30th Anniversary Celebration

It all started in Hoopa, California. A tiny motel, a dial-up connection, and a young guy who thought it might be fun to write down a few stories from his life on the Trinity River. That set off a 30-year chain reaction: a monthly family update grew into a website, a blog with running bits, and eventually a podcast that found an audience by telling the truth with a grin. I take you back to the Trinity River bridge where it began and trace the crazy and surprisingly durable path of theMangoTimes, shaped by forward-happy friends, early web experiments, and a Jimmy Buffett ethic to quietly make noise.

You’ll hear how a dentist with an AOL handle became a reluctant publisher, why parental myths and top ten lists helped build a voice, and how friction around faith and church forced a move toward independence that actually made the work stronger. We revisit the homeschool blogging era, the launch of HomeschoolingIRL, and the moment podcasting clicked as a way to say out loud what most people whisper. Along the way, friends drop in: tech lifeline Sven Rafferty, musician John Trost with a coconut-and-machete memory, and longtime pals who remember the forwarded emails that started it all.

The throughline is simple: show up, be real, and create for a tiny crowd that keeps you honest, which in my case was my wife, Kendra, my brother-in-law Jeff, and my long friend Byron Wolfe. Their voices shaped every post and episode, even through grief and long pauses. As we close the loop on three decades, I outline where we’re headed next: a season on change in midlife, featuring people who pivot hard and find new lanes with practical courage. If you’ve ever wondered whether your quiet project matters, this story says yes. Platforms may shift, but practice endures.

If this resonates, tap follow, share it with a friend who’s plotting a pivot, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Tell me: what change are you setting in motion this year?

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Guest Information
Sven Rafferty
Matt Andrews
James Estes
Jon Troast
Reese Hopper
Byron and Barb Wolfe
Kendra Fletcher

Resources and Links
First Edition of theMangoTimes

Music used in this episode:
Coconut Telegraph - Jimmy Buffett (Buy It Here)
Quietly Making Noise - Jimmy Buffett (Buy It Here)
The Andy Song - Jon Troast
Life of Riley, Bass Walker, Look Busy, Sunny All Day andCarefree by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100449
Artist: http://incompetech.com/
Back to Portland by Track Tribe.
Lost and Found by Dan Lebowitz.
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Transcript

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Bridge To Where It Began

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Free audio post production by Alphonic.com.

SPEAKER_05 0:06

Hey, this is Fletch, and I'm on Highway 96, and I am on the bridge overlooking the Trinity River in Hoopa, California. And this is where it all began. Thirty years ago, 1995, I sent my first email from the Best Western motel that I'm staring at right now. That was the first edition of the Mango Times email that then became the Mango Times website that then became the Mango Times blog. And now the full website blog and podcast. So I drove here on my trip to Montana just to remember where it all started 30 years ago. So stick around as we celebrate 30 years of the Mango Times. Welcome to the Mango Times Podcast. This is Flash. Hold on, stop the recording. We can't use the same opening as always. This is the 30th anniversary. Let's take it back to the beginning and use the intro from the very first episode of the Mango Times Podcast. Welcome to the Mango Times Podcast. This is Fletch. I'm the writer, editor, and general stick poker for everything you read or listen to at the MangoTimes.com. It is my own personal podcast where I like to talk about culture and Christianity. I'm gonna have some good friends stop by just to make us laugh. We'll talk about good movies, good food. I'll talk about the great singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett and what life was like for me growing up in the 1970s, as well as what life is like now in a big family, which for me is eight great kids and a gorgeous wife. Hey, stick with us here at the Mango Times Podcast to help us as we quietly make some noise. Hello and welcome to the Mango Times Podcast.

