Welcome to the Man Talk Show. I'm Connor Beaton. And today, you might notice that the audio is a little bit

different because I am coming at you from a cabin in upstate New York where I am shacked up,

a beautiful piece of property, finalizing the manuscript to my book. And it feels like an absolute honor to be doing this.

And it's been wonderful to have some time to reflect.

And it's like a very surreal experience.

It's kind of like, you know, if you're a parent,

you can't really prepare what it's going to be like to have

your first child, as I recently found out. But you also can't really prepare what it's going to be

like to write your first book. And I have been in awe and really honored in some ways that

there are people out there that want to publish my work and my

words and that feels deeply rewarding and and uh something that i that i feel honored by but that

there's people that want to read it as well and so i you know i i say that because when i look back at

my life i'm going to share some other stuff with you here.

I have some quotes from Carl Jung that I want to share, but I just wanted to give you this little aside.

When I look back at my life, you know, I remember distinctly being a 17-year-old kid growing up in northern Alberta.

And when I graduated high school, I remember the pit of sort of despair and lostness that I felt in my life.

And I would feel that way for a number of years.

I probably felt that way for at least a decade, maybe 12 or 13 years. But at 17 years. I probably felt that way for for at least a decade, maybe maybe 12 or 13 years.

But at 17, I barely graduated high school. And, well, I didn't graduate high school at first

with my colleagues and my peers. I failed grade 12 English and I failed grade 12 biology.

And so I had to go back and do that again. So that's,

you know, in some way, that's why it feels like a monumental accomplishment and achievement in my

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