?

Well, you know, when we choose somebody, we're also choosing somebody that is sort of going to represent very often certain challenges that we maybe we need, but we don't necessarily want they may you know, there, and there are certain, like, you know, as I mentioned earlier on, there are different, you know, there are patterns that we get into.

And I was like, I'm going to fall into a pattern. And if I'm not really clear, I may fall in love with somebody just out of some sort of chemical reaction. And I want something greater than that. So [01:26:00] so I actually, I went to death Valley on my own and I went to go do some writing and I, I, you know, I rented a room and I got in one night and I thought, you know, I'm going to sit down.

I'm gonna write, I got in the afternoon. And I went to sit down and write, and I thought, you know what? I think before I write, I just needed to go on a hike. So I walked out now, if anyone's ever like near death Valley and it's not the middle of the summer go, it is just breathtakingly. Beautiful. My God, it's just shocking.

And I just went out and just hiked around the Valley and it was just so alive and then went back and went to sleep. It was a great, you know, I'm going to go get up in the morning. All right. And I got up the next morning and sat down at my little desk and I forget if I open my computer or my journal or wherever it was.

And I get, I just sit there and I'm staring at blank paper, but you know what, before I write this morning to go on a hike and I just went and hiked for half a day and came back and said, you know what, I'm going to right now. And I sat down to write and just [01:27:00] stared at this blank page. I like forget that I'm gonna go hiking.

And then I'll just write tonight. And I basically spent my two and a half days in death Valley, just hiking. But while it was hiking, one of the things that during one of these hikes that came to me was I need to be really intentional. If I'm ready to be in relationship. I also want to be in touch and chill about it.

What's important to me. And as I was walking in, I had my iPhone and I was dictating and, and, and I had dictated thoughts and I came back and I, and I wrote them into my journal and was getting really clear about what was important to me there. That way I was like, I go into a relationship I'm going in.

And it doesn't mean I can't let my heart speak to me, you know, but But I also need to let my brain do some of the talking as well, because anyone who's, who's been in a relationship before knows you are also kind of in a [01:28:00] business together, you make financial decisions, you make practical choices together.

And I want to be someone that I, that I, that we compliment each other, not where we, you know, and, and, and if we compliment each other, it means we don't necessarily always agree on everything because we have different strengths and different weaknesses. Those can either, those can either support us to be greater, or those can push us each down.

And so I was very intentional about it. And literally the next day it was new year's day. And I got a text from Sarah and now Sarah, we have mutual friends and six months earlier about we had briefly connected. We ran into each other. She was renting a room at our, our host family she's Kenyan.

And so she was renting a room with her host family and, and they were also friends of mine. So I had these mutual friends, but we didn't really know each other. And we had chatted just a few times very briefly [01:29:00] and. Over the summer. We had run into each other. There was dropping off a DVD for for her host father.

And she was coming back from lunch with someone we started talking and we thought, you know what? I was rushing out. And it's, you know what, let's finish this conversation over coffee sometimes. They're great. So exchange phone numbers. And we, about four months later, I reached out and I was like, Hey, how about, do you want to grab coffee this week?

And she said, you know, I'm not feeling well this week, but let's touch base soon. Probably about four days later, I ran into her having coffee with somebody. I was like, Oh, that's funny. And then and, and then about a month later was new year's day. And she said I got a message from her. And she said, well, why don't we grab lunch?

And I was like, that's weird. I said, well, you know what, this week is like really busy for me. So let me, let me touch base with you. Like next week, literally two days later, [01:30:00] I ran into her having lunch with someone. And when we looked at each other, we both thought this is weird. I think we're going to have to do it.

And so anyway, she messaged me again a little bit late maybe that afternoon or the next day. How about lunch? And as you know, I'm super busy this week, but I could grab drinks on Thursday evening. And it's funny because she actually knew my oldest daughter, like they were, I don't know, they were like necessarily friends, but they knew each other that, you know, they had gone out and had coffee before.

So so like there was nothing between us, she's you know over seven years younger than I am. And so there was really, it was just like, she was someone who knew my daughter. It was just like, we're just going to go out for coffee, but then there's no time. So we went out for drinks and it was really funny cause she thought Matthew temple [01:31:00] does drinks so weird.

He's like, I own his dad and he's so square. But we went out. Yeah. And it was amazing. We just hung out and it was just so relaxed. And that evening I just, I went home and I just, I couldn't sleep. And I pulled out my journal. I was like, you know what, over it, a week when I was by myself in death Valley, I had been describing this woman who I think I might've just met this woman.

Like this was a pretty close description of who this person is. So a few days later we hung out again and Hmm. Literally that was the second time we hung out. And it was, you know, just when our hands touched, it was just so clear that, Oh my gosh, like. This is this person, you know, this is the person that I, I think this is it.

And [01:32:00] yeah, so that was, that was kind of the way, the way that happened. And later I kind of like laughed cause I had I was actually I I'll, I'll preface this with, I've done psychedelic mushrooms twice in my life. I'm not, I am definitely not much of a drug user. I'm certainly not opposed. I don't feel like it has necessarily a major place in my life.

But twice I've done psychedelic mushrooms and the first time was one it was just a miss amazingly profound experience of kind of understanding my own biography. And this next one, the, this other one, and this was after we'd been together for a couple of years, just this vision of how, like, before we were born, you know, cause she's Kenyan and her story of how she got to to America is a crazy story.

And like how we got [01:33:00] to this, that moment where I was dropping off this DVD, like we'd been circling, we'd been around each other for several years beforehand and never really talked. And then it was as though the angels were saying, you guys, like, we've been trying like here now Matthew has to drop off this DVD just at the moment when you were coming back and then that still didn't work.