Introduction

SPEAKER_05 2:12

This is your host, Fletch, and this is the episode I've been waiting for and I've been excited for because it's our 30th anniversary show, and I have a lot of fun planned for this very quick episode where we just celebrate being here for 30 years. I cannot believe that I started this path 30 years ago. So we're gonna talk a little bit about the path. We're gonna have some guests come in. We have a few shout-outs that have been provided. And so here we are, 30 years. I can't believe it. Where did this all begin? You know, in 1995, I graduated from dental school. I was a freshly minted dentist. And I don't know if you know this, but when you graduate dental school, you get a degree. They call you doctor, but you're not allowed to work on a human until you pass the state board exam. So I took my California state boards, I was waiting that summer for results. And a friend, Byron Wolf, who you'll hear about on this episode, his dad was a dentist, and he said, you know what Fletch should do? He should go work for the Bureau of Indian Health Services. And he had a job that he knew about in Northern California. It was in Hoopa, the Hoopa Indian Reservation in Northwest California. And so we spent a month on the Hoopa Indian Reservation. Well, that first week in, I decided to send an update to Family and Friends saying, we made it and this is what we're doing. And I called that email the Mango Times, episode one, because I was going to do four of them. So I sent this email out to Family and Friends, and I called it the Mango Times. Now, why the Mango Times? If you go on the website, you'll get all the history. But at the time, Jimmy Buffett had a newsletter called The Coconut Telegraph. It was based on a song of his. I'll play a clip of it right here.

SPEAKER_10 4:04

You can hear them on the coconut telegraph. You can hear them on the coconut telegraph.

SPEAKER_05 4:18

I love Jimmy Buffett. I was a huge fan. I was a parrot head. And I loved the idea of the Coconut Telegraph. I loved that it was this weekly newspaper that talked about shenanigans and that people you didn't want to end up on the Coconut Telegraph. So I was thinking, well, what can I call this? Well, my email address for AOL.com at the time was MangoAndy. And I decided to send this out and I just called it the Mango Times. Well, the second week came around in Hoopa and I wrote the second email and I called it the Mango Times number two. Well, when I got home, it turns out people actually kind of liked what I was doing. I was doing some comedy and writing some funny things that the kids did, some adventures. I would give a fishing report, and someone said, Hey, I missed the Mango Times. So once a month, I started sending out the Mango Times, which was like, you know, those things you get at Christmas, all the letters where people tell you what their family's

The First Edition of theMangoTimes

SPEAKER_05 5:15

doing. I didn't have to send one at Christmas because every month I was updating what we were doing on the Mango Times. Do you want to know what that first email sounded like? I have a copy of it. And I'm going to link to it. Just go down your show notes and click on the Mango Times episode one, and you'll be able to see the very first edition of the Mango Times. Kind of fun to read it now. I did stupid things. I talked about, you know, parental myths. That was one thing I started talking about. I started doing top 10 lists. I just did anything that I thought was silly and would make people laugh. Well, that went on for a while until I was at a wedding, but someone at the wedding came up to me and they said, Hey, are you Fletch? And I said, Yeah. And they go, and you write the Mango Times. And in my mind I thought, how do you read the Mango Times? It's an email that I send out to friends and family. Well, it turns out people were forwarding the Mango Times to their friends and family. It was the first time I realized the power of email, of the internet, of social media. So that was going on. So at that time, it was early marriage and early parenting. Some of our closest friends were Barb and Byron Wolf. And these were friends that, like us, were curious. They were creative. They loved all the things we loved at the time. And if there was some technology that we could get into, they were right there with us. Matter of fact, I remember he talked to me about a website. And I thought, oh, websites.

From Email To Website

SPEAKER_05 6:45

Yeah, I've been to websites. I mean, that this was very early on. And in one weekend that he was at our house, suddenly I created a website. And of course, I called it the Mango Times. And there was like an about us page. You know, I just I basically looked at what everybody else was doing, and I created this website called the Mango Times. It actually didn't have its own URL at the time. It was hosted somewhere. And so now I didn't have to write an email. Just once a month, I would update this static website. And I had little things walking across the screen and I had flashing colors and we had updates. We had photos. We got our first digital cameras. So we were able to put pictures up and very, very bare bones. Well, I would have regular series. I would do top 10 lists. I would do funny things my parents said. I did a whole section called Parental Myths where I talked about stupid things like it's okay to eat cookie dough. It's okay to pop your knuckles. It's okay to run up an escalator. All the things that some kid in Iowa when I was seven years old ended up in tragedy. And I was too young to research whether this was true or not. We just believed it as kids. Uh, you know, pop rocks and soda, all those things. I started dispelling all those parental myths. I had no source, I had no authority, I just talked about it and I was stupid. But it was funny and people liked it, and so I had this website going for a while. And truthfully, life got a little busy and it just became harder to update. So it really became a static website. But then

