#40 – Final Approach: A Pilot’s Viral Send-Off and the Flight Plan for a Thriving Retirement

Mark Hardcastle [00:00:14]:
Yeah. Ryan, it’s a pleasure to be here. Yeah. In fact, this is a break from the craziness I was telling you a few minutes ago before you started recording. It’s. It’s been a madhouse here for three weeks. My wife’s been going crazy moving furniture and making space for 35 guests to come in. And so this is.

Mark Hardcastle [00:00:31]:
This is a moment of respite. I could have a real conversation with a real adult about stuff that’s important. So thank you for having me on.

Ryan Doolittle [00:00:40]:
I’m glad we could spin this as if I’m doing you a favor.

Mark Hardcastle [00:00:44]:
Oh, trust me, you are.

Ryan Doolittle [00:00:49]:
You graduated from the Air force Academy in 1982, and you served nine years as a pilot on active duty, and then you became. Did you go straight to being pilot for United Airlines at that point?

Mark Hardcastle [00:01:00]:
Yeah, nine years active duty, and then I was unemployed for all of two weeks. I. I had a. It was a charmed transition. You know, many of my peers had much more time in between trying to scramble to put bread on the table. But I was actually hired before my date of separation. So I knew on September 30 was going to be my last day in the Air Force. I already knew on October 14th I was going to show up at United, so it was brilliant.

Mark Hardcastle [00:01:27]:
Wow. Yeah.

Ryan Doolittle [00:01:28]:
That is. That’s got to be a great feeling at that. I mean, I don’t know if you had a family yet, but even if you didn’t, you did. Okay. So. So you knew I’m going to be set.

Mark Hardcastle [00:01:38]:
Yeah. That was very, very reassuring.

Ryan Doolittle [00:01:40]:
Okay. And were you already living in Colorado or you moved because of United?

Mark Hardcastle [00:01:45]:
Moved because of United. I was. I finished my military career at Omaha. At Offutt Air Force Base, I was flying strategic reconnaissance RC135s, based on the 707 airliner made by Boeing, wasn’t filled with seats in the back, it was filled with electronic gear. And so we would fly around the world and do reconnaissance. So, anyway, I finished that and on September 30, 1991, and then was hired to be an instructor in the United Airlines training center right off the street. Based on my time before I was flying reconnaissance, I’d been a primary jet trainer, teaching people, taking flight folks off the street, teaching them how to fly jets.

Ryan Doolittle [00:02:26]:
Wow.

Mark Hardcastle [00:02:26]:
And so, because the Air Force had made me into an Instructor. United was interested in using me as an instructor in their training center and that’s in Denver. So we moved from Omaha to Denver to assume that position.

Ryan Doolittle [00:02:40]:
I have heard people say when they’re on a passenger flight, by the way the pilot lands. I heard a guy saying, I could tell this guy was Air Force, this person was Navy. Can, can you tell the difference?

Mark Hardcastle [00:02:55]:
You know, it’s a joke. Every landing is different. Every landing is different, conditions are different. Boy, we always hope for, for a greaser. We want to, we want to butter the Runway is the way we put it. But sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

Ryan Doolittle [00:03:10]:
Well, tell me, so you got some notoriety as you were retiring from United Airlines. There was a United. I don’t know if, if they originally did it, but the video I saw was one they put out and it was, I think that’s the one that kind of went, went large. But it was such a cool send off. I didn’t expect, or I was surprised to see a company do that for one of their pilots. But I don’t know, maybe you’ve had such a good relationship with them, but everyone seemed to, you seemed like a famous, like a celebrity to, to the people. Tell me about how that happened and what, and you know, how it, how you experienced that video going out.

Mark Hardcastle [00:03:50]:
It is far more complicated than you would imagine. But let me see if I can sort of winnow it down to, to the reality of this situation. United has been using that as a commercial. As you mentioned, on World Pilot Day back in April, buddy of mine woke me up at 8:00 in the morning on April 26, said, dude, you’re all over the Internet. And sure enough, United splashed it out to all of the socials. And what that was about was I had established a routine of interacting with my passengers, had created this, I hate to call it a Persona because then it sounds like it was fake, but it wasn’t fake at all. It was just one of the hats that I wear. I mean, I wear multiple hats.

