Humility Makes Us Real

It was a spur of the moment kind of thing because I mentioned it when I did the intro to the video, and I knew it was close on my inbox, so I just pulled it up and read it. Because and those emails don't bother me. Some people may think that they do bother me, but after a while, you get thick skin and it's not a big deal. It's just not a big deal. If you're going to be in this this internet game, you're gonna get a lot

of criticism, and that's fine. I don't know why people do it, and that's why I read it, because it doesn't Those kind of things don't make sense to me. Because if I'm looking through videos on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook or TikTok. I feel no need to be critical of the of the creator because that's just what they're doing. I may look over at my wife and say, is this stupid or what? Or Hey, this is good, isn't it. So that's kind of where it comes from.

I've never spent much time around people that are ugly to other people. I've met several in my life. If you're a man, you know, you kind of grow up fighting and defending yourself and those kind of things are natural. But just as an adult, you know, to be around like I see these Karen videos and stuff. I've never run in to anybody like that ever. I wonder where these people live. I don't know. I don't know. It's

just funny to me. Anyway. I read that email that I said it was a woman, but it was actually a man. I didn't realize that. I think my brain was telling me it was a Karen, but it wasn't. It was a man. But today, about five o'clock in the morning, I walked out on the porch to have a cup of coffee and this was the first email I got, and he sent me a letter of apology. So I'm not going to read his email and be critical of him and then let this apology go. So this is not a story video. I know I talk

a lot. I'm sorry, it's this thing. I don't move this thing down a little bit, hopefully it won't fall over. I'm not going to let it go without you hearing his apology. And I've had I've told you before. I get probably a dozen nasty emails a year, and I usually don't respond to them. I have responded to a couple. Most time I delete them, but maybe ten percent of the people kind of realize after they've sent it that, oh, that was a mistake, not because I read it. I

don't read hardly any of these on the podcast. This one just happened to be a spur of the moment thing, and I read it. There was no nothing that made this one different from any of the others, even though the wording was different. But I cannot read one on the podcast a bad one without reading his response to that. And he says in his life, I'm going to read it to you, And he says in his email he was going to apologize to me the next day. Anyway, it was on his mind, and before I even get started,

I want to say to this gentleman, thank you. I'm glad you owed me, are you. I'm glad that you didn't owe me one. I'm glad that you sent an apology letter that tells me this is a full grown man. Let me say before I go any further, I am guilty of popping off about different things. I have been

in many stages of my life. You get frustrated with something, it doesn't matter what it is around people, you get impatient, get If you're opinionated in any way, and you have, especially a male, you have a certain level of testosterone running through your veins. You tend to say what you think is right, and you say it in a way that hurts other people. I've done it a hundred times, and if I catch it, if I'm conscious of it, and the person did not deserve it, then I apologize,

just like this man has done. So I want to tell him, thank you, thank you very much. You don't owe me anything. I want you to please continue listening to the podcast, extend to me some grace that I'm not a professional. I'm a person in the construction business. I'm not I don't have any I have a little college education, but it's not. It would not have trained me to be a grammar or English expert, or even

knowledgeable in those areas. I let the software correct my grammar if it will, I let the software correct my spelling. Thank goodness for good software. It will check grammar. Anyway. I'm just rambling, but I want to read you his letter and this is very very good, good evening, and happy Halloween. A few moments ago, I listened to the what If It's True podcast in which you read the shorter email very maturely sent to you earlier this week.

Before listening, I was already going to apologize to you tonight. You refer to me as a lady, but I'm a man and that is no big deal, and I thought it was funny or amusing. You also said something is wrong with this person, and you are correct. I have a horrible meanstreak, not all the time, but much too often, and I realized that I need to lighten up and be more civil and more positive and less negative. I'm very sorry for insulting you, mister Buckner, including saying get

a brain. That was ludicrous and inexcusable of me. Sometimes I think how I must care more about words and correctness than about people. I remember being hypocritical at the age of seven. These days, and I'm a year older than you, that attribute is amplified. As a perfectionist writer and speaker, I hold everyone else to very high standards, even to the extent of condemning them. Such condemnation is wrong.