From Website to Blogging

SPEAKER_05 8:16

this thing came along that Kendra got involved in, and it was called blogging. And very early on, people had places at blog spot or things. It just ended up becoming this online diary, and I thought, you know what? That's actually what I should do. I should blog. Well, Kendra was on a platform at the time called Homeschool Blogger, and you gotta realize this was a different stage of life. We were super deeply involved in the Christian homeschooling movement. So I never killed my original website, I just started blogging over at Homeschool Blogger. Well, here's the thing in Christian homeschooling at the time, if you were a dad and you had a blog, you were in a very, very small, small group of people. Well, you'll never believe what happened. Because of what I was writing, they ended up giving out awards for best homeschool blogger. And I won it like a couple years in a row, only because I was talking about ridiculous, silly stuff, and for some reason people liked what I wrote. And so I would win this homeschool blog award. Now, here's where it gets super funny. Uh, I got invited to speak at a conference, uh, some homeschool conference. And so I was like, Great, they were gonna fly me out to Virginia. They wanted me to come out and speak about being a homeschool dad and whatever. And I that was it was great. I mean, truthfully, it just stroked my pride. I'm like, sure, I'd come speak. It was a free trip to Virginia. And I said, Hey, by the way, my wife blogs as well. Her name is Kendra Fletcher, and the people that ran this conference went, Oh, your wife is Kendra. Well, here's the funny thing. What ended up happening is they canceled my invite and just gave her an invite. And so I suddenly was like, Oh, well, I guess homeschool blogs dads aren't that important, but I went and carried her bags, and we went to this homeschool blogging conference back in Virginia. And it was great. It was so great. It was fun. So that's kind of where I was. I'd gone from being this email to a static website to now blogging. Well, if you know anything about the Mango Times, you know that the homeschool blogging community probably isn't gonna want what Fletch really has to say because it the content just started changing. So I went to WordPress and I hosted my blog on WordPress, and it was still just a link off of the Mango Times website. So at the time I was blogging about everything. I was blogging

Hello Squarespace!

SPEAKER_05 10:48

about life, I was blogging about church, I was blogging about religion. But as it turns out, when you blog about church and religion, a few people can get their panties in a bunch. And the person that was hosting my website said, Hey, I need you to move off my website, I need you to move off my server. That which you're posting doesn't line up with my values, something like that. You know, fletch be gone, basically. So I contacted a really good friend named Sven Rafferty. He's from hypersven.com. You should look him up if you need IT help in the central valley. If you need IT help anywhere in the world, contact Sven. He's amazing. He has taken care of me forever. And I said, Sven, I need a place to host my website. And there was this thing called Squarespace at the time, very early on. And we got the Mango Times over to Squarespace, and I was just able to write whatever I wanted to. Silly, ridiculous, inappropriate, slightly offensive. I don't know. Just depends on your perspective. And the MangoTimes.com took off until someone asked Kendra, you know what you should do? You should host a podcast. You should host a homeschooling podcast. And Kendra mentioned it to me, and I said, Yes, we should host a homeschooling podcast. I don't know how I commandeered that. But we started something called homeschooling IRL, homeschooling in real life. And we decided we were going to talk about Christian homeschooling from a very true perspective. We were going to pull the veil back on Christian homeschooling and talk about all the topics people didn't want to talk about. Every two weeks, we would come on and have a podcast and we would just openly talk about tough topics. And you know what? It took off in the home in the Christian homeschooling world to have people talk in real life, apparently that's what people wanted to hear. But along the way, I created the Mango Times podcast. It was just another component of the Mango Times. And so here we are, 30 years in. And that is the history of the Mango Times. Now, there's a lot of other small stories along the way. There's microblogging, there was Facebook, there was Instagram, there was Twitter, there's YouTube. I was never gonna be a video podcaster, but who knows? Maybe that's next. But along the way, that is what became the Mango Times. It started as an email, ended up as a full website, blog, podcast, microblogging, social media, empire people. It's an empire, it's nothing. You know what it is? It's fletch. Sharing thoughts, finding some humor, putting it out there, and really not caring