Mark Hardcastle [00:04:33]:
I’m a father, that’s one hat. I’m a husband, that’s another hat. I, I’m an author, that’s another hat. I work with the Colorado Children’s Chorale. I’m a singer, I’m a conductor. Those are all hats that I wear. Captain Mark was a hat that I wore at United. And Captain Mark had a process of interacting with passengers.

Mark Hardcastle [00:04:51]:
And over time, over seven years, United management started to see what was going on. And then one of my buddies said, hey guys, he’s Going to retire in two weeks. What? We should capture this. So the idea was to just kind of capture it and have it for people to look at. And anybody who wanted to do something similar, there it was, you know, that was the idea. Well, then it did take on a life of its own. Next thing I knew, I got a call from a film producer who said, united has told me about what you do. Would you mind if we followed you around with a camera for a day or two? Sure, come on.

Mark Hardcastle [00:05:24]:
You know, whatever you want to do. Come on down. And on the 21st of March, I left Denver on a two day trip. Three days on the 21st, three trips on 21st, three trips on the 22nd, and on after leg three on the 21st, I landed in Omaha for my layover and was met by this camera crew there, four camera crews of a producer. And they started videoing. That afternoon we did the exterior. You see an exterior inspection on that video? Yeah, that was during the layover in Omaha the day before my last flight, two hours. Then we went to the hotel and then they came back the next morning.

Mark Hardcastle [00:06:00]:
Met me at 6 o’clock in the morning at the gate in Omaha. Hooked me up. There was a microphone on my tie, stayed there all day. I had a little pack on my on, off, switch on my belt. And all day long, everything I said was recorded. And there was a camera in my face all day long. And I’m thinking, this is really fun. Look at this.

Mark Hardcastle [00:06:19]:
How cool is this? And I had no idea how they were going to put together. I knew nothing about. I’m an airline pilot, I’m not a film producer.

Ryan Doolittle [00:06:28]:
Yeah.

Mark Hardcastle [00:06:29]:
Next thing I Knew, here comes April 26th and they splashed this thing out here. And I’m like, who is this guy? This guy’s cool. Look at this guy. Look what he’s doing. It was hilarious. It was just funny as it could be. But on what level it was funny because, I mean, I’m just an airline pilot, right. I’m a captain.

Mark Hardcastle [00:06:54]:
We have. We had 17,000 pilots at United. I’m just one. Stephanie was. Stephanie Spiegel was the producer. She was so talented and her camera crew were so talented. They made me look really, really good. They put this thing together.

Mark Hardcastle [00:07:10]:
It was such a beautiful story of what it’s like on a captain’s last day.

Ryan Doolittle [00:07:17]:
Yeah. Seeing that person in the video who basically seems like they could be a comedian or something, you know, just the friendliest person, even to seeing you right now in your retirement, like, you seem much more laid back. So when, when you had talked about retirement, you said your whole life, or most of it had been the schedule. Very, very highly scheduled and you knew where you were going. And you know, that was great. But when you stopped, you decided you owed it to yourself to, to give yourself like a year sabbatical to do nothing but to simply rest and allow yourself to be carried by the breeze. Irritation would come about just with little tiny tasks you had to do, even like, oh, I need to go get eggs for the, you know, house, or whatever. And you don’t seem like that type of person at all in the video.

Ryan Doolittle [00:08:05]:
That dichotomy really interested me. So how did you deal with that? And how are you dealing with that? And where, where do you feel you are now?

Mark Hardcastle [00:08:13]:
Right. Yeah. So that was one of the things that really surprised me. I was so structured for so long. I mean, for as long as I can remember, I’m in middle school. Right. I started on the track to be where I am today. So it’s been a long time.

Ryan Doolittle [00:08:27]:
Yeah.

