Unpacking Emotions In The Empty Nest - E57

Clancy Denton  0:00  
The person kept apologizing and saying, I know what I'm dealing with is not as bad as what other people but you know what? It's what we're dealing with. The person said, Stop apologizing. We're saying caveats of we know this is not a big deal. It's a huge deal for us. This is the loud quiet living the empty nest. Welcome

Rick Denton  0:19  
back, everyone to the loud, quiet episode 57 which is going to be a little different chat today as well. It's not the episode we thought we'd be making today. In fact, we didn't think we'd be making an episode today.

Clancy Denton  0:34  
No, we thought we we would be doing this episode from Orlando. In

Rick Denton  0:39  
fact, let's see what time is it we'd be driving, or, yeah, maybe not quite getting ready to drive to the airport, an airport we will not see today. No.

Clancy Denton  0:53  
So this episode is going to be about disappointment, and I know we've touched on that before, but usually it's been evolving things around our children or, I mean, we've had disappointments as adults too, but this one was, I think we're still in a little bit of just like shock, or not even shocked, but just we will get into, we have put so much mental and physical energy into what we were going to be attending in Orlando and at what 515 yesterday. Yeah,

Rick Denton  1:40  
it was around that time frame, right? So we discovered that we would not be going to Orlando. And as with many stories, when you talk about disappointment or that, we recognize that what we're about to talk about is not the same as the tragedy of losing a family member or like, this is, this is career disappointment. This is preparation disappointment. This is and it's real, but we want to acknowledge that there can be things that are even well,

Clancy Denton  2:06  
okay, and that's very interesting, because point, actually a podcast I was listening to this week, the person kept apologizing and saying, I know what I'm dealing with is not as bad as what other people but you know what? It's what we're dealing with. So and the person said, Stop apologizing or or saying caveats of we know this is not a big deal. It's a huge deal for us. I mean, this is, this is disappointing. Yeah, that's a really and I really resonated when that caller called in and said, I really wish that people would stop caveat and apologizing for what they think is a bad thing, but comparing it to other people bad things. So oh

Rick Denton  2:54  
my gosh, no. Let's stick on that for a second. We were not clearly that wasn't planned, no. But

Clancy Denton  3:00  
when you said that, I was like, No,

Rick Denton  3:02  
cut it up. What's funny about that? Or you saying that? I have said that to other people. I have said, don't apologize for that. You're feeling what you're feeling. It's okay to feel that that's you. Heck. We've said it to our children. We've said it to our friends. I've said it to people I've never met in person, but have developed a networking connection through LinkedIn and other spaces. And I tell them, No, you don't get to apologize because you're experiencing what you're experiencing. And then, lo and behold, here I am trying to insert a caveat That's just human

Clancy Denton  3:34  
nature, I think, because, you know, okay, I shouldn't be feeling this way over something like this, but when other people are like you said, dealing with way bigger tragedies, but it's what we're dealing with right now. So,

Rick Denton  3:52  
so let's so what is that? Yeah, what is that like an eight minute tease? It is. So as you can those of you who are watching, if you aren't watching, Clancy and I are dressed very similarly today. I think the mic stand may be blocking my logo, but we are representing CX passport Live, which is the new business extension of my Podcast, the podcast that I've been doing for three years. CX, passport. It's a business podcast. It's about customer experience with a dash of travel.

Clancy Denton  4:26  
And this is what we had teased probably five, six episodes ago, saying, you know, we were thinking about going into business together. What's that gonna be like? And so this is, this, is that business? This event that we were going to in Orlando was supposed to be the launch of CS passport, live,

Rick Denton  4:54  
we can do the loud, quiet, living in the nest together. We can't seem to talk.

Clancy Denton  4:57  
Yeah. So I. You know, that was, I'm sorry. I didn't know we were saying that together. No,

Rick Denton  5:05  
I was laughing at how we started to and then just fell apart, which is an indicative we started and then it fell apart. So

Clancy Denton  5:11  
this is what, you know, I've been going up to your office. We have been, you know, we designed the logo we have. We had stuff that we were going to give to you were going to be doing three podcasts while we were at this event. This event was sponsored by someone that you had already had a relationship with.