Launching Podcasts And Speaking Frankly

SPEAKER_05 13:35

if anybody responds. As a matter of fact, I've said this from the very beginning. I wrote everything I wrote on the Mango Times. I put everything out on the podcast for three people. The first was my wife, I just want to make her smile. The second was my brother-in-law Jeff, because I just loved to get him amped up and have him respond to me. More often than not, it was my grammar or my the way I said it. But often it was, hey, I'm thinking about this, and get him to respond. And then lastly, was somebody I already mentioned that was my good friend Byron Wolfe, just because in the back of my mind, he was always a guy that kept me thinking and keeping me ahead, and he still does. So those were the three in the back of my mind. Every time I wrote something on the Mango Times, every time I blogged, and every time I put together a podcast, I thought, what would they want to listen to, think about, engage with? And I realize it's not always gonna be perfect, but those were my muses. In reality, I don't think Kendra ever reads what I wrote. I don't think Jeff ever read what I wrote, and I don't think Byron ever read what I wrote, but they were the creative source behind all of it. And you're gonna get to hear from each of them on this podcast. All right, so before we continue the story of the podcast and have a few guests on the show today, I want to share one more clip from Jimmy Buffett, which pretty much explains what I've been doing here for 30 years.

The Three-Person Muse And Buffett Ethos

SPEAKER_05 15:29

Pissing off the old kill joys, not too soft, not too loud, just enough to draw a crowd. And my crowd's always been three, so uh that song by Jimmy Buffett has inspired me since the 90s. You know, just quietly make noise over in your little corner of the internet. You can do it quietly. You can still make some noise, you can still draw a crowd, and you can still piss off the old killjoys. So thanks, Jimmy, for 30 years of inspiration. All right, the Mango Times podcast. So I started this on the heels of Kendra being asked to do a homeschooling podcast, which I commandeered with her. No plans. I figured out how to do it. Byron helped me, figured out how to get onto iTunes podcast at the time. Now it's called Apple Podcast, how to get onto iTunes, how to have a show. I was listening to podcasts, so I had some ideas of what I wanted to do. But you know what? I just pooped out. And then I mentioned this before, but one of the biggest things that happened was one of my creative muses, uh, my brother-in-law Jeff died. And you'd think, like, oh, you've you've lost this creative muse. But I didn't. I still think about them all the time. Every time I write, every time I podcast, every time I'm doing something creative, every time I'm going to say something that I think is slightly controversial, I just think about Jeff. And I think this would have been an engagement in a debate. So this podcast went on a break. And then, like I said, last January, when my mom died, I thought, hey, I need to get my creativity back on. I had gotten involved in improv, I'd gotten involved in theater, I was doing a lot more things that were just genuinely funny with people around me, and I thought I really should kick up the podcast again. All right, one of the other favorite parts of the Mango Times and the history has been people I've met along the way. So when I announced that we were celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Mango Times, I had a few people call in. And I just want to share their words with you as an audience. The first comes from someone who this podcast, this blog, this website wouldn't exist. You've already heard about him, my buddy Sven Rafferty, who helped me get the MangoTimes.com online. Here's what Sven had to say.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Bro, 30 years. I can't believe the Mango Times has been around for 30

Sven’s Message And Early Squarespace Days

SPEAKER_03 17:53

years. I still remember the day you asked me, hey, what do you know about this Squarespace? And before you know it, the Mango Times was on Squarespace. Man, it's been a long and fun journey. You always make me laugh, Fletch. Congratulations to 30 years. Hopefully we'll be talking in another 30 years. I mean, let me do the math in my head real quick. Yeah, I think it's possible. I think we'll be around in 30 years. If not, we'll download our brains to an AI agent and we'll talk then. So, from your buds, Sven, to the Mango Times, to another 30 years, bro. Peace.

SPEAKER_05 18:35

Thanks, Sven. I appreciate it. Again, I would not be here without you. You know, one of the other people that called in is a friend. I got to meet him a long time ago. Uh, he's a musician. I met him through Garrison Keelers, a prairie home companion. He was the musical guest. He had a contest for not a contest, but just a sign-up if you wanted to host him in your living room as a living room contest. It was the weirdest thing ever. Basically, if you won, he would do a concert in your living room, and then he'd spend the night on the couch in your living room. And he was traveling around the United States trying to do a hundred concerts in a hundred days. And that's John Trost. And I met John because I won. Both Jeff, my brother-in-law, and I got to host a concert. We had them back-to-back nights. And so I met John. He came and put

Jon Troast And Coconut Warfare

SPEAKER_05 19:28

on a concert for my family, and he has become so much more than a musician. He is just a dear friend in my life. And here's what John had to say. Fletch!

