Okay, the older I get, I think I'm getting smarter. I actually think I'm getting more common sense. Alright, I'm recording this on Friday evening tomorrow is Veterans Day, and I'm a big guy for hanging the flag on these holidays. I'm not one of these people who fly the flag every day.
I fly it on holidays. I fly it on Veterans Day. I fly it big time on Memorial Day. This type of thing.
Fourth of July. That type of thing. And when I bought this house 16 years ago, I bought a flag on a wind ball, and it came with a little plastic thingy. And I had to screw the little plastic thingy into one of my shutters outside so I could hang the flag.
And I did that, and I hung that flag up there for 16 years. And then the plastic disintegrated and died. And I'm thinking today, you know, I have a lot of stuff going on today. I need to go and get a new thingy.
So I go up to Ace Hardware, and I walk in, and you know, there's these guys with their Ace Hardware vest on. I said, I need you. And they said, it is so good to be needed. I said, yeah, what do you need?
I said, I need a thingy. He goes, we've got thousands of things. I said, okay, let me tell you what I need the thingy to do. I said, I have a wooden flag pole, you know, a flag.
And I had a plastic thingy for 16 years. I went through the whole story. I said, I need a thingy to put on. That's the one thing.
And they said, we're going to take you to the thingies. We go to the thingies. And I had no idea. There's like different sizes of thingies for flag poles, because not all flag poles are the same.
You know, a little wooden flag pole is somewhere big, somewhere smaller. And you have a big one or a small one. I said, that's personal. No, I said, I have no idea.
It's a wooden flag pole. I said, well, you know, these, we have a brass one here that will last you a lot longer than 16 years. I said, I don't think I'm going to last another 16 years. But anyway, but it was one size.
Well, they had these metal ones. They came in three sizes. And I couldn't, I just, I had no idea. I narrowed it down to two of the sizes.
So I just said, what the hell? And I bought both the sizes. I was just at a meeting at the Tampa Bay Technology Center. I was at a birthday party up there, because I couldn't wait to get on.
I wanted to put those things up tonight. But I'm not going to put them up tonight. So I came home and I walked into my studio and I unraveled one of these things. And I stuck my flag in it and fit.
I was like, darn it. So then I unraveled the second one, stuck the flag in it, fit perfectly. And now I'm happy. So tomorrow morning, I'm going to get up really early.
I'm going to put that in there. And I'm going to stick the flag up for Veterans Day. And then we go out in the backyard and tear down the fence. How's that?
Then I'm going to a Veterans Day talk that my friend Doc is giving at the Tampa Bay Technology Center at noon. And I'm going to make my adult children come. I'm going to take the fence down. I'm going to make my adult children come and haul it out to the street.
Because I'm too damn old. I guess I should start the podcast. What do you say? Let's do that.
And welcome to the Daily Grateful. My name is Michael Croce. And I am here to turn you into a grateful person. No, I'm not.
All right. I was asked not long ago. Is it a motivational podcast? And I said, hell no.
Is it an inspirational podcast? I said, no. Oh, you know, and this person was kind of a podcast expert. And he's saying, you know, listen, you really need to get into the motivation field with your podcast.
And I said, no. And I said, why? It's the Daily Grateful. You come on and you talk about gratitude.
You talk about inspiration. No. When I started it, that was the intention. That was that was the intention.
And I've just kind of, well, if you've been listening, I talk about whatever the hell I want to talk about it, kind of works its way around to grab dudes sometimes, sometimes, not but most of the time. Kind of does. But I basically come out here and tell you stories. And you know, that's what we do.
I try to fill about 10 or 12 minutes and then it's all done. And if I feel I need a boost, I have a button here. I have a thingy. This thing is produced in a studio and a network radio quality studio that is in my home, that was built in my home.
I've got all the snazzy stuff that I've never used. I've got a really good video camera right up there. I've got all of this lighting in here. I could turn this into like a YouTube channel if I wanted to.
And I got a mixture that, you know, I can switch between cameras. I got another camera over there. I could do all of that. I haven't done that yet.
It's like I haven't learned Photoshop yet. I met a woman tonight that knows Photoshop. And I felt so inadequate because she's just rattling off all these terms. And you know, and she's a beautiful artist.
She's showing me pictures and flyers and things that she's made on Photoshop. And I said, I use canvas. And she goes, oh, you use camera. It was like a dirty word to her.
You know, and I said, I've made about 30 or so book covers on canvas. He goes, oh, what's that doing for you? And I said, well, I've literally made dozens of dollars in my publishing career with book covers from canvas. So what does that tell you?