And then it was the say, let's grab, finally grab this coffee. And she said, no. And then we had to run into each other, having coffee. And then she was like, Hey, how about lunch? And then I was like, I don't know, I don't have time. And we run into each other where she's having, where she's having lunch with someone.

And it was just like, it was as though the angels were working overtime to make sure that we got that we connected. And I just had, there was this sort of vision of, Oh my God. Like, and kind of going back to what I talked about too, of being okay with those struggles that happen in our lives earlier was.

Everything that had to happen, even from all of the, like the amount of missed opportunities, close calls. I [01:34:00] had to have been a very, very successful filmmaker. In Hollywood. It was like, there were these called these near misses, you know I, every PR movie that I produced with with a studio or that was, that was released by a studio at a movie released that I produced for, for Columbia pictures.

I made a movie with for MTB. I did a movie for universal I, all these like movies that I did and every one that I did. There was like, they just didn't hit. It was the, you know, I S I sold a script and it was like, Oh, I finally, now I sold a script. I mean, it was nice. I got a check for selling a script or whatever, and then that didn't work out.

And it was like one thing. There were all of these, these things that were so close when I got my, my first kind of, I don't want to say it was a big acting [01:35:00] role, but I had a, I had a really fun scene with Josh Brolin in a movie that nobody watched and, and even like being on set for two days with, with Josh Brolin, like that was in John Malcovich.

And I was like that when, when you you're in a summer blockbuster movie and you're in your on-set for two days, you also get a piece of the pie. And I know people who have like, you know, you make friends thousands of dollars for a two day role. And I was like, this is going to be great. Literally, no one saw that movie.

It was the first it was the first flop that legendary pictures had total flop. And it was just like one thing after another and all of these things. And then like, Oh, cause I, it had to be this person in this place, this moment where I could meet Sarah, I was like every challenge I had immediately, like as soon.

And it was really, really, as soon as we met, but also want to have that experience also was [01:36:00] this clear, this. This, this like transcendent experience of thank God, truly thank God for every difficulty that I've ever had for every setback for every near miss. That didn't happen for every near miss that did happen for every single thing.

I am eternally grateful. There is not one thing in my life, but that was at that, that I wished had was different when I had that. But now, you know, we'd been together other now for a while and sort of as like, kind of this funny little example right. Even before Sarah and I met a friend of mine and I had like, I hadn't been working for a while.

Cause you know, you work in, in, in the industry as I did, you know, you've got a few years where I'm producing a lot of stuff and I'm making a ton of money and then a few years where there's nothing going on. And then, you know, it's kind of like [01:37:00] up and down. And I was going through a little bit of a low period and a friend of mine financially, and a friend of mine was just like, by as much a theorem as you possibly can.

He's like max out everything, you can do it. And I was like, that's easy for you to say, like, you don't have four kids. You're not paying alimony. You're not like all this other stuff. You have no idea. I can look back and be like, man, I had an inside scoop, you know, I'd be a millionaire. If I had listened to my friend, that's something that, every one, so I get this little like twins.

Oh. Like, and I knew it's I knew it, you know? And but now I can go back and say, you know what, thank God that didn't happen. Thank you, God, that didn't happen. And there's a reason and I don't necessarily some of them I can see, but I need to be where I'm at right now. I need to be here so I can figure out what you know, so that I can take the steps that I need to be.

I need to be in my life, not someone else's life or not some imaginary life or not. Anything else. Like my [01:38:00] life is not designed to be, you know, I'm not a lottery winner. You know, I'm, that's not part of my life. I'm not, I'm not winning the lottery in that way. It's not my life. And I know that my lottery tickets, my winning lottery tickets are the children that I have is my, my fiance that I have, my winning lottery ticket is, you know, we have three businesses that we're doing together right now that are up that are beautiful and amazing and struggling to get these things off the ground.

And they're beautiful. And this is what my life is for is that I'm here in service. I'm not here to buy a bunch of cryptocurrency and become a crypto millionaire. Not my life, not the one I'm not gonna, you know, go speculating on, on, on stocks or whatever. Yeah. I'm probably smart enough to do that kind of stuff, but it also takes energy.

And there's only so many hours in the day and I could be speculating with that. I could [01:39:00] be learning about that. I could be gambling that one, or it could be spending time with my kids and writing the lover's journal that Sarah and I wrote together and writing my other book, you know, the, the the creatives handbook and, and recording two podcasts like that makes me feel alive.

So every like near miss, whether it was either something that could have been the didn't or something that almost didn't happen, but did, I'm just eternally grateful. All right. Talk and talk about that. Where is Matthew temple today? You just mentioned a whole bunch, but where are you today and where are you heading?

Woof. Okay. So I spent the last 12 in the last two years. I spent about a year and a half of that living in Kenya. I always knew that as soon as my youngest kids graduated high school, I was going to do something that would appear from the outside, like a midlife crisis move, which I was like, that's funny.

Cause it's going to kind [01:40:00] of go inside with the midlife crisis. Timing. I was 41 years. Olds just turned 41 when my twins graduated high school. And so when they did then that following December, I moved to Kenya with Sarah and we spent a year and a half there and a lot of ways that was me.

Saying, I'm just going to let go for a minute. Like I had been working so hard to, you know, build a career. I had just, you know, and at that point I had just come out of I got out of really kind of a, quite a really good succession of, of experiences and of work and movies I've produced. I think in the couple years before I moved, I think I'd produced four movies.

Two animated features a documentary that I also directed another one called cage that just, I [01:41:00] produced, it just came out in January. So I had a you know, things have been going pretty well. But it was also a lot of work, you know, like like I wrote, I think I was 1230 turn around. I had a major shift that, that right around where my right before my mother passed away, I'd had, you know, coming out of the last of the great recession.