My family is a literary family, grammar champions, writers and poets, and we all notice errors everywhere all the time, on newscasts, billboards, store signs. But none of the other family members react as hatefully and anally as I do. Perfectionism is a curse. Two or three months ago, I sent you an email from my primary email address in which I praised you as a good reader with a very good voice, and I complimented you for having your own podcast. I do

not think poorly of you. I just get so extremely frustrated when everyone, not just you, makes spelling errors, pronunciation errors, etc. And I sometimes personalize these reactions by attacking people with words, even viciously. My behavior is irrational and just playing bad too much of the time. Just from listening to you, I can tell you are a good person and a

man of integrity. You obviously are intelligent, I'm not. Intelligence is a necessity of having a podcast in my perspective, So cruelly telling you to get a brain was absolutely stupid of me, and I'm very sorry. Also, in a recent in a recent episode of What If It's True, you exhorted us listeners not to send you hateful emails. But I did that anyway. That was very disrespectful of me,

and I heartily apologize for the disrespect. Now, there are people who will say something ugly to someone and then they'll just go, I'm sorry. This is not one of those. This is a well this man thought about what he said, and I don't want to spend any more time on making him feel bad. I want him to know that I'm friends with you, and I know you are friends with me, and I believe you, and I have every reason to believe that you don't really think the things

that you put in your first email. I am not critical of people with just about anything. I think. I probably am. I may be and not know it. I'm a flawed I'm a flawed man, very flawed man, and so I'm sure of that. I've done that before, and I'm sure I do it. And I don't even think about it, but I don't say much about it. I usually, especially you know, in my middle aged years now, I will just walk away and not say anything. And that is because I understand that I'm not really good at anything.

I don't feel like i'm good at anything, so I don't feel like I can give anyone any critical advice or criticisms, even helpful advice. Usually I preface it with maybe you could try this, what do you think about that? Or maybe just you know, I just don't feel like I'm good at anything, so I'm not very critical. So it's hard to understand why somebody would send an email that's critical to just a podcaster who's having fun. I mean, you can tell in my demeanor maybe in the podcast,

that I just love doing this. I don't, and I don't feel like I read very well. I don't feel like I read these stories like I hear them in my head, maybe a little bit like adults used to read to me when I was younger. But what you hear is how I read, how I hear it in my mind. When I'm reading short stories, audio books, emails from listeners, I'm not trained. I don't. There are a few people say, oh, man, you're awesome at this. I'm not.

I would never be picked, never be chosen to narrate a best selling book ever, because of my accent and the way that I speak, and because it's not professional. The sound of my voice may sound good to you, but there's way more to it than that. And I don't know if you remember years ago, not years ago, but maybe months ago, I talked about a subject of

knowing your place. You have to know your place as you go through life, in any situation, any group of people, any organization, whether it be business, church, social groups, whatever, you have to know your place. You cannot go through life going thinking of yourself more than you are. You can't do that. You are doomed to failure if you do that. I don't know if that's humility or what.

But I learned that a long time ago working for a massive steel company, when a general manager explained to me what that meant, by knowing your place, knowing when to speak, knowing when not to speak, knowing when to listen. And it took me a long time to learn how to listen. I was always so full of this talking that I wouldn't listen to people in it and it's an acquired skill for me. It is I don't listen

very well. But in this world of story narration and stuff, which is such a trivial little thing to even think about, I know my place. I know my place. It's on this podcast and doing probably independent author published books because I give them a good deal. I'm like, when I narrate audio books, I'm like, I'll just I'll give you the audio, you go sell it on audible. I didn't used to do that, but I do that now. So I give them the audio free so I can put

it on the podcast. And I earn income from ad revenue by releasing audio books and short stories and things like that. I don't know I could. I'm looking at this timer here, it's thirteen minutes. This email really moved me this morning. And if the man was here in front of me, I would hug his neck. Probably he's probably a type a personality. It goes back to knowing your place. People like that are not very responsive to

physical touch and all. He may or may not be that way, but I would want to hug his neck and say, man, I love you. It's okay, no big deal, no big deal, it's all under the bridge. I don't care. And when I say I'll never think about it again, I damn well mean that I want to even think it about it again. The only thing I will remember

is what a nice email this was. Speaking of which, through the years, I have talked about people being ugly in the comment section and through emails, and that is not fair to the people to the thousand to one emails that I get from viewers who send me nice emails. It's a thousand to one and I'm going to say this not in a braggy sort of way, but I'm going to give you a little taste. And I'm not going to remember them all and I can't respond to I get a lot of emails. I don't know why,

but I can't respond to all of them. But it would be hard to remember all the emails that I've got of people who have said things like I'm trying to I'm going to think of the ones that just hit me right now. There have been several from people who are going through recovery from some sort of addiction to a substance, alcohol, drugs, whatever, And I bet I've gotten I don't know how many people saying you your narrations helped me through that. That was never the intention

of this podcast. The only intention I ever had was to be just have fun doing this. That's it. I don't I don't care about anything else. I just am having fun. But that if there are some byproducts of what is I'm doing, it makes me feel very good that somebody who is in recovery and who is look, that's hard. That is hard, hard, hard, it's hard to do. And they and you use anything that you can get because you have a you have tonal vision, a single

track mission to break free of the substance. You'll use anything to get through it. And that people would use these my podcasts to help them get through that, that's unreal. I had a woman not long ago tell me that she would listen this is crazy. She would listen to my podcast and she was pregnant. She had a baby that was soon to be born, and I think she said that the baby would get you know, mother's how