Mark Hardcastle [00:08:28]:
And preparing for the Air Force Academy, I took a rigorous academic track and then got to the Air Force Academy and oh my God, talk about stress. From the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, every moment is scheduled. And then in the Air Force went straight to pilot training. I can’t imagine a more stressful vocational study. And then into military as a pilot. And then nine years of that combat, for heaven’s sake. And then from there to United, where everything is scheduled. So that was sort of, that’s sort of the setup.

Mark Hardcastle [00:09:00]:
I did the flying thing for 40 years. And so when I was with United, I’d go out, for example, and fly a three day trip and then I’d have three days off and then another three day trip and each trip started at a different time of day. So if I had one that was going to push back at 8:00 in the morning, I had to get up at 4, which meant I had to get to bed at 8pm well, when was the last time you went to bed at 8pm and fell asleep?

Ryan Doolittle [00:09:22]:
I can’t just decide to go to bed at 8. I don’t know if you can, but I don’t know how that works.

Mark Hardcastle [00:09:27]:
No. And so that’s another source of stress. And while I’m home, I gotta get the uniform into the cleaners, gotta get it out, I gotta pack, I gotta do laundry, gotta do all this stuff.

Ryan Doolittle [00:09:38]:
Oh, the amount of packing, you had to do that alone.

Mark Hardcastle [00:09:42]:
Yeah, I mean, so, so there was this, there was a routine that one gets into that makes it manageable, but it’s there nonetheless. And then you go out and fly. And I’d fly one, two or three flights a day in the 737 when I was flying internationally, I’d fly one long leg. So all of this sets up a lifestyle and a accommodation in, in the nervous system and the need to compartmentalize stuff. So when I walk down the jet bridge to enter my cockpit, I cannot allow myself to be impacted by stressful things that are going on at home around me. I was used to being rigidly scheduled. That was my lifestyle. And now the day I left United, all of that vaporized.

Mark Hardcastle [00:10:31]:
It vanished into thin air. It, the epiphany came to me like the day after two, two days after I’d quit. I was out walking. I walk a lot. And 45 minutes into the walk is where my brain usually kicks on. And I recognized a sense of lightness. Now this is, this is different than what you were getting at, but I’m going to get back to that. A sense of lightness.

Mark Hardcastle [00:10:53]:
And it was like what is going on here? And I realized that I had been carrying this, this burden joyfully. But it was a heavy burden.

Ryan Doolittle [00:11:02]:
Yeah.

Mark Hardcastle [00:11:02]:
Being responsible for 179 passengers, a multimillion dollar aircraft, the schedule, all the things my crew, I carried it well, I did the job well. And it was, it was, it was meaningful and joyful, but it was still a heavy burden and I did not know how heavy it was until it had been lifted away. Ah. And that was the beginning of the transition of the change. That first moment was really cool. But then what happened is my, my psyche began to react to the non stimulus of okay, what do I have to do? Have I got, have I got to do laundry? Have I got to pick up a uniform? Have I got to get to bed at 8:00 tonight? Or do I need to stay up till 11 so that I can sleep till 8 tomorrow morning and, and fly later in the day? Do I, you know, who, who am I flying with and where am I going? And does, do I, do I need to worry about this? I mean all this stuff, all of that was absent and it got kind of weird and my body started to, started to respond to that. And so it took me a while to recognize that and process that anxiety of why, how can I be, I can’t justify sitting still. And so I recognized that reality.

Mark Hardcastle [00:12:21]:
I began to process that and I’m still in that process. I haven’t figured that out yet. But that and the sabbatical you mentioned a few minutes ago was something I had, I had recognized going into this that I wanted to do anyway. I didn’t realize how critical it was going to be. You know, I had been deeply involved with the Colorado Children’s Chorale. My passion has always been music. I love choral music. And my vocation, of course, is flying.

Mark Hardcastle [00:12:47]:
But my avocation has been music. And then beyond that was writing. I. I had always thought, you know, people ask me, what are you going to do when you’re retired? Well, I’ve got. I’m not going to be bored. I’ve got all these lives already that I can engage with. But I recognized early, several months before I retired, you know, I probably ought to just back off and give myself some. Some grace to reconsider everything.