My, the big hint for me on that was a little bit delayed. But I'd bought a house. I had, like, my kids were in private school. It was like all of these things. And then, you know, and then the economy crashed and I went back, I was waiting tables at night and men and tending bar and managing restaurants.

And during the day I was either producing features or producing commercials and I was doing like lower budget thing. It wasn't, it was like, it was always like almost enough. And if it was consistent, it would have been fine, but you know, kids [01:42:00] keep eating and, you know, the, the, the, you know, mortgage collector keeps knocking every month, whether you're having a good month or not.

And so I kept this like terrible restaurant job with, with the pretty, like, over really difficult boss as a human being. And and I was just, and then at one point like that summer. Before my mom died was just like, I, I got fired from that job, like me and the, and the owner finally, it just got to be too much.

And so it was like, Oh my gosh. And I have, I had collected debt from, you know, from basically so many years of you know, coming out of the great recession. And my marriage was definitely like, I knew it was going. And then that same year my mother died and it was like, man, I just about lost my house. My, you know, I lost a job by law, almost lost my house, my marriage game to an end.

My mother dies like this cataclysm. [01:43:00] And at the same time, there was also a real, like there was this real sort of beauty in it in, in that experience. And you know, so you're kind of like, you know, we're sort of, where am I? Right? So it was this, all of this stuff and just kind of holding life together.

And one of the things that was always challenging in my, in, in, in my, in my first marriage was that I, how much about practical person I am and how much I just like, I'll put everything on my shoulders and carry it, you know? And so there was from a very practical standpoint, There was a lot of carrying and I'm also a fairly driven person.

And so even when it was like during the day I'm producing commercials to pay the bills and at night I'm waiting tables or tending bar to pay the rest of the bills, I'm still like getting [01:44:00] up early to work on writing a screenplay, you know or doing some of my own project. And as soon as there's a little break, I I mentioned that little stop motion, animation, animated movie I did with my kids.

I was like, Oh, all of a sudden, I, my days are free and the kids have a little bit of vacation. And and since I'm, you know, I've got days free, let's make a little movie together, like always kind of pushing, pushing and you know, Oh, I just need to relax. And so I'd imagine I was going to ride my bicycle around the world.

And then I met Sarah and she was like, well, if you ride your bicycle around the world, we're going to be apart for two years. That's a long time. Why don't you move to Kenya with me? I was like, what? That sounds kind of crazy and kind of cool. So sure. So I did, and part of that move was just letting letting go, letting be what was going to be [01:45:00] And and it was wonderful.

I did a ton of walking, climbed a lot of mountains. I walked from where I lived to Mount Kenya and then climbed Mount Kenya, which is the second tallest peak on the continent. Just a little shorter than Mount Kilimanjaro, snow on the top also just really opened up. I wrote a book, wrote, wrote two books, actually one which I sell on my website right now called the creatives handbook as a guide, as a, as a guide for people who want to create or who do create Started the the interracial couple podcast with Sarah, just really kind of like opening stuff up and just waiting to see what is going to come.

What is the world asking of me when I was really ready to start doing the making movies? Again, I had written a pilot that I rewrote to shoot in Kenya that we were [01:46:00] slated to film just before just after COVID hit. So we were supposed to film it. Yes. Is Kenya hot video market. Cause I know my friend, a good friend of mine in college is in Ethiopia and the film industry is just booming.

There is that how Kenya is or not as much, it's not as much. I'd actually be curious to, to talk to your friend or hear how it's going. I mean, in I have I do know this guy who sort of an acquaintance, an acquaintance, who I knew from ages ago moved to Uganda. But he to make movies with the guy, but he was like, there's one filmmaker there who he absolutely loved.

He thought he was a genius and it was like, I'm going to take my producing skills and go help this director. You know, Nigeria is in, is internationally renowned for its film for its sort of film world Kenya, not so much. I think it needs it. There's [01:47:00] certainly a lot of, a lot of potential there.

But it was also one reason why I was excited to be there. I was like, you know what I have. You know, people with my amount of expertise, I have a very unique niche of expertise, which is that I have done a lot of things. You know, I, I produced $10 million features in Hollywood which is not big budget, but that's still an awful lot of money, but I've also made feature films for, you know, under a hundred thousand dollars.

I have produced commercials for 10 grand and I produced commercials for $250,000. And so like, I, I am deeply, deeply acquainted with the entire process. There are very few people who can make a movie on a hundred thousand dollars and on $10 million and actually know what they're doing. There are very few people who know how to develop a script, but then can also get all [01:48:00] of the deliverables and all of the legal deliverables and and asset deliverables for a studio delivery.

Those are, so I have this very unique, broad set of knowledge and like, that's great for a place like Kenya because you'll need that. And I, there aren't, there are very few people like me in Kenya. There are a lot of people who know the film ministry in Los Angeles. So a lot of people will know it in Berlin, in London, in Paris, in New York in Madrid, but not a lot of Nairobi.

So I was kind of excited to bring my expertise there. But, you know, when COVID hit, we ended up not filming. And then we came back to the States just for a visit and Sarah and her business, which is called eco Donia and she makes bags and wallets, but primarily bags in Kenya and is selling them in the us for her.

It was, she said, you know what? I'd like to have a year here to spend more time developing the market. Now that I spent a year and a half working with the craftspeople in Kenya and building that those relationships. [01:49:00] So it just became this thing of, Oh, you know what? I think it's probably good for us to stay here for a little while.

And we had this perfect place. My brother had this cabin that needed some work and I didn't have coming back and the pandemic and not having any work and being, having more greater time than money. I said, great, let me just stay here. I'll, you know, cover the costs of of what it is here and, and fix the place up.

And I've been doing that and loving it. It's, you know, it's amazing. This little place is really nice now. So we've put in work and it's good during my days to get pulled myself away from the computer to go out and, you know, you know, cut down, cut down trees or lay floors, or, you know, fix Roos and things like that.

