And thank you so much for joining us once again. It is the Nightly Pleasures podcast. It's March.

Oh, wait. I'm your host and the author of the piece you're going to hear today. The Grey Knight.

Hello, you can call me Jack. Uh, most of you call me Daddy. And all I can say is, how blessed I am for that. No, no irony.

Sometimes it still takes me just a little bit of back. Women with, women with profound, articulate, wonderful, full personalities in lives,

and they still give me little daddies with hard-eye emojis,

and, you know, I feel, I feel pretty lucky on that one.

I feel pretty good.

Yeah. I feel pretty lucky on that one. I feel pretty good. Um... As you can tell, I didn't come super prepared with this introduction.

Sorry.

Sometimes I ramble, but that's why we put the time stamps in there.

So you can skip ahead and you can just think, Sometimes I ramble, but that's why we put the time stamps in there.

So you can skip ahead and you can just think, oh, I hate this.

This is for the people who literally say they would listen to me, read a phone book,

even though I don't actually believe that,

and are just putting me on right before a drive or doing the dishes or something like that. You know, it's killing time anyway. It's like not being alone. That's what I do with podcasts anyway. So, you know, hi, how you doing? You rubbing them dishes? Are you using that turn signal? That's a very good girl.

How's your year going?

My year stinks so far.

And that is not a segue that I'm about to start ranting or saying anything negative. All contrary, my friends, I actually am giving myself pretty good marks.

Because if it's not great, and I keep going and I keep pushing then that has to mean something good

that has to mean that some amount of of energy and development uh some amount of my long-term planning

has to have paid off, right? I'm feeling, well, I'm feeling

much more capable than usual. When I get down, when I get frustrated, I have very little

...