But she knows Photoshop. And I am so jealous. I said, am I too old to learn Photoshop? And do you hear?
My cats are making noise. Now I have the door open to the studio. I should probably close that. But anyway, you know, am I too old to learn Photoshop?
I've always wanted to do Photoshop. I've always wanted to do the layers thing and all of that. But I don't know. I don't know.
And I like designing book covers. And let's see what else did I do for the tech bites, tech bites Tampa Bay podcast. I designed the album cover for that using Canva. So I want to learn.
I want to learn. But I might be too damn old. I don't know. I might be too old to learn Photoshop.
And the other thing is this woman that was teaching me this and she's showing me all her work. She's incredibly creative. My daughter is incredibly creative. I have a grandson.
I have an eight year old grandson who is a beautiful artist. You would not believe his art. And you know, he's smart as a whip, but he directs all of his energy into art. And he's fabulous.
And I want to be an artist, but I'm not. Okay. I'm an artist when it comes to this sort of thing. I'm traveling in front of Mr.
Microphone, and I can take you on journeys. I've done this for years. I can take you to places that I've been. And when I'm done, you're going to know all about it.
I'm going, I could take you back to my childhood home and Battle Creek, Michigan. I could tell you all about the Coca-Cola plant across this. I could tell you all I've done this before. This I can do very well.
This is an art form. I can do this very well, but I can't draw. My handwriting is terrible. And I never learned how to play rhythm guitar.
And I was going to. I was gonna spend a week learning rhythm guitar because how long could it take, right. And that's a not story for another day. But anyway, getting back to this lady that I'm talking to about the speaking engagement, it was a lady and her husband, actually.
And they're very media savvy. And they said, well, you need to get into the motivation and inspirational stuff. And I said, you know, that's what they told me when I was doing a gardening radio show. You need to talk about gardening.
And then I stopped talking about gardening. And the show took off. And the ratings soared. I mean, it was still a gardening show.
And I would still sprinkle gardening stuff in there. But no, it turned into something totally different than a gardening show. And the ratings took off. And I knew it.
I had the number one rated weekend show in America. It was that big in the 90s. I had an agent in Chicago. And I had people who did stuff.
It was weird. I would walk in there and they would, oh, you know, but that was that. And then that radio slowly disintegrated because of radio disintegrating, so newspapers. And I tried to get out of it for a long time, finally got out after 35 years.
And now I'm here in the podcast world. And I'm not going to do a motivational podcast. I'm not going to sit here and tell you, you know, I'm not going to do any of that stuff. You know, I used to go to these things.
As a matter of fact, I used to go to these. Do you remember these things? They traveled around the country. They would have all these motivational speakers at a large venue.
And they would have Zig Ziegler, if you remember him, and all these other. And they would have former presidents there, George H.W. Bush. And all of these people, and then they would have all these little guys that were motivational people that would sell you these programs.
And you paid $7 to go to this thing. And there would be 30,000 people in there. I went to it at a place called Tropicannofield. And all these, they would just come up and they would just tell you their stuff.
And they'd say, if you want them for more to see our program, because they basically pitched from the stage, you walk out into the hall and they had tables set up. And you would buy their programs. And these people would make a lot of dollars doing that. And I said, nah, man, that never interested me.
And while I enjoyed listening to Zig Ziegler talk, and I enjoyed listening to Robert Schuler, the Reverend Robert Schuler talk, he had a program called Possibility Thinking, which was excellent. My late uncle bought it for me on cassette. And it still went around here someplace. And it was very, very good.
I liked him probably best of all. But, and he was a pastor. He had the Crystal Cathedral. Remember that?
That all fell apart, too. But not going to get into the motivation business. What you have here is a daily grateful where I'm going to come out and talk about stories. I'm going to talk about things that I've done, things that I've been.
I'm going to talk about my little flag thingy here that I have that I got them out tomorrow. And taking my fence down tomorrow and going to a Veterans Day talk tomorrow. That's what I'm going to talk about. And that's what I think we all need to talk about.
It's just stuff that happens to us. Sometimes we're embraced with happiness and joy and success and all that. And then other times it really sucks. Life really sucks.
But even when life sucks, you find nice little things in the middle of it. This is what, if I've ever learned a life lesson, that when things really suck, you're going to find joy in the middle of it someplace. You're going to find one little thing that's going to bring you up. And you don't need somebody telling you that.
It's just going to happen to you already. You know that it's happened to you already. Alright, I'm not here. I will see you folks tomorrow when I sit down in front of Mr.
Microphone again. It's about brilliance. Absolute. Positive.