I remember my wife when she was pregnant. I would put my hands on her bellies and the kicking in the feet and all that stuff, and you can see their head roll around in their belly. It's almost creepy, but it's beautiful in a way. She said that she would put on the podcast and the baby would be kicking like crazy and hurting her. This is late late in the pregnancy, and she would put on my podcasts

and the baby would calm down. And then she said that the little girl was born and when she gets fussy, probably not all the time, but sometimes she would put on the podcast and the baby would settle down. How cool is that. That was never the intention of this podcast. It was never to help anyone. It was all selfish for me, just to try to do something that made me happy. But in the in the process of all that,

it seems to make other people happy. I have gotten emails from people, older people from older generations saying, I am a housebound, homebound they're alone, they don't have, you know, maybe they don't have, whatever the situation, but they're alone a lot. And they say, you've been such a good friend to me listen to you know, reading these stories, and you know, I don't know what to say to them, thank you for letting me know that. It makes me feel so good and it gives me steam to do more.

I'm trying to think of people recovering from surgeries, talking about the how listening to the podcast kind of got them through recovery. Oh, there are others, and I wish I could think of them, and I do answer some of those, but I'm telling you back, it's not that much anymore. But back daring from twenty to early twenty twenty three, I was getting sometimes twenty emails a day from some Half of them are stories, and half of them are people just saying they enjoy the podcast. People

don't have to do that. People don't have to do They don't have to take the time to sit out and send an email, but they do. And I'll tell you something else over I've wanted to say these things to y'all forever, and I just I don't like to talk about myself. That's why there's no story in this video, so people don't have to watch it. But I have a po box that's listed in the description or somewhere

in the about page on my channel. I have received more gifts, books, wood carvings, metalworking projects, and most of them are Bigfoot related good books that I've read, just gift after gift after gift, and I never make it a thing on the channel, and that there's one reason for that. It's because I don't want people to do that. I don't want if you talk about it, it makes it happen more. I've seen other channels where people love that stuff. I don't want anything from you, and I

don't mean that in a bad way. What I mean is, let me just read these narra and keep putting these podcasts out and you just enjoy it. The income from the ad revenue is fine with me. I don't need. And I know people will say, well, you need to accept gifts from people, and I will if you send them, I'll be thankful for them, but I'm not going to talk about them on the channel because because it just encourages people to do more and I don't want you

taking time. So there's some people will say, you know, you just don't know how to take a gift. I don't. I'll admit that I don't know how to do it. So anyway, six years into this, probably fifty gifts from people, and I know they're sitting there thinking, you know, he never said thank you for that, he never acknowledged it, and I don't get many anymore, and I'm happy with that. All I want to do is do these stories you guys, enjoy them, and then go back to my life. That's

all all I want to do. But to the people who have sent me gifts through the years, you are so generous and I'm so thankful that you thought of me to do that Christmas gifts, just general stuff through the year. Anyway, reading this email made me feel very good, made me feel very appreciative and thankful and humble. This man's humbled me because I wasn't angry with his email. I was just good. God man, Why would somebody take

the time to send that? But now he took the time to send a much longer, well thought out, heart felt he says at the end, I heartily apologize for the disrespect. I accept that apology. As Val Kilmer said, we off friends now in Tombstone. We be friends now anyway, okay man twenty two minutes. Nobody's gonna watch this video all the way through, but it is my channel. I don't get to talk to many people. I'm out here in the sticks all by myself and the you know.

I feel like I'm on a desert island out here sometimes, but I like it. I like the solitude I like being by myself. I like doing my own thing, but there really is nobody to kind of express your thoughts and feelings too, So that's what I'm doing here. So thank you all for watching this. I'm sorry it's so long, and I hope the gentleman who wrote this, who wrote this apology to me, sees this. This is a podcast just for him, basically or spurred on by him, So

thank you. Okay, Fiction Friday is tonight. I've got a really good couple of scenes out of a great novel that I'm going to read to you, and I hope you guys enjoy it, so get ready for that. I think it'll post around six pm tonight, and when you hear it, I hope you want to buy this woman's book because she is one hell of a writer and storyteller and a really nice person with a really nice family. I've gotten to kind of digitally know them, and they

are very good people. So anyway, listen to that tonight. And since I never know how to say bye, I'm just going to say it's a Southern thing. We don't know how to end a conversation, but I'll end it here, So thanks for listening. And we'll see you tonight on Fiction Friday. Thanks