EP91: CHANGES (w3w) with Toby Brooks

Episode Summary:

In this introspective episode of the "Becoming UnDone" podcast, host Toby Brooks reflects on the multitude of changes he has experienced in the past few months. Transitioning from a long-term position at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center to a fresh start at Baylor University, Toby candidly discusses the whirlwind of onboarding, training, and adjustments that come with a new job. His journey is marked by personal and professional milestones, including watching his children grow up, making career sacrifices for family, and enduring bittersweet farewells.

Toby explores the profound impact of change, both in its ability to cause upheaval and promote growth. As he navigates everything from the sale of his family home to the loss of beloved pets, Toby finds solace and inspiration in music, specifically Blind Melon's track "Change." This episode delves deep into Toby's emotional landscape, offering listeners a raw and relatable perspective on coping with transitions and finding gratitude amidst the chaos.

Transcript

0:00:00 - (Toby Brooks): You might notice some changes this week. I'm joining you this time from a short term apartment on one end of campus at Baylor University. I started my new job this week and it has been a whirlwind. All the usual new job stuff is in full effect, the onboarding, the training sessions, the paperwork, the new id badge, keys, parking passes, all that stuff. And honestly, it's been great. Ive met or reconnected with some incredible people and Im excited to begin this new journey.

0:00:31 - (Toby Brooks): But let me tell you, change is hard and change on the scale ive encountered these past three months has been nothing short of staggering. Well start with a job. Ive spent the past 14 and a half years at Texas Tech, specifically at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. I didn't know the difference when I first applied, but there sure is one. Texas Tech on one hand, is a massive 45,000 plus student general academic campus, complete with big twelve sports, the going band from raider land, majors of all types.

0:01:06 - (Toby Brooks): That's Texas Tech, but TTUHSC is a different animal. It's adjacent to the general academic campus in terms of geography, but it's a totally different vibe. Six schools from medicine to nursing to my area, which was health professions. And while I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, working exclusively with grad students and TTU was so close, that was great. If Im real honest, I missed being on a traditional college campus.

0:01:37 - (Toby Brooks): I started my higher ed journey at a community college. It was the right choice for me at the time in terms of fit and finances, but it wasn't that big time college that I'd always dreamed of. I got a small taste of that in undergrad at southern Illinois, but the University of Arizona is where I did my master's and my doctorate while I worked in athletics. It was in the pac ten at the time, and I traveled all over the west coast working with gymnastics and football, helped out a little bit with baseball.

0:02:04 - (Toby Brooks): It was a phenomenal three years, but since then I've been all over the place doing jobs of all kinds, mostly back and forth between working as an athletic trainer and being in the classroom teaching it. Once when I was on the road working football, my daughter Brennan, who will turn 21 next week, took her first steps and I missed it. When I got home from a long, exhausting weekend, I came in the house, gave my wife and daughter a hug, and plopped down on the couch.

0:02:33 - (Toby Brooks): To my shock, little Brennan popped right up and walked over to me. I was thrilled and I was mortified all at the same time. It was wonderful, but I'd missed it. I knew this was one of the first of what would be a countless string of firsts that I didn't want to miss. So not long after, I made some big changes in my career. There's that word again. Changes. By the time Brennan and her younger brother Tay, who came along just a couple years later, were ready to start school, I knew I wanted our family to be able to stay put.

0:03:06 - (Toby Brooks): We got to Lubbock in December of 2009. Brendan was in second grade. Tay wasn't even in school yet, and after 14 and a half years of softball and piano and theater and marching band for her and baseball, academic meets, football and band for him, Tay, my youngest, walked across his high school graduation stage in May. We had made it in the world of college athletics. It's a lot like the military coaches. Kids get uprooted every couple years when the staff does great and gets a bigger job, or when they don't do so well and get fired.