SPEAKER_07 19:37

It's John Trost from Illinois. Congratulations on 30 years, my friend. You're a guy who makes things happen. For example, I recall a time when I excitedly told you about my first experience drinking coconut water right out of a coconut. Amazing. Well, it wasn't long after that we were in your driveway attempting to recreate the experience. As I recall, it wasn't quite as simple as we hoped. But no problem. Soon enough, you also procured a machete, which eventually succeeded in extracting the goodness. Thanks for making things happen for 30 years and more, my friend.

SPEAKER_05 20:26

Now, one of the things about John is he wrote a song about me. Yeah, my dental staff and my parents paid him to write a song for me for Christmas one year. So who gets a song made for them? This guy, right here. And here's a clip of what is called the Andy song.

SPEAKER_08 20:43

There's just a few more things you should know. Well, he's a dentist, he likes tie-dye shirts, he wears flip-flops all the time. He likes donuts, Lurpees, and a Coke in a bottle would be fine.

SPEAKER_05 21:12

You know, along the way, we've had some great conversations. One of the conversations

Matt Andrews

SPEAKER_05 21:15

was with my good friend Matt Andrews, and Matt called in to say this.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Fletch, this is Matt Andrews of Ankony, Iowa, wishing you a congratulations for 30 years of blogging and podcasting. It's good to know that you've been doing this since I was 10 years old. So congratulations on longevity. Uh, it was a real pleasure being on the podcast this year and getting a chance to talk to you. And uh it was just a lot of fun, and it's fun listening to you, and congratulations, man.

SPEAKER_05 21:44

Now, Matt was on for an episode where we talked about what if you don't know everything. I'll put a link in the show notes. It was a great episode. A lot of you loved it. If you haven't heard it, go back and listen to that episode with Matt. What if you don't know everything? You know, because you don't know everything. That's the point. How do you show up in those moments where you just don't know everything and you have to live in ambiguity? And whether that's in life or in faith or in parenting or in relationships, just that concept that, hey, guess what? You don't know everything. So take a look at that episode. It's one of my favorites. A multiple guest on the Mango Times is my good buddy James

James Estes

SPEAKER_05 22:23

Estes. James called in to say this.

SPEAKER_04 22:25

Hey, this is James from Elk Grove. I remember the Mango Times reading it in the beginning on my AOL email of all the fun, marriage, kids, everything going on. Now look at you. 30 years later, the podcast, the website, lots and lots of fun. Congrats on 30 years. I love you, Mango Times. You're awesome.

SPEAKER_05 22:47

James, you're more than a guest on the Mango Times. You go back so long in friendship, all the way back to high school, two 15-year-olds acting stupid, part of just a silly, crazy crew that would hang out every Friday night, go to dollar movies, and go to Denny's and eat tacos and just do stupid stuff in Campbell, California. You know, as I wrap up the call-ins for the Mango Times, I specifically wanted to include the three most important people, the source behind what I wrote and thought and decided to put out on the Mango Times, and that was my wife Kendra, my brother-in-law Jeff, and my buddy Byron. So, in no particular order, I have some inclusions from each of those. First, there would never have been email. I would not have Mangoandy at

Barb And Byron Remember The Early Days

SPEAKER_05 23:37

AOL.com if it wasn't for this guy. I would not have a website, and I would not have ever had a podcast if Byron hadn't gotten involved. And he and his wife Barb sent this in for us. And if you know them, this is perfectly classic Barb and Byron Wolf.

SPEAKER_06 23:56

Hey Fletch, it's Byron. I'm Fletch, it's Barb. So we uh aren't quite sure what to talk about, so we decided we're just gonna talk, and then you're gonna edit this because you're a podcaster and that's kind of what you do.

SPEAKER_09 24:11

And we're not at all.

SPEAKER_06 24:12

And we're not. And we don't have a script. Um so uh we we are original recipients of the original Mango Times back when I was wolfie299 at AOL.com. And uh at one point, a few years ago, we took all the email from the first uh five years of our life from AOL and uh we archived it and we printed it out and put it in a box. And so for a long time we had printed hard copies of all of the original first edition Mango Times.

SPEAKER_09 24:52

But they fell victim to one of our moves.

SPEAKER_06 24:57

Uh I think we just edit the edit things and threw them away.