So that's, it's nice to be able to do that in between all the time I spend on computers. And so that's kind of, you know, this and, and really building this amazing life with the, with Sarah and. [01:50:00] I mentioned when we were in Kenya. She, we, she, when she launched eco Dunia, she, she did a crowdfund to raise, you know, just to like raise just some money by pre-selling some bags.

And so we had, you know, we filmed her and she it was so uncomfortable for her and I'd wanted to start a podcast for awhile. But had, you know, I was blogging instead and writing my book and it just didn't, it never, and I was delivering my documentary called hardball, the girls with summer about a few women in America who played baseball and that's not softball.

That is baseball. I didn't misspeak. And so I'd just finished that movie and I had to deliver it cause we had we had sold it to a distributor, so there was all this stuff going on. And, and then I, I would make this video for her and she was so uncomfortable. She said, you know what? Like maybe we should do a podcast together.

We film it. Cause I've got to get better bang on [01:51:00] camera. I was like, well, perfect. It's something we do together. That's great. And so we started doing this podcast, the interracial couple podcast, and I'm going to put links to all these in the show notes. So if you're listening or watching, check out the show notes and you can see Matthew and Sarah's podcast, the books and all the projects they're doing.

Awesome. And so we do. Yeah. And, you know, at first it was a little bit, you know, it was, it was, you know, our, our place in Kenya had stonewalls tile, floors it's super echoey. And we didn't really, you know, it was just kinda like getting into it and moving it along. And now we've, you know, we've this afternoon will record our 58th episode of the podcast recorded every week, come hell or high water.

And that was kind of, you know, that was kind of getting that, getting into that with her. And and, and so that was one of our things. And then we came back [01:52:00] and she said, you know what? We have this pretty tremendous relationship. And you know, and what are the things, things that make it so real, so amazing.

And we brought some focus in to that, and we just went, I went through it and one of the things is, you know, I journal a lot. I'm a fairly regular journal, not necessarily every day, but certainly multiple times a week on average. And in our first two years together we, we read a book and it was actually a book on money, but it was really a spiritual journey.

That used sort of it, and it was really sort of about a spiritual relationship to money. And one of the things that it required was a lot of journaling and reflection. And since we spoke about forgiveness, some of the exercises were around forgiveness about any incompletions that we had in other people's lives.

[01:53:00] And so we were journaling together and, and, you know, and, and I'll go back to, to when we first were together. And I think one of the reasons why our relationship is so fantastic as we didn't actually try to impress each other, the first time we went out, it wasn't a date. We went out because we, we basically had mutual friends and we had said, we were gonna just like, have a conversation over coffee, just turned into you know, drinks in the evening.

And like the way she talked to me too, like I had, it was it w I had a big, I had a leftover mega mustache from Movember. So I used to grow them, big mustache, every Movember, and that year I just hadn't shaved it off. And I was loving it. It was just like this big, like Wyatt Earp thing. And I can't believe she fell in love with the there's nothing.

She hates more than a mustache. [01:54:00] In fact, we were writing. Yeah. And she thought, I was like, Oh, so what do you do? And you said, you don't have an online business. I sell things online when and I said, Oh, that's cool. And she said, but you know what? I could never sell men's razors. Cause I would just give them away.

I'd say, please take these for free head, shape that crap off your face,

right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Super subtle. And she tucked us these, like these she's very funny. And she took these just really like, kind of both funny and barbed sort of jabs at my life for, you know, for obviously having premarital sex for having, you know, for having a kid as a teenager. Like she just was like jabbing, but there was no nastiness to it.

It was all in just as wonderful humor that she could just poke fun and she felt so comfortable and. Even also [01:55:00] like right away at the beginning, like when it became like the second time we hung out and there was definitely like energy between us that was quite palpable. And we'd gone out to eat that evening with really one of our two mutual.

We had two mutual friends that were like, you know, actually like, you know, friends. And I guess I should really just one. And that friend was like, we, she mentioned that she was hanging out with me that day and she said, Oh, I'll take you guys out to eat and we'll go out to eat together. So we all went out to eat and on the way back, she just, she asked questions.

She was just like, and she shared things with me that nobody shares with each other right away, you know, just past mistakes experiences we had where we've come from all this stuff. It was basically almost like I'm going to try and scare you off, but it wasn't even that so much. It was just like, we're going to, if, if there's going to be anything here, it's going to be built on [01:56:00] integrity and, and honesty.

And that also basically means honesty in a way that if I'm going to be vulnerable and honest with you, and I'm going to share with you the mistakes that I've made. Or even the mistakes that I've made, even if it's an a, if you want me to get into a relationship at the beginning, it's easy. Oh, that was a past mistake.

Well, how about a relationship when you've been in it for four years and you did something that really hurt your, your partner or your spouse last week or yesterday, you know, can you immediately fess up to your mistake or you know, or, or a shortcoming or whatever, can you point out the other shortcoming without being blaming?

Like that was you made a mistake or what you just did really hurt my feelings or whatever that is. And so that just building on that honesty and was pretty, [01:57:00] pretty profound. So anyway we came back from Kenya and H entire plants. Sure. Just to interject there too. What's unique about your situation is most people, the culture you come from and the more similar your background is, the easier it is to get along and to gel.

And you guys probably have very drastically different backgrounds and cultures yet you congealed so well. So that's really interesting how God worked that out. Hmm. Well, you know, that is now and we, we've also, we kind of like, wonder how is that, you know, how could it be so awesome. You know, she was definitely a, an odd ball in a lot of ways in like where like in, in her culturally, she is quite unique.