0:03:42 - (Toby Brooks): And that holds true for athletic trainers and strength and conditioning coaches as well. For the longest time, my biggest goal was to be a head athletic trainer at a d one school or an NFL team. But when I saw a toll those jobs took on families, I just didn't have it in me to try. And so compared to the life I thought I was headed for, a decade and a half ago, 14 and a half years at the same job in the same town, at the same address would seem like the opposite of change.

0:04:11 - (Toby Brooks): But it wasn't. I'm reminded of a quote by Elie Wiesel, who once said, the opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. Change was happening everywhere around me all the time. And sure, I had the same address. We had the same family dog. For the most part. We drove the same cars if we went to the same church. But within those walls, all four of us were changing. That wobbly toddler grew up to become a Texas Allstate choir pick by her senior year, before she went away to the University of Oklahoma.

0:04:43 - (Toby Brooks): And she came back for a year and went to tech, and she went away again to get her own apartment. And that kid brother endured injuries and illnesses and setbacks on his way to being named Allstate in baseball as a senior. So it sounds like I'm bragging about my kids, which I am. But when Tay walked across that stage, I knew that change, huge change, had just happened, albeit in those micro doses that I couldn't really point out from day to day.

0:05:15 - (Toby Brooks): Over time, the macro level changes were tremendous. Now, any empty Nester listening to this has already been through this. They know it. They get it. I tried as hard as I possibly could to grow and get promoted and stay put in West Texas. As hard as I possibly could. But for whatever reason, those doors never opened. I guess now is as good a time as any to say. I'm Toby Brooks, and this is word to the third. On becoming undone most weeks on becoming undone, I bring you guests who have navigated some bad stuff in order to do some awesome stuff, or, as I often say, transform from falling apart to falling into place.

0:05:54 - (Toby Brooks): But every once in a while, it's my turn to reflect, refine, and reprocess homeward to the third. So even if those figurative doors never opened for me in Lubbock, thankfully, somewhere else, they did. Baylor University is in Waco, Texas, about five and a half hours from Lubbock. In that 350 or so miles, everything seems so different. The endless horizons of West Texas, the dust, the wind. They give way to the hills of central Texas, the green and the stifling humidity.

0:06:28 - (Toby Brooks): So in the midst of this massive change, here's what we've got going on. The house I've owned and lived in longer than any other in my life, the place where virtually all my parenting memories happened to. The place we had built just for us. It's for sale. If one of you faithful listeners would buy it and let us come over every once in a while to check up on it, that would be awesome. But anyway, it's on the market.

0:06:52 - (Toby Brooks): We had to paint it, real it or neutral, and change the carpet and lots of other stuff as we packed up. Really doesn't even look like my house right now. Also in that time, Tay finished his last baseball game after playing for twelve years. That void in my heart from not getting it to watch him play anymore might not ever fill in. Then he graduated high school. Then I finished a new degree. Then I left my job.

0:07:19 - (Toby Brooks): Then my wife, Christy, left hers. Then our oldest family pet, Carmel, had to be put down. Then I moved out and started a new job. And last night I got a call from my son saying that, tragically, he found our only other pet, his two year old australian shepherd pup, Gus, suddenly, unexpectedly dead behind our shop. It was the last straw. So I did what I do when I don't know what to do. I turned to music as I sat in this very room, wondering what else could change, what else could go wrong.

0:07:57 - (Toby Brooks): The word that kept running through my mind was change. Couldn't shake it. So I went to Spotify, poked the letters in and looked to see what the magic algorithm would bring me. When I think of changes, the first song I thought of was changes by one of my favorite groups, shy. I listen to that one a bunch my senior year of high school, when I decided to break up with my long term girlfriend for a freshman in my alpha peer leaders class, which, my son would tell you gives some creepy vibes today, but I would argue it was different back then.

0:08:49 - (Toby Brooks): Silently, I'm a little embarrassed that it does look pretty bad in retrospect. Anyhow, as cool as shy is, and as much as I love that song, those changes aren't what I'm feeling. So I look for something else. Of course we have tupac.

0:09:09 - (B): Come on, come on.