Rick Denton  5:37  
This was a this was a big B to B software company, their user conference. This is 1000s of people. This is, this was a big thing at the gaylord at Orlando. I

Clancy Denton  5:46  
mean, we had coffee mugs made, I'm trying to hold it the right way so you can see it. We had our, you know, the business cards with the QR code, because we launched a new website, we had go

Rick Denton  6:01  
ahead and zoom in on that. For those of you that

Clancy Denton  6:05  
wants wine glasses made with the etching on it, we put a lot of mental energy money. We had to buy new equipment. That's

Rick Denton  6:17  
like, this was really, I'm glad you pointed out. It's been five or six weeks as we built towards this. And I knew this was happening several months ago, but it really did start to kick in after we took Tegan back to school, like if the summer was all about get to that point. And then I knew my entire business mental energy was going to be there, and then you were brought into doing a whole bunch of mental energy into that as well. And the amount of YouTube videos that I have watched on how to check the peaking levels on an external monitor with the green lines and the the ISO and the well said something else, F stops, things I didn't know anything about, because when you're doing just a casual video or remote CX passport has been all remote. I didn't need to do that. Well, this was going to be the first one, and I wanted it to look incredibly professional. I wanted to know exactly what I was doing. I wanted no mistakes, and the amount of work that I and then the amount of work that we put into making sure there'd be no mistakes was significant. Yeah. I

Clancy Denton  7:31  
mean, we spent almost two hours last Friday just going through the website that you had created. And I was like, Nope, we need to redo that. Nope, let's redo this, you know. So, yes, we

Rick Denton  7:44  
all very good inputs, by the way. You know,

Clancy Denton  7:48  
I recognize that our logo was a little bit off because there was a space that wasn't supposed to be there, and you didn't even notice it drive it drove me nuts when I saw it. So, you know,

Rick Denton  7:59  
we need to make sure and talk when we talk about what it's like working together. You know, six months from now, when we've really kind of done we've had our fights, we've had our successes, all that that's a great point to bring back in is I didn't see it, yeah. And even when you said something, I saw half of what you said, but I didn't see the main thing that you were talking about. So figuring out how to even to communicate those things, yeah?

Clancy Denton  8:19  
So, you know, yesterday we spent all day pretty much, you know, packing, packing. I didn't get a picture of, you know, you had all of the equipment laid out. The stuff that we were taking. Everything was, pretty much, we were winding down, and then I

Rick Denton  8:40  
was just about to start putting into suitcases, my stuff, and I don't, I don't know if you knew what, if you could tell from my face that something bad was going to happen?

Clancy Denton  8:52  
No, because you came in kind of laughing. You're like, oh yeah, but

Rick Denton  8:56  
it's probably more like a psychotic Joker laugh. And I said, Yeah, they just canceled the entire conference for a good reason. Yes, they handled it incredibly professionally. The people I'm working with this company are so professional. They are heartbroken this is happening. So this is not a callous though. What a bunch of jerk kind of thing. No, there's a hurricane with Orlando at its dead center on the day that the conference was going to be. And,

Clancy Denton  9:29  
you know, last week, when I was looking I always look at the weather, I was like, oh, it's going to be rainy. And I kept getting the radar alerts on my phone, blah, blah, Storm has been upgraded to and I was thinking, Oh, okay, well, that's probably why it's gonna be Well, yeah.

Rick Denton  9:46  
And for any weather nerds that are out there, if you're not, just skip forward, like about probably 60 seconds, this is a weird one. If you look at where it's sitting right now, it's kind of off of Cancun, and it's going that direction. So. Straight across the Gulf to Florida. I don't recall any hurricane doing that direction, because when you said, oh, there's storms, I went looked at that same time. I was like, oh, okay, now that's fine. There's a storm. Well, no, the one that I saw, I was like, Oh, well, it's hitting Mexico. It's gonna go through, nope. Yeah, dead center. I

Clancy Denton  10:18  
mean, it was funny when we started texting people that needed to know what was going on, the kids were both like, it's still hurricane season. Like, I know it does. It seems late, but, and

Rick Denton  10:33  
I think that's, you know, an element too, of why we're seeing so much damage and tragedy in North Carolina, there probably was an element of, wait, it's still hurricane season to the degree that's going to come far, that far inland. And I think there is a lot of that surprise that this is still going on. So

Clancy Denton  10:49  
they did, you know, I do appreciate that they took that into consideration, instead of us all getting there and then being stuck or being in some sort of situation that none of us want to find ourselves in. So if

Rick Denton  11:06  
you're not associated with the corporate world, like these events, when I say they're planned a year in advance, that's not an exaggeration. The one that I went to last week, that I wasn't I was just an attendee, they announced at that event. Hey. So the date, the next dates for this in Austin are going to be blah blah. These are prepared so far in advance. So the angst of canceling, we talk about our disappointment. This is a much wider disappointment. Oh, for them,

Clancy Denton  11:33  
yeah, I've Yeah, I feel for the girls and event planners. And, you know, I've been in charge of events for school things, and when you have to cancel something, yes, it's very disappointing, yeah. And, you know, so I do I feel badly for them, yeah. And we had also, you know, reached out to a couple that used to live in Frisco, that I was very close to Lisa and, you know, great, come in. Yeah, we're gonna fly, yeah. And,

Rick Denton  12:06  
like, I was sitting there going, okay, but I gotta make sure that I don't have too many beverages and don't eat things with a lot of salt, because I'm gonna be on camera the next day. Don't want to be puffy and all that, yeah, all the things that in a snap, yeah, just don't matter anymore, and so we ate things that made me puppy last night.