But when she moved to the States, she found herself, her, her host mother did like, they were [01:58:00] bi-weekly women's groups. So there was a lot of work with these women where they got where they came together and sort of Baird or bore their souls to each other where it wasn't about trying to impress somebody.

It was about like being honest and vulnerable and real. And so there was this great practice that she had had in that. And I too had kind of come from, from, you know, had done a lot of, a lot of work on growth. We both question our assumptions. We're both we both don't mind being wrong. You know, and it's one of these things it's amazing.

Like sometimes we'll get into an argument about something and very often it'll be like, you know, if we do one of us very often, we'll kind of come afterwards and be like, if it's clear, say for example, that I did [01:59:00] something like I'm in the wrong in this argument, I'm like, Oh, Okay. Like, even if I don't totally see it your way, you know what, I'm real, I'm going to really think about that.

Like, let's come back to this cause it's like, if I come, if I've come across to you in such and such a way, and I didn't see it that way, if that is actually the way I was acting and I will unaware of that, I need to think about that. So thank you for pointing that out. And if it turns out you are right and I was wrong, let's say, I thought I was being kind and, or I was by pointing out maybe like one example was I made a joke about it was like two jokes in succession about her drinking.

And Sarah's not like a drinker, but you'll have, we'll go out and I'll be a couple of glasses of wine or whatever. And I just, I made a joke about it in a way that just [02:00:00] wasn't cool, you know, and she brought it up and she was upset with me. And and it wasn't that I had any intention of it, of like, you know, of goading her or making any sort of innuendos about anything.

But I did. And when she pointed that out to me, I was like, you know what? I'm in the wrong here. And I could have defended it and been like, you're overreacting, you're seeing that wrong or whatever. That's not how I meant it. And at the end of the day, I was like, you know what? Hey. It's not necessarily how I meant it consciously, but if I think about it, I can also see, for example, that like my dad made comments about to my mother about things like that with like her eating and you kind of either.

Yes. So now I am, I'm not that comment was totally out of line because it wasn't out a freedom. It was out of a [02:01:00] family pattern that I had of it's okay. To, you know, to point it out because maybe like, you know, maybe this week, for whatever reason you drink more than you normally would or whatever, you know?

So and maybe it was opportunity. Like none of those things even matter, you know what I mean? I was totally out of line. And so like that would have been an example where there is no problem, but I chose because, because Sarah is quite honestly so freaking amazing. And as like just, just shockingly wonderful human being, a lot of the things I it's almost like if, if there's a problem and it's not to say she has never his fault, she's got, you know, she's also human.

She's human too. Yeah, we all do, but, but it's like, there are times where, like I have to find something, you know, like, so I'm just going to revert to some old pattern so that I can find something wrong so I [02:02:00] can bring some negativity into my relationship because I'm just not used to having a relationship that is, is so fantastic.

Anyway. So that's kind of this kind of long way around of, I don't mind being wrong. He doesn't mind being wrong and if I don't bring it up, sometimes, you know, if we're at getting into a little bit of a heated debate, sometimes she'll just stop. Okay. Let's just look at it completely from your point of view for a moment, you know, like in a way that's like where there's just no, like giving up or staying or negativity, but we both kind of like, here's the thing.

If I, if you and I get in an argument and you're right. And I, and I learned that I was wrong and you're right. Guess who actually wins that argument? I do because I just gained something. Okay. But if we're in an argument and at the end of the day, you're like, Hey Matthew, you know what, actually, you're right.

[02:03:00] I didn't gain anything except maybe a little feeling of pride, which is totally an unbeneficial feeling for pride, but you just gained new knowledge and understanding. So being wrong is actually the way better place to be in in, in, in, in any kind of conversation, argument, disagreement, it's better to be wrong than to be.

Right. So you're kind of learning and growing together. Yes. Yes. So anyway, we came back and I was going to make this document. I was going to make this, shoot, this pilot and start this TV series in Kenya. That didn't happen. All of a sudden we're like here in, in California and what. What are we, what are we going to do?

We have to change all of our plans. And she said, you know, we have this gift that we could really be offering. And so she and I developed the lover's journal and it's based, it's a, it's a prompted journal for couples and it's, you know, has [02:04:00] 52 weekly prompts monthly challenges insight, you know inspirational and insightful quotes.

And and it just kind of, it leads through some really fun and easy stuff. And also through some sort of wonderfully challenging stuff in relationships. And that's something that we've, you know, that we've been doing together and that's still fairly new for us. It's being carried in it's first local bookstore here.

We launched our website just a couple, two or three weeks ago. I'm still not a hundred percent Donnie. We're still doing our SEO and backend stuff on it. And a little just actually today, we finally sent in a bunch of men to Amazon to sell them on Amazon. Nice. And again, we'll put a link to that in the show notes so they can actually buy off Amazon, but this is going to air in probably about four weeks from the day we're recording.

So you think in a month there'll be available to purchase. It definitely will [02:05:00] be it's it's available right now on our website. It'll be on Amazon to purchase and we'll make sure to get a we'll get, we can make sure to get a both links and we'll do some special code for everyone. Who's listening here.

We'll do some kind of discount code for everyone here. Let me just check in with Sarah, but we'll do something and make sure to put that in the show notes as well. Yeah, absolutely. What I'll do is when this is over that our listeners know that at the end of the episode, we always do a special promotion.

So we'll go ahead and put a special promo code in for the lovers journal. So stick around to the end and you'll be able to get yours at a discounted rate and one of the link right there for you. Beautiful. So that's so that, you know, and that's been, that has been a, you know, that's been. I've focus and a really exciting focus for me in the last in the last couple of months.

And, you know, as a, as a writer, as an F and as a filmmaker, that stuff is always you know, it's something that I always do as I mentioned you know, in the last, well, last year and a half, I had [02:06:00] two movies that came out and both of them are available on iTunes and Amazon prime and, and all that. So I can put some links in there.

