Welcome And Why This Helps

James Guttman 0:00

It's the journey made with Pod. HiPod I'm Dad. Hi Pod, it's James Gutman, and it's HiPod I'm Dad. Thank you once again for finding me. It is September 18th, 2026. This is available everywhere that you find podcasts, HiPodom Dad.com, all the archives, all that stuff. Hurrah. I appreciate you guys finding the time to check this out. I've been looking forward to doing this podcast. I don't, I don't know if it comes across, but in many ways, this is therapeutic for me. I get a chance to talk, I get a chance to speak, tell you guys things about my life. And this week has definitely been one of those weeks, right? I live in the same world that you live in. I deal with the same people and the same situations and the same stresses and issues. Um, and I had that this week all across the board, man. Um, whether it was uh romantically, whether it was, you know, work, whether it was friendship, just annoyance, annoyance, annoyance, annoyance. Left and right. And do you know where most of the annoyance comes from? It's never the situation, right? Because there's situations that come up. I handle

Annoyance And The Real Problem

James Guttman 1:05

situations. That's always kind of been my thing. I say always, but for the last 14 years, since I had this heart surgery and this change of life, um, I just take care of what's in front of me. If there is a task to be done, I do the task. I might complain about it after. I might make an issue out, I might roll my eyes as I do it, but I get it done. It's not, it's not the task that annoys me. On top of it, I'm gonna be honest with you guys about something, and this is something that's I've held on to, I've tried to explain it to people. I'm gonna explain it to you. You tell me what you think, especially as it relates to um, you know, a partner or, you know, somebody that you're involved with, I always say it's not for me about the conflict, right? Everyone makes mistakes, everyone does something crappy. It's about the follow-up. If somebody does something hurtful to you and they don't mean it and they genuinely apologize, let it go. That's what I do. I let it go. But if the follow-up has no self-awareness, right? If the follow-up, uh there's no lucid moment where they realize to themselves, like, oh, I messed up. That was wrong. No accountability. Um, that to me is the issue. And what do all these things have in common? It's all about words that we use. It's about how we talk and how we say things. Uh, whether it's gaslighting, you come to somebody and you go, hey, I have a real issue with the fact that you, you know, hit me in the head with a baseball bat. And that person's like, yeah, well, I'm gonna be honest with you though. Like, as I was hitting you with a baseball bat, I couldn't help but think that you were like, maybe you liked it, you're making me do it. Like stuff like that is nonsense. But people do that. The idea of having these words is how can I structure my words to avoid responsibility and issues. Now, look, I don't want to be a cynic and I don't want to sit here and be like,

Apologies Versus No Accountability

James Guttman 2:55

everybody's like that. They're not. And not every situation is like that, but you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who wouldn't agree that a lot of people like to talk in circles. Word salad. I knew someone who used to talk about word salad all the time, a million years ago, this person. Word salad, it's a word salad. Um, which is again another cute way of saying, you know, nonsense, garbage, just saying whatever. And after a week like that, of silliness and gaslighting and um, you know, work issues, and you know, oh, he said this. Oh, do you think well I'm not saying this to you? This is for you, but I got my son back. Lucas comes back to me on Wednesdays, right? I put it on my social media. Hi, James Gutman. You could follow me um digitally. You don't follow me in real life. That's weird. But when he came back this week, I could not wait to have my son back. And for some people, they don't get it, right? They're like, well, you know, you you don't get it because you know your son is higher functioning. My son is not higher functioning. Lucas requires a lot of work on my part. There are things I need to do for him, there's things that he can't do on his own. Um, difficult tasks, things that many parents stop doing for their kids when they're little, I still do for Lucas. Lucas requires work. But I love being around that kid more than pretty much anybody. Do you know why Lucas is lovable and Lucas is sweet, right? But on top of it, I know where I stand with my

Gaslighting And Word Games

James Guttman 4:25

son all the time. It's never a surprise. It's never the kind of thing where, you know, he's being nice to me and then somebody cooler comes along and then he ignores me. I mean, this kid is a teenager, he's 15 years old, and he's at that age where he should be embarrassed of me. And so don't get me wrong, we do have teenage moments, man. This kid, I swear to God, in many ways, it's it's a little bit more on the table than other kids because he doesn't even try to hide anything about himself. The other day he was in his room and he's down the hallway. I can see him from my room. And I'm like, Lucas, come here. Come on, buddy, come on. I put my hand up. Come on, Lucas, come on. And I swear to God, and this is not the only time it's happened, he'll lock eyes with me and close his door in my face in the rudest way, but he doesn't mean it rude to him. He's just like, I don't want to deal with this. He just closes it. And you know what's funny? That is the beauty of his personality that I'm talking about. Lucas does not, I don't know, gas me up just to let me down. Lucas is real, emotionally real, on a level that I can't even begin to comprehend. He is so cards on the table. And it's so refreshing. Now, don't get me wrong, in a practical sense, me as a neurotypical person who has words, I can't do it at the level that he does it, right? If somebody comes up to me and they're, you know, hey, do you want to come to my birthday party? I can just close my door in their face and