Clancy Denton  12:23  
So I was telling you that, you know, it is a little ironic that our life group this last week has been discussing five anchors of prayer, and our discussion on Tuesday was about unanswered prayers. Yeah. And you know, our our prayer request that evening was, hey, just hoping that this event goes well. This is kind of our first launch of all of this. And so let's

Rick Denton  12:51  
talk about like that, like the the feelings, because the logistics of, there's this point it sucks. We put so much work into it. We all of that. But I want to take what you just said there and talk about kind of the feelings of this. Because when it first happened, I was just all right, you know. And then later that evening, talking to you just I said, I just feel, I feel so disoriented, because this was going to be such a pivotal moment in the launch of something, and it's a something that I do feel very confidently that, from a faith perspective, this is, you know, all things have been kind of pushing us this direction. This is the right way to go. This is where the interest is, the business appetite is. I'm sort of lost on what to do now, you know, because everything that was going to be after Orlando, was going to be influenced and inspired, and even just the simple content generated from Orlando, there's a bit of a huh? Well, what now? Yeah,

Clancy Denton  13:53  
I told you, you know, this morning when you were asking me, okay, so what do you want to do today? How are we going to and I told you, I said I was totally checked out for Sunday, like today, I'm like, Okay, so now I do have to make my grocery list, and I gotta plan meals for the week. And I texted Ashley and said, I'll be back at work tomorrow. So it is just, you know, I know you had some nervousness going into it, because this will be the first time that we've done like you said, you've done CX passport in a situation that you have a guest there right in front of

Rick Denton  14:36  
you, all over everything. Yep,

Clancy Denton  14:40  
I was jumping into a new role of being the producer behind the scenes and getting B roll and all you know things. And that's like, okay, but if I turn away from the monitor and something's messed up while I'm trying to get B roll, how am I so? So, yeah, there, there was nervousness. But. It was also exciting. And so for now to it just be like, hmm, yeah, okay,

Rick Denton  15:09  
I like that. The idea of going from new, totally new, from B roll to groceries lists, that's a

Clancy Denton  15:18  
well. And then I was thinking last night because I was thinking about the unanswered prayers, and I said, Okay, what it why are we supposed to be here this week? Why were we not supposed to be there? What's in my head I'm already jumping to, what is the reason that we weren't supposed to go on this for this event. So it will be interesting to see if anything comes about from that or not, or interesting,

Rick Denton  15:50  
because the why is not something that is, and normally I'm a very straight to the Why did this happen? Kind of thing that has not hit me in the same way. And I think for me, this is not me saying that well, my way is right, but rather for me, it's because it's so much bigger than CX passport. Live, for us, it's big, but the hurricane hitting Orlando, I'm I just haven't even thought about that, affecting a conference, affecting CX passport live affecting Rick and Clancy in Frisco, Texas this week.

Clancy Denton  16:24  
I think I probably was thinking that way just because of the discussion we had Tuesday night. Because ever everyone talked about when things go unanswered or the answer is no, or, you know, usually later down the line, you can see why that happened. And sometimes it's not for anything. And just, you know, this could be just God protecting us from being in a hurricane, you know. And I do. I you know, our friends that live in Orlando, I you know, did tell them, please stay safe. So, yeah, I don't know. It's just,

Rick Denton  17:08  
I have a question for you, okay, because you talked about, well, now, you know, I texted Ashley. I've got the grocery list.

Clancy Denton  17:16  
I don't have the list yet, but yes,

Rick Denton  17:21  
we talked a little bit about this last night. Why? Why pivot so quickly back to the routine?

Clancy Denton  17:32  
Well, because one, I think I have the mindset, okay, that's not happening. So there's no reason for me to take off four days, and especially because then I because we did talk where said, Okay, well, let's maybe just go somewhere else. But there's and you said something. I said, I'm not going anywhere that direction. So no. And then when I looked at another place it's easy to get to that we could just do a day trip or down and back, you know, I was like, Oh my gosh, the flight's already, you know, 400 $500 well, no, so I don't know. I think I just pivoted right back, I think, because it was just okay, that's done. And yeah, unpack the clothes. You know, you hadn't put all your stuff in the suitcase. I had to open my suitcase start unpacking everything.