SPEAKER_09 25:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:01

So anyway, at one point there was a printed version. Original printed um Mango Times. Mango Times.

SPEAKER_09 25:08

Now there's not.

SPEAKER_06 25:10

So congratulations on 30 years of the Mango Times, both in hard copy and in virtual editions.

SPEAKER_09 25:18

And um yeah, what a ride. We remember when it was not around not didn't we remember when it didn't contain eight children and uh Fletcher Dennistry didn't exist. Early days.

SPEAKER_06 25:35

Early days. Now it's late days, and we still have trouble remembering things, but for different reasons.

SPEAKER_09 25:44

So congrats!

SPEAKER_06 25:45

Congrats, and uh here's to another 30 years of the Mango time. Maybe 30 years from now it will be uh something that you just think about, and then everybody else can receive it. Amazing. All right, bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_05 26:07

You know, I constantly refer to you two as two of my favorite people on the planet. Every chance I have to get together with the two of you makes my life better. And thank you so much for your friendship. Thank you for being involved. Thanks for creatively making me think about funny things, thanks for deep laughs, great food. From the wine wizards straight till today, I can never have potato riclette and not think of you. All right, so since we've talked about this before, my brother-in-law, Jeff, died several years

Reese Hopper on Jeff’s Legacy

SPEAKER_05 26:41

ago, and it's kind of impossible to get his thoughts on here. But I reached out to his son Reese, who is one of my nephews, and I told him kind of what I was doing, and I said, Hey, could you take some time and send something in, you know, on behalf of your dad? And so this is what Reese had to say.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

Fletch, congrats on the 30th anniversary of the Mango Times. I've been trying to think of what my dad might have said to you in this occasion. I don't know exactly what he would say, but I know it would be clever and funny and pretty short. He might have teased a little bit, but ultimately it would have been uh would have been something fun. What I do know is that he was always a big proponent of creativity. He was a big proponent of using technology, new technology, but not to the detriment of your consistent creativity, but to its service. He never shied away from the work. Obviously, he kept his own daily writing practice for years and years and years, and you've kept up this consistent writing practice for a long time as well, and um I know that he was a big proponent of that. He knew that creativity, whether done for profit or for fun, was just an enriching portion of life. To do it for no other reason than to enrich your own life was well, well worth it for him, and I think I saw that throughout his life. I was I've been inspired by that looking back on his life. That whether he was doing it for work or for an organization or to help out a church or something, or whether he was doing it for himself, creativity was just an an enriching endeavor for his life. And so, congratulations on doing that for yourself for 30 years and also for impacting many, many people along the way.

SPEAKER_05 28:35

Reese, as you and your brothers, uh Carson and Dan, know your dad was super special, not only to me, but to Aunt Kendra. Great guy. I don't know how much you know of this, but yeah, he was a challenging guy. He always challenged what I thought, what I said, what I decided to put out loud. I think he liked that I was willing to say things out loud, maybe because he didn't have to, and then he could just like go, oh my crazy brother-in-law. But just deep, rich conversations about everything from life to faith to family to literature to how poor my grammar was. I think he was always questioning how an English major like I, like me, like me, like an English major like me, could have been so poor a grammar. But what a great guy. He was a great man, you had a great dad, and thank you so much for stepping up and filling in in the gap for me on this one. Last but not least is my wife Kendra. Like I've said multiple times, I don't even know if she reads what I write or listens to what I say, but boy, does she give me the space to be creative. Whether it's

Kendra’s Space For Creativity

SPEAKER_05 29:42

going on stage for improv, whether it's driving to Sacramento for improv, or just taking space around my fire pit, constantly finding the funny in even things she says. I know our brands of humor and creativity don't always line. Up, but boy, has she given me space for over 30 years to be a lot edgy. I was gonna say a little bit edgy, but she gets the true version of me. She gets the a lot edgy version of me that doesn't always show up on the microphone, that doesn't always show up in the blog. She gets the darker side of my humor. She gets all the things where it's super inappropriate. That's what Kendra gets. And she lets me stay in that space and she encourages me to stay in that space, and she encourages me to find friends that stay in that space. So I could not be doing this muted version of what you get if she didn't let me do the super crazy version every day at home. So thank you for letting me quietly make noise and say what needs to be said in the moment at all times and still love me through it.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Hello, Fletch at the Mango Times. This is your wife, Kendra. I'm not a witch, I'm your wife. Um I I was there at the beginning of the Mango Times in that funny little hotel room in Hoopah, California. Uh, and I just wanted to say that I love your creativity and all the things that you've written and done uh at the Mango Times since then. Congrats.