And and something that I just get so much joy and appreciating shin out of is, is helping others cause something that I've done in my life that I really like when I look back on my life. And I think what are the things that I'm proud of? I'm proud of my children w and sort of who I was as a father.

I am proud of myself as a, as a life partner because of the effort that I put in sure. Recognizing and mistakes, but I've grown and learned so much. But it's also actually been as a, as a creative human being. And I feel like people have stories. And are each of our stories has a tremendous amount of value.

And it's something that kind of is it's ours. It belongs to [02:07:00] us, you know, as individuals, like my story is unique, your story is unique. And when you have a story, there are many ways of expressing that story. So one is like, Oh, my stories, this was my life. And I want to share that. And the other is my story is I have a way of seeing the world through an Inn and I express that through photography or through painting or through sketching it may be through sharing some insight or knowledge on a podcast.

It may be that, you know, my grandfather or grandmother was this amazing person and they have a story. And part of my story is knowing that I came from that and I want to tell that story of, you know, of theirs. And, but so many people don't tell those stories because we want to do it justice. And so in some ways it's better in our minds and our silly minds to not do it at all, rather than do it in perfectly.

And something that I'm really proud of in my life is that I've [02:08:00] always been creating something. You know, it's like, it's my it's almost been, my mantra is, is my ABC is my always be creating nice instead of always be closing, always be creating exactly. It's always be creating and. You know, and when I, I it's, I mean, always, and you know, it, and whether it was as early on making music and making a CD or whether it was when I was not creating as much in the way of sort of artistic expression after I made my first movie in between then called sense of place.

And when I moved to Hollywood, I spent a year in Sacramento and I studied with a man named Dennis ClinCheck and a program that he ran up, the Rudolf Steiner college at the time called consciousness studies. And so I wasn't writing a screenplay. I wasn't making anything like that. And I founded a nonprofit [02:09:00] during that period of time called we strive and we strive.org.

And I always, and I, then I began and I was writing, writing articles for Lily Poe magazine just really, really into it gauged. And, and when I looked back at a certain point, particularly coming out of the great recession where I, why coming right out of the great recession was my career. Did it take off?

And a lot of people had kind of, you know, had really struggled during that period of time and struggled for a long time afterwards to get back on their feet. It becomes during that time I made, I think at least two. Feature films and they were both ultra low budget movies that I made. One, I made both of my made almost no money on, I made a little bit, but not very much money doing them.

So I worked a ton making two feature films and I made no, basically no money on I directed a short film. [02:10:00] And from that short film, this guy who produced it with me at the same time was starting a commercial production company and they had connections, but they didn't actually know how to produce to the level of what they were being asked to do that.

The first gig was a commercial for a Nintendo game that was made by Warner brothers games. And they were like, this is really important. It's a really low budget thing, comparatively, but it's for a, you know, it's a big account. And if we can, if we can blow their socks off, we'll have a ton of work and we'll be able to really launch this company.

So they hired me and sure enough, we blew their socks off. We did a really good job. And for the next couple of years, I was like, you know, I was making a ton of stuff with them. Whenever there was work, I was doing it because I was like, I was their ACE in the hole when it came to being able to execute high level work on a tight timeline and tight budgets.

[02:11:00] And when that wasn't happening, as I mentioned, you know, my, my kids and I made a, it was like, Oh, I've been spending all this time working nights in restaurants to, you know, pay, pay the mortgage and pay for the kids to go to private school. And by day I'm producing commercials and you know, and music, videos and stuff.

And all of a sudden I had this period of time where I was like, Oh, my days were free. And I was like, let's I had this idea for a little short film called animal cookies about this little girl who, who gets who has like a toy kitchen and bakes animal cookies in her toy kitchen. They come to life.

It's cute. We're super cute. Oh, nice. And is it available publicly, like on YouTube or where can people yeah. Yeah, well, we'll put a free YouTube link. It's it's, it's less than two minutes long and super short. But like there was that, you know, and this was just something I literally, I did it in my garage with my, with my, with my children over [02:12:00] over Thanksgiving break.

And it took me a year to finally assemble it all. Cause it's, I don't know. Well, it's 24 frames for every, for every second to write. That's a lot of frames. But then it turned out pretty good. And so I submitted it, sent it out to a few film festivals and we, we played in film festivals all over the world.

We'd play it in Europe, Australia, all over the U S we won a couple of awards. And so when I say like, my pride is not so much in like, Oh, I made this thing and I, I, and, and people loved it. And I bought these awards because I made also a lot of stuff that nobody ever cared about that didn't win any awards or whatever, but then I did it and it, that it didn't matter.

And so at this point in my life, one thing I love doing is I've launched another podcast. Actually it's called tapping creativity. There's gonna be so many links in this, in these show notes people's are good. Like they're gonna like, forget it. This guy's an idiot. He it's too many things to click on. I just get me [02:13:00] what you got and we'll organize it.

The listeners, if you're out there, you're going to have the ability to go through the show notes and on the website, just decently in order, just go through them as you see fit and check it out. It's it's, it's gonna it's it's like yeah, it's going to be a Baskin Robbins and 31 flavors. But so I made these little, you know, and so the thing that's, I I'm really excited about is right.

So I think, so I even, I started this podcast called tapping creativity because so often people come to me and be like, Oh, I, I, and wanting to write a screenplay for 20 years, or I really been wanting to, you know, I've, I've, I've written a few songs, but I really want to record them and make, you know, put them up on SoundCloud or on Spotify or something.

And then people don't do it. And to me, that's so sad, you know, because to me, there are a million ways to interpret that we were made in God's image. [02:14:00] But one of the ways that I love to interpret that is that we, I have the capacity, the ability and the capability to create something from nothing. And when we do that, it is enlivening.