Mark Hardcastle [00:13:13]:
And it’s a good thing I did that because I did not know just how deep the anxiety of being unscheduled and uncommitted was going to be, how much it was going to impact me.

Ryan Doolittle [00:13:30]:
Yeah.

Mark Hardcastle [00:13:30]:
And so I’m processing that now. Ten months in, I’m starting to recognize some healing, some psychological healing and some evening out of the emotions and some sanity and some rationality coming back into my world. And that’s a good thing. I am soon going to be able to look at those worlds I was involved in before, those lives I was involved in before, and see if I really want to re. Engage with them on a deeper level or if I want to find something totally new.

Ryan Doolittle [00:14:07]:
Right. Well, what I think is so interesting too, is. So you mentioned you knew your retirement date, basically the day you started working, because you have to retire at 65.

Mark Hardcastle [00:14:18]:
Yeah. Many people don’t know that that’s a federal law. When I started 32 years ago, it was age 60, but a decade or so ago, they upped it to 65. And so now I retired at 65, but I still knew there was an age limit that was going to happen.

Ryan Doolittle [00:14:32]:
Even with that, it still has taken 10 months in to start to transition. So I think it’s important for the listeners to know, to be aware that it can be a challenge to get to who you want to be and as you’ve called it, the third act.

Mark Hardcastle [00:14:47]:
Right. Let me explain that. Years ago, I mean, Jane Fonda, I’m told that when she turned 60 and she said, I’m now entering my third act, it’s the one that’s going to give meaning to the other two. And by that, what she was saying, I think what I interpreted it Was I get to define with intention how I’m going to live out the rest of my life. I am at a watershed event. I’m at a watershed in my life. So I’m entering my third act. I get to decide what I want that third act to look like.

Mark Hardcastle [00:15:18]:
I grew up a small town in Georgia and my community. There was a sequence of events. That’s what just what you did. I went to elementary school, junior high school, high school, graduated from high school, went to college, got out of college, got established in my career, got married, started having kids. That’s just what you did. And while I had a lovely childhood, I have great parents, a very healthy, happy childhood. We didn’t talk about, okay, what do you got to do? How do you figure out what kind of life you want to create for yourself? And so what happens is, so many people just fall into this life that is prepared for them by other people.

Ryan Doolittle [00:15:59]:
Yeah.

Mark Hardcastle [00:16:00]:
And to a certain degree, that happened to me. Now, my dad decision to go into the Air Force Academy was a very conscious decision in seventh grade. So that part of my life, that component of my life, was very intentional. But unfortunately, the part about finding a mate and then establishing a personal life, a social life and a religion and those. Those kinds of things that just happened by default.

Ryan Doolittle [00:16:23]:
Yeah.

Mark Hardcastle [00:16:24]:
It was not intentional, and that caused all kinds of problems.

Ryan Doolittle [00:16:31]:
I think finding a mate, that’s just so often not intentional, because who can. Who can decide who you’re gonna. I mean, you just meet someone and it happens sometimes.

Mark Hardcastle [00:16:39]:
Yeah. It shouldn’t be that way. I. I mean, seriously, we should teach our young people that here are personality. Get to know yourself first. And then you got. Here are some things that another person would be. Kind of person would be compatible with your own personality.

Mark Hardcastle [00:17:00]:
And so don’t just go find the prettiest girl and fall in love and have kids. Find someone that is a match.

Ryan Doolittle [00:17:09]:
Right.

Mark Hardcastle [00:17:09]:
That you can. Can grow together and build a life together. And here’s how you do that. Here are things that you work for, look for, and work toward. I never had that conversation, and I would love to have that conversation with young people in high school and college and that kind of thing. We should all be having those conversations with those people so that they can create a tension. Now, the point is this. The day I walked out of United Airlines was the end of my first adult life.

Mark Hardcastle [00:17:39]:
To say it’s the end of my life is. Is not. It’s not maudlin. It’s not sad. It’s just a fact that I had no Control over. I had to stop and. But I was 65, as opposed to 25 when I started my first adult life. And so I had 40 years of life experience that has informed how I want to approach my third act, if you will.