Rick Denton  18:38  
Yeah, because yes, the flights. And I spent some time playing around. This morning, I was at Google, Google Flights, and I just put in days and just said, Okay, I want the flights to be under this price. Where in Can we go? And I found, actually, a couple that, you know, might be a couple that I'm like, No, have no interest in going there. And I think I'm still and forget flights for a second. I'm even thinking, Well, you know, what if we went to Big Bend, or what if we took a trip? That is a trip that we had never really had the time or the ability to do, but now we could, and I'm still leaving it sort of open ended, I don't know. And the reason I asked that question of you is I don't know if I'm just still kind of in that denial, or if, no, I'm really trying to hey, we've just been granted a gift and of four on four days that were already blocked out. So what could we do with those four days that we have wanted to do but haven't been able to do because schedule or weather or prices or whatever got in the way.

Clancy Denton  19:52  
Yeah, I don't know, like I said, I can be spontaneous at times, but I think I already mentally have moved on. And I'm just, and that's probably just a coping mechanism. I'm just Okay, done. Let's just get back to regular, yeah, routine.

Rick Denton  20:12  
I'm not there yet, but we're also talking about less than 24 hours. So I may try to find it go somewhere,

Clancy Denton  20:17  
if you would like.

Rick Denton  20:20  
You know, that's funny. You You always talk

Clancy Denton  20:23  
about wanting to go do whatever. Yeah,

Rick Denton  20:26  
you're so that's interesting, though, that's a whole nother category, though, of, okay, yes, but this is a disappointment that we shared. This is a life that we're sharing. I'll be honest, it feels kind of selfish to look at you and say, Hey, I think I may, you know, I may go camping for a couple days. That feels selfish to me. And I don't know that it should feel selfish,

Clancy Denton  20:49  
no, because I don't want to go camping,

Rick Denton  20:51  
I know, but we would do,

Clancy Denton  20:53  
I know. And that's where I I'm not that kind of wife partner. Oh, you've heard of that. I don't. If you said, Hey, I'm gonna go camping, I wouldn't be like, well, we should have done something together instead, because I've already, like, I said, kind of mentally moved on. And back to, you know, just like I said, regular routine. So I'm giving you permission, if you would like to go.

Rick Denton  21:32  
Thank you for the permission. Yeah, it is. It's just that feeling does hit there that you not you Clancy, obviously I'm talking about me, but that it feels somewhat selfish in in doing something that is something that I know I enjoy, that I know you don't enjoy, and so I would be the only one involved doing it when there's still a little part of me that's like, Yeah, but what if I found a really good flight to Chicago? We both love Chicago, and would do a trip there. So that's the I think my desire would be, hey, what can we do together? So can we keep that open and then pivoting into already routine starts to close that door down, and I realize it's not a solid close. If something popped, we could totally do it. Sure. Yeah, we got another question for you. Okay, well, I was thinking about it this morning. Actually, do disappointments hit differently in the empty nest? Do they hit harder, softer, differently?

Clancy Denton  22:40  
I don't know necessarily in the empty nest, but I would say at the point of our life that we're in right now, which empty nest or not the it wouldn't I uh, these things, I don't think, bother me as much as I was very disappointed for you and me too, because I was looking forward to getting away for a few days, even though I was going to be doing things, which was fine, but because this is not a oh my gosh. We really needed this to happen for our family, for life, or it doesn't. I don't have that just crying on the side of my bed like I have had before.

Rick Denton  23:46  
All right, see, I'm good at asking questions. You know the word as you were saying that, because I didn't know the answer to this question when I asked it, the disappointment is not coupled with fear,

Clancy Denton  24:01  
yeah,

Rick Denton  24:06  
and I think some of that, there's two things that come to mind. One, I'd actually already kind of thought of But seeing you react the way that you're,

Clancy Denton  24:14  
gosh, where's the tissue box? I moved that out of here because that

Rick Denton  24:20  
was a line from episode one through five. You know,

Clancy Denton  24:23  
no, I guess, every so. Why?