It puts us in a, it puts us in a S in a divine space, which is intimidating. And I think it's one of the things that holds people back is like, wait a second. That's big work. And if I am going to spend five years writing a novel, or if I'm going to spend two years writing a screenplay in two years, raising money to do it.

And, and three years finding, you know, finally filming and putting it to you, the other, I want it to be really good and it might not be, and that's gotta be okay. And if you're going to do it, you know, aye, aye, aye, aye. Mostly I do a lot of, of either screenwriter teaching screenwriting or, or or [02:15:00] sort of coaching or mentoring or consulting for filmmakers.

People wanna make movies. That's where I do. Most of my work also work with musicians and stuff to and other artists. But, but you know, but screenplay is probably where I spend the most time and I get people, you know, young students all the time are like, Oh, I want this too. Really good. I say, you've never done it before, so it's not going to be good.

Your first screenplay will not be good. And I'm like, Oh, I'm gonna spend so much time. Yeah. Yeah. You will. And guess what? The first time a surgeon operates, they're not going to do a good operation, which is, guess what? You don't operate on a real person. When they first start operating, they operate on a good day.

Right? You basically, you're going to operate on somebody that's already dead because they're going to do such a bad job. And guess what? Being a creator. Is so hard that the first time you do it, it's going to do such a bad job, but you [02:16:00] can't, there's no such thing as a dead screenplay, that's going to show up there for you to do your first, like your first your first surgery on.

So you could have to invent your first terrible screenplay or your first dead screenplay, and then rework that over and over and over again. And it's going to be bad. It's going to be dead. And you know what, and it's not to say that you won't get it to be good enough at some point and maybe make it that does happen sometimes.

Sometimes your first screenplay ends up being good. But your first draft is God awful, guaranteed. 100% of the time, because you don't know what you're doing. You've never done it before. So what would you give as advice to people who are trying to be creative? Like, are there steps to the first time you do this?

Hey, here's the outline? One, two, three. What would you recommend to those creators? Well, I would say I talk about that's, that's actually what my book goes into and I will give you the very quick overview. It's what I call the seven PS for powerful and effective [02:17:00] creating. And the first is like picking your project, which is also getting really clear about your project.

So that is for example, like, Hey, I wanna, I want to write a, you know, I wanna write a book like about, I don't know about a woman who was the first woman to use a computer in, in Douglas aircraft and in aerospace in America. Cool. Okay. Well, that's a cool book. Is that going to be a novel? It turns out that's the story of my grandmother.

So is that going to be a a biography of my grandmother? Am I going to use her to inspire a novel? Is that actually better going to be done as a documentary? Is that going to be better to be done as a series of articles or a short story? So getting really clear picking your project and then from picking your project, now you need to go into planning once you've planted and [02:18:00] preparation, and then you go into process know, setting up what is your process?

And that was really going to be different for everybody. So for me, I don't have any young children, so I can get up and I can write two hours. First thing every day, that's an option I have, that can be part of my process. But what I also might find is that two hours, first thing in the morning might not be very good, cause I might not function quite as well until 10:00 AM.

So maybe I need to do it at 10:00 AM, but I also might say, you know what, I'm feeling really ambitious, but I'm a single mother and I really want to like write and have this book done this year. And that would have been in the kind of the in, in the in the planning stage would be sort of sending out what are your smart goals and everything.

That way, you kinda know what you're going to hit, but you might find that, Oh, wait, you know what I said, I was going to write three times a week, but if I'm it's so hard for me, really, the only time I can do it is like Saturday morning at 10:00 AM. I can drop my kids off at my neighbor's house for two hours ago, sit at Starbucks at the local cafe.

[02:19:00] And I write for two hours. That's all the time I have that's part of your practice and getting to know what your process is. Once you figure out your process, then you put it into a practice, need to get into a rhythm. And once you're in that, then it's patience and perseverance, right? So you go through like, it just takes time.

So a lot of times we think, Hey, you know what? Like I want to make a movie. And when I made my documentary, I know that people can take 10 years to make a documentary. That's pretty easy. And I was like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to make this documentary in a year. Like that is what I'm going to do.

Well, I didn't make a documentary in a year. I want to say it was maybe two and a half years. But thank goodness that I said that I was so dead set on doing it in a year, because if I had said, Oh, this might take me three years, it probably would have taken me nine. You know, that's how it works, right.

It, because, right. It's just, it's a creative process. You're making something from nothing. You're putting yourself in divine space of being a [02:20:00] creator. So that's pretty tough. So it's patience and perseverance. And then kind of like what sometimes like my, my eighth P or the one that's overall is purpose.

You know, what are you doing this for? And being really clear on that, that way. You know, it's like, if it's your purpose, if your purpose is clear, then I often kind of say that you probably heard about this mother. There's a story. Remember was in the newspaper. Back in the eighties, his mother lifted a car off of her child.

Her child had been run over by a car and she lifted up the car and you know what, for a woman to lift up a car is impossible. It's also impossible to write your first novel or even not your first novel writing. A novel is impossible. Making your movie is impossible. These things are impossible, but yet it happens.

How does the impossible happen? Purpose the who lifted the car off her child had the purpose of saving her child, the purpose so great that you could do the impossible when we're clear about our purpose of why we're showing up to doing it, [02:21:00] we can do the impossible. So so actually anybody who reaches out to me, I do have a the beginning of that I give away for free which has really kind of a setting, setting up the smart goals, getting what, your get your project and really, you know, beginning on setting your your planning your, your planning phase and kind of setting you off on the roads that, that, that I always give away for free.

And actually also anyone who's listening, I always will do a you know, at least one, one free call and really just kind of like get in with anybody. What, what is holding them back? Because it is unique and there aren't many, like it's both unique and it's universal. In that there are, you know, there are you're going to fall into a category and your story is unique, but the thing that's holding you back is usually falls into, you know, one of like four or five categories.