SPEAKER_05 31:28

All right, so what's 30 years taught me doing this? You know, my encouragement is it doesn't matter if it's a motel room in Hoopa, California along the Trinity River

Thirty Years of Lessons

SPEAKER_05 31:42

with a MacBook Duo Pro, or whether you're sitting in a makeshift podcast studio with microphones and earphones and recording instruments. I have learned that I had this branch, I have always had this branch of creativity that needed to be worked out right alongside real life. The point was to be real. You know, I think for so much in those 30 years, I have hidden who I really was, whether that's my humor, whether that's my version of life, whether that's how I see faith, whether that's how I see parenting or marriage or friendship. I think for so often I was being who people needed me to be, showing up how they needed me to be. And I think over these 30 years, what I've learned is to be real. Let people know who you really are, and then show up even when it feels pointless. I mean, there were so many years where I wasn't being creative because of whatever that pressure was coming from the outside, or it just seemed pointless. But that idea of showing up and then showing up for whatever your audience is. Like I've said, my audience has always been three people. So if you've liked what I've said, if you've liked what I've written, if you've liked the show, or if I've pissed you off, I've written this, I've done this for three people. I've put it out publicly for other people to enjoy, hopefully. But there were three people that I was speaking to every time I spoke. There were three people I was writing to every time I wrote. If you've found joy, if I've made you laugh along the way, like I said, if I've rubbed against you the wrong way, if I've smashed a couple of your idols, never intentional, never, never personally intentional. But that starts conversations, and I'm always willing to have that conversation. So it doesn't matter what the medium has been. You know, I've walked away from social media, but whether it's been this blog, this podcast, this website, whatever the medium is, if it's creating conversation, if that's causing you to change or me to change, or us to meet somewhere in the middle and listen to one another, that's what 30 years has taught me is that there's space, there's always space around Fletch's fire pit for a discussion. Even if we totally disagree with each other, there's still space to have that discussion. I'd love it to be two-way. I'd love it not to be a one-way conversation. So from the motel in Hoopa to this microphone right here, let's keep talking. Speaking of keeping talking, we are gonna take a little break. The month of December is gonna be some highlights from this year, so continue to check in. They're gonna be coming out weekly. Some of my favorite uh discussions from

Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_05 34:28

the podcast will be bite-sized, um, you know, quick little bits that I'm just gonna put up over the next couple weeks. And then starting in January, uh, we have a new theme and a new purpose. We're going to look at change in midlife. Like, what does that look like when someone makes an abrupt change and decides to do something new? Um, I'm still fleshing it out, but that's the theme, that's where we're headed next season. And I look forward to having those conversations. As always, if you know someone that's done a midlife shift, if you know someone that said, I was doing this, but now I'm doing this, or I've done this, but I want to do this, wherever in that conversation that you have someone know someone, or if it's you, let me know. I'd love to talk to them. I'd love to do the legwork and find out what the actual story is and go from there. But more than anything, I can't wait for you to come back in January as we continue discussing these great big adventures in life. So, with that, as always, if you'd like to reach out to me, just go down your show notes, hit send fletch a text. You can go over to the MangoTimes.com and hit the Let's Connect. I'd love to hear from you. You can buy me a taco, that's always great. That's a way to support the show. Also, head over to Apple Podcasts, leave a review. I'd choose five stars if I were you people. If you haven't done that yet, could you do that? That's an easy one. Just go to Apple Podcasts, slide down on your app, hit a review. It doesn't have to be five. You can give me one star. You can be just like, you know what, Fletch, shut the hell up. That's fine too. I'll take, I'll take any review you want to give me. And along the way, thank you, thank you, thank you for 30 years of letting me send emails to your inbox, post stuff online, send words into your ears through a pot. God, this sounds stupid. You know what? Thanks for 30 years. You guys are the best. Get out there and quietly make some noise. Thanks for listening. Christian, you want to say goodbye to our audience?

SPEAKER_02 36:24

Goodbye. I love you all.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Goodbye.com.