0:09:10 - (C): I see no changes wake up in the morning and I ask myself it's like, worth living should I blast myself? I'm trying to be a porn even worse than black my stomach hurts so I'm looking for a purse to snatch.

0:09:20 - (Toby Brooks): As much as I love Tupac, this song is about societal ills and systemic racism, not new jobs, real estate agents, and deceased dogs. Next.

0:09:48 - (B): You're changing I can't stand it my heart can't take it.

0:09:59 - (Toby Brooks): Changes all lowercase by, ironically, all uppercase. Xxxtentacion, or however you say that, came up next. Now we're talking. That slow, methodical, somber quarter note pressed out on a piano with that melancholy chord to each verse to tell the story of a heartbroken lover who significant other is changing. Still not really the words that I'm after, but for sure that sad vibe that's been sitting in my chest for the better part of half of a year.

0:10:29 - (Toby Brooks): I could relate to keep looking. There's a black Sabbath track called changes, but I couldn't make it out of the first verse.

0:10:45 - (B): I've lost the best friend that I ever had.

0:10:53 - (Toby Brooks): Not my vibe. David Bowie has his take on the concept chin chip change and face the.

0:11:02 - (B): Strain change don't wanna be a richer man face the ch ch ch change.

0:11:14 - (Toby Brooks): Yes, the lyrics kind of fit this season in my life. And the chit chit chit chit changes part, as annoying as it is catchy, but that's still a no. Then I saw change by blind melon. I'll be the first to tell you, I was never much of a blind melon guy growing up. Somehow I had a fear that listening to grungy alt rocky white bands would make me a poorer athlete question mark. But I'll admit, I certainly connected with the b girl video from their track no Rain, and I had a vague recollection of borrowing the cd for a few days from my friend Brian, who always seemed to have music that I didn't.

0:12:21 - (B): I don't feel the sun's coming out today staying in it's gonna find another way as I sit here in this misery I don't think I'll ever.

0:12:38 - (Toby Brooks): Know so I'd google it blind Melon formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1990 when Mississippi natives Roger Stevens on guitar and Brad Smith on bass connected with vocalist and Indiana native Shannon hoon. The trio later added Christopher Thorne as an extra guitarist before adding Glenn Graham on drums and shortly after began working on a four song demo. Their self titled debut album dropped in September of 1992, which, from thinking back, would have been the fall of my senior year.

0:13:18 - (Toby Brooks): No Rain got heavy airplay on MTV in the spring and summer of 93 as I was wrapping up high school on my very own. Change was the fourth single release from the album, but it didn't chart even after no Rain went number one on the Billboard Modern rock's tracks chart. From the driving acoustic guitar to that bluesy harmonica at the opener, it certainly had the sadness that I was looking to connect with. Nailed it, but I didn't remember the words.

0:13:46 - (Toby Brooks): So I clicked that little bar at the bottom of my iPhone a few times to try to get those lyrics to pop up. Maybe it's just me, but half the time it tries to close the app. Anyway, I did it and I read the words and I'd found the auditory medication that I needed for the night.

0:14:05 - (B): And when your devil starts all broken keep on dreaming cause when you stop dreaming it's time to die.

0:14:17 - (Toby Brooks): And when your deepest thoughts are broken keep on dreaming, boy cause when you stop dreaming it's time to die that's pretty heavy. That's pretty profound. Sadly for blind melon, tragic change was coming. Lead singer Hoon spent several stints in drug rehab and against the advice of his drug counselor, the band decided to go on tour in 1995 to support their second album, Soup. After several weeks on the road, Hoon was found dead on the band's tour bus after suffering a heart attack caused by cocaine on October 21, 1995.

0:14:56 - (Toby Brooks): He was just 28. The group later broke up in 1999. They've reformed a time or two since then. They've even written and produced new music as recently as 2021 with thoughts that they're going to produce enough singles to eventually put together an album. It's kind of the Spotify way of making albums in 2024, but whatever. So knowing the backstory to the song and the pain that it came from gave me a fresh perspective.