And once you know that, then you actually say, Oh, well, now I know what's holding me back. And [02:22:00] now I can put my effort into that as opposed to being like, Oh, there's this one size fits all. Or these things that guru is show up and say, Hey, do my system. And it'll work miracles for you. Like, it doesn't work that way.

Your system worked for you given your, your situation. But you know, a hammer, you know? Yeah. If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if the hammer is the tool that you have, you're gonna want to go and bang everything in. But that's just not always the tools. So it's just getting to know what, what your unique challenges are.

So that way you can actually get the necessary tool you need and that, so kind of coming to circling back, that's where I have so much, like I'm both proud of that in my life that I've been able to always be. I mean, I had that thing where I had three kids and two jobs and a wife and all that stuff and was still making movies and was still writing screenplays and still founded a nonprofit and, and, and not everyone can do what I do.

I get that, but anybody [02:23:00] can get their story out there. Everybody can create, everyone can do that thing. They say I've been dreaming of doing everyone can do that. And so I take so much joy in my life and helping people and I, I love it. I just, I love it so much. I had this one client, which should tell you about her briefly because it was so wonderful.

And she was one of my first clients. We, I was in and it's actually the reason why I even started saying, you know, I'm gonna help other people was my kids were getting ready to graduate. My youngest were getting ready to graduate high school. And I was standing next to these two women who both had their daughters on the basketball team.

And one of them. Her youngest was also graduating high school and she was quite a bit older, you know, she's older than me. And I was like, wow. So now that you know, the, your final kid is falling the coop, what are you going to do? And she said, well, you know, for 20 years I've been wanting to write a screenplay.

So I think I would take a little sabbatical and I'm [02:24:00] going to write the same time. I'm talking to this other woman who has, who is a single mother of two, and really struggled so much. And, and. 

PART 3b EPISODE RPP Matthew Temple: [02:24:09] really struggling to be a creative. She was, you know, act an actress, but also our writer and really wanted to be a filmmaker.

And I was coming up against, there was always some issue in her life. And at that point, her issue was she had had a full-time job. And for the first time in her life, She for awhile, she w had more, plenty of money to support her family with, but at this moment we're talking, she'd gotten cut down to half-time and she said, I I'm at halftime and I can barely pay my bills.

And it was feeling so good. And I said, you realize you've actually just hit the jackpot because as an artist, you only have to work 25 hours a week to make, to, to, you know, to cover your nut. That me just freed up 25 hours and you can now put 25 hours a week [02:25:00] into your creativity, into your art. And so, and still pay your payer bills.

So it's amazing. So kind of like leaving that, I stopped, I went back and I thought, you know, This is, I called her up and said, you know, I want to do something for you. I want to spend this next year. I'm going to mentor you. And so I was working with her over the course of this year and and someone who has struggled to be creative her whole life, or to find the time to be creative and express herself creatively.

The end of her at the end of our year, working together. Well, 10 months actually, I get an email from her and I quoted in my, in my book cause it was so inspirational as a woman who had struggled for so long to just pay her bills as a single mother of two. She writes me from Costa Rica. She had pulled her kids out of [02:26:00] school, out of, out of, out of school for a while.

She went to Costa Rica. She said, I'm sitting at my desk, overlooking the ocean. And I just submitted my first article. For this woman who hired me and it was like the work that we did together. Obviously she had her own work. She had to do the work. Right. I didn't do any of the work for her, but through guiding her from being like, I'm not living a life that I'm being fulfilled or I'm feeling fulfilled as a writer.

To helping her clarify, becoming really clear in herself, finding out what our strengths were to getting an email from her, from Costa Rica, sending off this project, I thought, Oh my God, it felt so good. And it was a major inspiration for me. And I continue to do that work when I'm not writing, directing, producing my own projects.

That's awesome. Yeah. Those are the moments that just make it all worthwhile. Right? Exactly. So now if someone's listening today and they want to get a hold of you, Matthew, what's the [02:27:00] best way for them to reach you? Yeah, I'm really easy to find on social media at Matthew C temple dot Matthew C temple. Matthew C temple.com is my website.

You can email me through that. But yeah Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, it's all Matthew, Matthew C temple. And I, I'm a pretty easy guy to find. And when you do find me, drop me a line I'm a fun person to talk to you, and I'm always happy to be of service at what brings the greatest joy in my life as being a service.

Well, thank you for being here today. I really enjoyed our conversation. I it's been so interesting and learned a ton. Is there anything from your past or present or where you're going in the future we missed before we wrap this up for the day. You know what? We missed a lot, but, you know, look, fortunately life is long and the world is small.

And so we'll have to fill in the gaps. I think, you know, as, as we move, as we move forward and in, in [02:28:00] other places because I feel like in this has been a this has been, we've taken quite a journey and I am super honored and grateful that you have provided this space. The great questions. And as a host, you've really sort of, you know, I feel like I've been able to be really open and honest and expressing, and I want to honor you as the person who has created this container for that as I'm, I'm really grateful and thankful for what you have, how you've held this and given me this opportunity to share my story and hopefully inspired at least one or two people along the way.

Oh, absolutely. It's my pleasure. And Matthew, I really thank you for being on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, stick around for another couple minutes. We got a special offer for you, and then reach out to Matthew, check out the show notes. Look at the short video, the stop animation video he made with his kids.

We love you. And like our slogan says, don't just listen to this episode with [02:29:00] Matthew, but do the knowledge that he imparted act on it. Repeat it daily. I have a great life. I'm David Pascoe alone. This is the remarkable people podcast. Our guest today is Matthew temple and we'll see you next week. Ciao.