Getting Lucas Back And Relief

James Guttman 5:55

expect them not to hate me. So there's there's certain times that we have to use our words to make people feel better or make things go a certain way. But one of the things that I've learned with my son is I try to take accountability for everything. I've always done this, and this has worked to my advantage. And as I've done that, I'm gonna, yeah, whatever. I'll give you guys my whole 2026 has been a different year for me. I've been telling my friends this is the era of honesty, right? I don't lie to anybody. And I'm thinking about it because I say that out loud, and it sounds like nonsense, but I I'll tell you why I don't, because it's it's a weird reason. I had a situation, there was somebody that I was uh I was seeing at one point, this is a while ago, and this person always wanted to question things and what's going on, and was asking me about I don't even remember what it was, but she asked me if I was lying. And I said a statement that it's really crazy because it changed my entire perception of how I'm I deal with people. And I said to this person, I said, Do you think I'm afraid of you? And like her eyes got big, didn't understand. What do you mean by that? I go, Do you think I am afraid of you? Why would you I don't know why would you be afraid? I go, well, if I'm not afraid of you, then why would I lie to you? Like, what consequence can you give me that I'm afraid of? Why would I lie to you? And in that moment, it felt so refreshing. It felt like this like epiphany, you know? And I've realized that I'm not I'm not afraid of anyone, right? I'm not afraid of what anyone can

The Era Of Honesty

James Guttman 7:30

do to me. But on top of it, the choices that I make, I stand by, right? If I do something, I do it because I believe it to be right. And if I'm called upon, I will defend my decision. But if I ever make a decision or ever do something that requires me to be embarrassed of it or lie about it or make up a story about why I'm doing it, I just don't do it. I don't. I don't want to live like that, right? My goal in life, maybe it was a surgery, maybe it's whatever, maybe it's quantum immortality, whatever the issue is. My goal in life is to put more good into the world than I take out. And this blog and this podcast and the things that I write all go back to that. I want to make people happy. I want to be good for the people around me. And I do that. So when the time comes to explain what I've done, nine times out of ten, it's something I'm proud of. I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm not gonna hide it. I have nothing to be afraid of. No one needs an explanation from me. I don't have to justify. If I'm telling you my answer, it's because I want to tell it to you. So why would I tell you something that I'm making up nonsense about? Again, now we're going off the deep. The idea here is that a lot of this comes from my son. A lot of it comes from Lucas. The idea that if he wants a cookie and I tell him no, and he decides in his head, I'm gonna take that cookie anyway, he will do it while I'm staring at him. Right? He does at times try to like go into the kitchen if I'm not there to get something. I get that. But if I was there, he doesn't care. He'll just come over, hey, just take it. I've had situations. I wrote a, you know, I did a blog about it. I did back when we see the cartoons on TikTok, I did the one about him literally locking eyes and me and eating my bagel. And I'm like, bro, what are you what are you doing? And it's that emotional honesty that I've tried to change my life to be like. I mean, this is a real life example. People hear me talk sometimes about, you know,

Learning Emotional Truth From Lucas

James Guttman 9:35

my son and who he is and his personality, and I learned a lot from Lucas, and I know people question that. Here you go. If you need a real, tangible, true example of something that I've learned from my son and tried to emulate, it's this. Everyone should be like this. Everyone should be like this. It's about who you are. You put it on the table, take me or leave me, I don't care. Because you know what? If we end up, you know, being uh friends, being a couple, being whatever, or end up working for you. I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life pretending. Like eventually you're gonna find this out. It's like here you go, this is why I am. And this is honesty, man. I could pretend, I can leave this out. And do you know why? Because I watch Lucas and I see how he lives his life, and I want to live my life the way he does. I want to be real to who I am, I want to be true to myself. Um, and I want to be happy, right? He's the happiest person I know. By far, Lucas is the happiest person I know. So if he's happy and this is how he lives, I want to live like that. And that's the truth, man. So anyone who knows my son knows what I'm talking about. If you have someone in your life, and this is the other thing, too, man, as time has gone on and I've met people and autism awareness has grown and autism acceptance, most people know what I'm saying. When I first started doing autism appreciation 10 years ago, it was a hard sell. People didn't really understand. Now, anyone who knows someone like my son knows exactly what I'm talking about when I talk to them, unless, I don't know, unless they have some of their own issues. I don't know, I don't know how else to put it. But um, I don't know, man. To know Lucas is to love him and to watch how he lives his life. You can't help but want to be the exact same way he is. I want to be him. I want to be open, I want to be honest, you know, my own way as my own person, with uh with words on top of it. But I

Autism Acceptance And Closing Plugs

James Guttman 11:35

want to um I want to value the words I use and I want them to mean something. And that's it. I learned that from my boy. Hopefully you guys learned that from me. I learned it from him. I'll tell you about it. You can learn it too. It's a whole big learning loop, folks. Whole big learning loop. That does it for me. Do me a favor, follow me. Hi James Gutman, H I James Gutman on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, threads, whatever. Um, highblogumdad.com every single Monday. Brand new blogs. Buy the book, Hi World Um Dad. I should plug that, I guess, every once in a while. Uh, it's available on audiobook, on Spotify, and on Audible, and wherever you get audiobooks, it's digital, it's print, it's everything. Uh, and Hipodom Dad.com. I'll be back next week. Spotify, every single place that has podcasts on there. That does it for me. Till then, James Gutman saying, be well. Byepod Um Daddy, I'm gonna go to the body.