Mark Hardcastle [00:18:05]:
So part of this sabbatical is for me to figure out how to apply all the knowledge and the experience that I’ve gained over these 40 years. How many times have you said to yourself, ryan, man, I wish I’d known then what I know now?

Ryan Doolittle [00:18:22]:
A lot.

Mark Hardcastle [00:18:23]:
But I have the benefit now of entering my next life knowing what I didn’t know then. I know now what I didn’t know then. And I have the opportunity as a retiree starting a new life, to put that knowledge to work. I know myself. I know what kind of people I like to hang out with. I know what I like to do, how I like to use my hands, how you like to use my mind. And I can. I can use all of that to synthesize now an intentional life going forward that I could step into with joy.

Mark Hardcastle [00:19:02]:
And here’s the other thing. Actuaries would tell me that based on my lifestyle, I mean, Average Joe blogs in America right Now, at age 65, life expectancy is 83. So that’s, that’s another almost 20 years. Based on the way I live my life. The actuaries say I’m going to live into my mid-90s. So that’s another 30 years.

Ryan Doolittle [00:19:20]:
Not bad.

Mark Hardcastle [00:19:21]:
And if I, if I do it right, I could live to a hundred healthy and active, and that’s 35 years. That’s another entire adult life. Yeah, I’m not done. I got another whole adult life that I can create with intention.

Ryan Doolittle [00:19:38]:
That’s why what I’ve found, and, and people have told me that in retirement it can, in a way be better than when you were young, because now you, you’ve established the means to do what you want to do, and now you have the time to do what you want to do. So the definition of retirement that a lot of people have said to me is being able to do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it. So you might be more busy than you were, but it’s doing things you actually want to do. So you’re glad or maybe you’re not, but, but you know what I mean? It’s. It’s up to you.

Mark Hardcastle [00:20:08]:
That’s the point. It’s up to us. A colleague of mine retired from United and something we can do. We can’t fly passenger jets anymore, but we could fly Corporate or, or some other charter, that kind of thing. The day he left United, he moved out to San Diego and took over a corporate flight office for a, for a company. And now he’s in charge of 40 business jets. Never quit flying. It loves flying, obviously, but I wonder how much thought he actually gave to that.

Mark Hardcastle [00:20:38]:
And so many of my friends have done similar things. It’s like, well, this is what I know. This is what I do. I’m just going to change uniforms. Just keep doing it. Okay? If, if you’ve really thought that through, and that’s really your best life. For retirement. For retirement.

Mark Hardcastle [00:20:51]:
Knock yourself out, brother. I’m happy for you. I’m thrilled for you. But, but I, but I use that as a cautionary tale rather than defaulting into what you know, this is a real opportunity to fill in a blank slate.

Ryan Doolittle [00:21:06]:
Right? And it’s so funny, you bring up finding a mate. And I think that can also apply sometimes to retirees. We surveyed more than a thousand people across 48 states and we found that love life is important. You know, this not a thing’s absolute, but retirees who are married were 4.5 times more likely to be happy. But there was no penalty, for lack of a better word, for one divorce. So, like, someone found out they weren’t a good match and then found someone else when they were older, who, when they’re a little more mature, that seemed to pay dividends. And it reminds me of something my friend’s dad told me when we were little. He said, you know, everybody looks the same upside down.

Ryan Doolittle [00:21:49]:
Just find someone you can talk to. And I thought, at the time, I thought that it was just funny. And now I realize it’s very wise.

Mark Hardcastle [00:21:58]:
You know, here’s the way I put that. We all need somebody to tell our stories, too. It’s all about that connection, the connection that gives meaning and significance for our lives. Yeah, really important.

Ryan Doolittle [00:22:10]:
Yeah. I did have a question. I guess it’s a little bit on a lighter side of things, but. So you did fly in combat. What would you say was scarier? Flying in combat or flying passengers who hadn’t had snacks yet?