Rick Denton  24:30  
Okay, but okay. Why? What do you think you're behind the tears? Because you just said,

Clancy Denton  24:37  
Well, I think I said it because I've felt that fear, yeah, and I don't have that now, yeah,

Rick Denton  24:46  
so it's a memory of those past fears, I think so, yeah, I'm glad that we're doing this, because I hadn't crystallized it. Because I'm I'm really disappointed in my core. Yeah. And I'm a little uncertain what's happened next. Already talked about that one difference about being in the empty nest, though, is we can do this. We can process this. We can experience this without the additional layer of okay, but we've got to either explain to the kids or keep a good face in front of the kids, or whatever the kids are not a factor in this, that this can just be you and me processing this disappointment, even something as simple as last night, where we said, You know what, and it took us a while to get there, but that's the other part. We could choose when to get to that point of All right, let's go to torches. Have some queso and some tacos and some drinks, right? And

Clancy Denton  25:42  
and some Brahms ice cream, and some I was, I don't know if I'll be going back to Brahms anytime soon. All

Rick Denton  25:48  
right, well, then Tegan and I can keep all right, the ice cream is good. I think that's part of it too. Is that, in addition to what you said of the fear, the fear is also not compounded by having to process this in front of or with the kids.

Clancy Denton  26:10  
And again, like I said, I don't know that it matters empty nest or not, because if the kid, I mean, we let the kids know as soon as it happened, and it was just like, Oh, bummer, you know, but it wasn't like the other things that we have gone through when they were younger. And we actually talked about this this week that, yes, you know, I don't think they realized some of the struggles that were going on, because we did a good job of sheltering them from that.

Rick Denton  26:45  
And yeah, that's a whole another category of parenting that we we tried to have our disagreements and our conflicts in front of them, but trying not to expose them to any economic fears was an important part for us, and maybe that wasn't the right choice. We'll never know, but that was our choice back then, yeah,

Clancy Denton  26:59  
so I don't like I said. I don't know that it necessarily equates with emptiness. I get what you're saying. But if the kids were here yesterday, we would have been like, oh my gosh, you're not gonna believe this. This just got canceled, you know. And it wouldn't have been maybe

Rick Denton  27:16  
the age of the kids, like, yeah, it's the whether they lived here or not. It's the fact that they're old enough to do that. So maybe I'm calling it empty nest when it's really having adult kids, which the two are very often synonyms for each other, not always, but often adult kids means empty nest. Yeah. So how are adult kids?

Clancy Denton  27:38  
They're good. They're living their best lives. So Tegan texted. Now that was the text from Tegan this week. Was which I didn't even know this was even a thing, and it's already been resolved, but she's She texted and said, what's all this stuff? I'm hearing about the ports closing and toilet Apocalypse, and

Rick Denton  28:01  
I just there strikes the ports, but didn't realize people are gonna now freak out about toilet paper again.

Clancy Denton  28:05  
And I, being myself, sent the gift from South Park. Of everybody going to the toilet paper, which people? I think most of our, most of the toilet paper is made in the US. I think it's very domestic, and unless you're expecting something from sheen or, um, anything that you order on temu probably shouldn't be wearing from but in cars, they did say cars, we're gonna coffee, but, but

Rick Denton  28:35  
people lose their bleep, really, toilet paper well, and I asked, I'd freak out more about coffee. I said,

Clancy Denton  28:41  
How many rolls of toilet paper do you have? She had 10. I said, you're good. And she said, but I do need eggs, so I need to go to the store.

Rick Denton  28:51  
Think about the ticket. Does this all the time they talk about, you know, what would our grandparents think about something that we complain about? You know, this Wi Fi is really slow, and the, you know, the grandparents like, yeah, you know, a dust storm just stole all of our crops, and we're gonna die this fall. Really, the ships don't dock and we go grab a bunch of toilet paper well.

Clancy Denton  29:13  
And I love Teagan, because she said, you know, she didn't know about it, but one of her roommates parents texted and said, I think you all need to go stock up on stuff. And so then she said, Well, we don't live by a port. Oh, bless your heart. They just think things magically appear at the front door via the Amazon truck.

Rick Denton  29:42  
We have Amazon we don't have ports. If

Clancy Denton  29:44  
you're not near water, you're safe.

Rick Denton  29:48  
Oh, goodness, from disappointments to laughs

Clancy Denton  29:53  
And if anyone's listening, and you know works for a corporation that would like to do an event and have cm. Passport live, and

Rick Denton  30:01  
over to CX passport live.com. For your full information, including pricing and options, we'd be glad to be at your next event. There you

Clancy Denton  30:10  
go. This This episode was sponsored by CX passport live.

Rick Denton  30:18  
There you go. We do find our ways into laughter, which is what I definitely enjoy about you and the loud, quiet living the empty nest.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai