"Bang It Out With Paul Janka" podcast

"Bang It Out With Paul Janka" hits many themes I've been hitting. You've also read about Paul Janka on Nash's blog.

Some of the podcast is pretty obvious... like, if you want to be a player for your whole life, be a player for your whole life. If you want to have kids, go have kids. There is no right path for everybody.

I see the biggest problem being when young guys (or girls, realistically) try to commit to one woman too early, and without knowing enough about chicks, or when a young guy is totally blinded by lust and pleasure. Then he makes mistakes he pays for later. Janka, Francis, and Torero all say (correctly, in my view) that a guy should not be thinking about any sort of long-term relationship before age 30, at the very earliest.

Before that age, he needs to be working on himself, his game, and his career. The first two are really the same thing.

Older guys, really starting in the mid-30s, can think about longer-term projects, like kids.

You will recognize many of the discussion topics if you've been reading this blog for a while. But my own desires and needs have been shifting somewhat over time. That seems not to be true of Torero or Francis, so they provide a good counterpoint.

In my own life, I'm still reluctant to give up the non-monogamous world I've been involved with for a long time. I have built up a system of sorts, and part of me wants to keep the machine going. Another part of me wants to let it fall apart. Yet I have spent so much time building it up, understanding its pieces, and making it work, that I don't want to drop it, even though that may be the better path for me. Especially because it is wonderful in many ways but a TERRIBLE place for a medium- or long-term partner. The book may be a capstone for my experiences in the scene.