0:15:25 - (Toby Brooks): I know this is all going to be great. I'm so thankful for what's heading our way. Oh my goodness. It feels like I'm Rocky Balboa. Like halfway through the fight where I get pinned in the corner and both Apollo Creed and Clubber Lange are just wailing the body blows, one change after another. But here's the good change isn't meant to make us grieve what we've lost, but it can help us to appreciate it.

0:15:53 - (Toby Brooks): I know I sure miss those little kids running around my old house playing sports or music or whatever, but I'm thankful I was at least there to see them grow up. Change isn't meant to make us resent a past that doesn't exist anymore, but it can make us thankful that it happened. What I want to do right now is go to bed instead. It's close to midnight and I'm hammering away on a new podcast episode. Maybe it's self defense so I don't have to sit alone with my emotions.

0:16:24 - (Toby Brooks): Maybe it's a productive form of self injury. I don't know. What I do know is that I'm regretting promising a new episode every Thursday night. The week before, I moved away, started a new job, and had to try to cobble together a workstation in order to make it happen. So my encouragement to you, if you find yourself in a similar predicament, is to find something to anchor, to be explicit about the things and the people and the places that you're thankful for.

0:16:53 - (Toby Brooks): And while 14 and a half years in the same place would agree to, in a way, it kind of made me lazy. This week I've written down the names and info of at least 25 new people I've met already. I'm giving Santa Claus and my making of a list and checking of said list twice and whatnot. But at tech, I regularly found myself weeks or months down the road with people that I should know their names that I didn't.

0:17:17 - (Toby Brooks): But not this time. I've actually tried to approach this job change with a Ted Lasso approach. If you aren't familiar, you owe it to yourself to get familiar. The show is a masterclass on emotional intelligence and servant leadership disguised as a sitcom about an english soccer team. I brought my team cookies or biscuits. As the brits would say, I'm actively seeking out info so I can celebrate and recognize the new people around me in this world.

0:17:45 - (Toby Brooks): The security guard Roy and I talked for ten minutes today. In 14 years, I never talked for ten minutes to anyone in our building staff, and that's pathetic. Not doing it. But along the way, I've got big, bright, shiny new dreams. Dreams to impact a community and a university, one person at a time, as best I can. That's my dream.

0:18:14 - (B): And when your demonstration keep on dreaming.

0:18:26 - (Toby Brooks): So keep on dreaming. Cause when you stop dreaming, it's time to die. Extra special thanks this week to the one and only Rob Arvilla of the Ringer, whose podcast 60 songs that explain the nineties is no lie, one of the best shows in the history of podcasting and whose format was clearly a massive inspiration for this week's show. Thanks, Rob. And for anyone listening, check out 60 or then 90 and then eventually 120 songs that explain the nineties wherever you get your podcasts.

0:19:00 - (Toby Brooks): Well, that wraps up another week. What about you? What are you working on or waiting for? And what are you doing in the meantime to get better every day? I'd love to help, and I'd love to hear about it. Surf on over to undonepodcast.com and drop me a note for more info on today's episode. Be sure to check it out on the web. Simply go to undonepodcast.com ep 91 to see the notes, links, and images related to today's show.

0:19:27 - (Toby Brooks): Quick update I'm making progress on my two new mini documentaries, and episode one of the Larry Johnson story will drop next week. I have had a heck of a time tracking down his old high school coach and his Odessa college coach, but I'm still trying. We're powering ahead either way, so tune in next week and give it a listen. I'm also making progress on some new interviews with all the cool people I'm meeting in Waco, so stay tuned. This and more coming up on becoming undone.

0:19:56 - (Toby Brooks): Becoming Undone is a nitro Hab creative production written and produced by me, Toby Brooks. If you or someone you know has a story of resilience and victory to share for becoming undone, contact me at undone podcast podcast.com. follow the show on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at becoming a nun pod and follow me at Brooks listen, subscribe, and leave me a review at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:20:21 - (Toby Brooks): Until next time, everybody. Keep getting better.