Mark Hardcastle [00:22:27]:
You know, that is funny. As you know, we started this conversation with how I loved being available to my passengers. I wanted to interact with them. I wanted to give them the opportunity to lay eyes on me as their pilot. And hopefully I. I would tell a story just by the way I presented myself, that, you know, I’m not the prettiest guy in the airport, but I, I walk up to the gate with as Much dignity as I can. Right. And I wear my uniform as best I can and those kinds of things.

Mark Hardcastle [00:22:56]:
So I. That said, we talk about compartmentalization. I. I compartmentalize that. And there comes a point in the flight where I get into the cockpit, I close the cabin door, the cock, and I am focused on operating the jet. I got people in the back to take care of the passengers who are crazy because they haven’t had their snacks. Yeah, my flight attendants were such an integral part of what I tried to do before. I would have my interactions that you saw on the video where I would greet my passengers out in the boarding area before boarding ever happened.

Mark Hardcastle [00:23:26]:
Before I did that, I always had a briefing with my flight attendants to try to lift them up and validate them and make them feel valued so that when they met the passengers, they were psychologically girded and ready to give them a good experience.

Ryan Doolittle [00:23:43]:
Did you go out and greet people every flight? I thought maybe that was just because it was your last flight.

Mark Hardcastle [00:23:49]:
No, the reason they videoed that was because I did that every flight.

Ryan Doolittle [00:23:52]:
Oh, my gosh. I’ve never seen a pilot do that ever.

Mark Hardcastle [00:23:55]:
But that was what Captain Mark did. What I would say is. Would depend on the circumstances of the day. Like I said, my guiding philosophy was, what do my pastors need to hear from me today? And so every flight, even if there’s nothing wrong, I would greet the passengers, express some gratitude for them being there, for them putting. Well, I’d say, you know, something like, boy, I. I’m here to say thanks for a couple things. First of all, thanks for jumping through all the hoops you had to jump through just to get to the gate. Boy, that challenge is not lost on me, and I appreciate you doing that.

Mark Hardcastle [00:24:26]:
And now that you’re here, thank you for trusting me and my crew to connect you with your moments that matter most. It’s an honor and a privilege, and I’m going to do everything I can now to make this the best flight you’ve ever had at United Airlines. One flight, one group of passengers. Not going to move the needle a whole lot for everybody. But it was my flight. I get to do what I want to do, and I got such a reward for doing that.

Ryan Doolittle [00:24:54]:
Yeah. Oh, I can just imagine. And so how do you find a way to do that now in retirement? Is there a different system? Is there a different. Or how are you doing it for yourself? Tell me what you’re doing now.

Mark Hardcastle [00:25:09]:
Right, so let me. Let me overlay this with the fact that I’m still In my sabbatical. So I’m, I’m guarding my time, I’m guarding my energy, all of that. But I’m thinking, and I’ve had two of these now. Some of my former first officers and some who actually heard from their friends about what I had done have actually reached out to me and asked me to tell them about it. What’s this thing I hear about you doing? What did you do? What did it mean? So these folks are first officers, captains, people reaching out to me, hey, tell me about this Mark. So what I’ve done is one of my friends is really, really big on social media, runs a bulletin board for pilots on Facebook. And so he actually set up a couple of events.

Mark Hardcastle [00:25:57]:
Hey, you know, Captain Mark was telling me about how people have been reaching out to him. It occurred to me that maybe we can just have a coffee and just. So is there interest? We’re gonna, we’re gonna set up a room in Castle Rock down the road here at a coffee shop. Anybody who’s Interested, show up 10 o’clock on this day and let’s just have coffee with Captain Mark. And we did it last month. It was well attended, very engaged. Guys, I mean, this is, this is a day off. This is not training.

Mark Hardcastle [00:26:26]:
This is people who are interested in learning how to do this. And then we did another one, like three days ago in central Denver. Again, well attended. People came in with questions. So I find that to be very fun. They’ve heard about this shtick that Captain Mark did, and they, they’re curious and they’re thinking, man, this, this could do something. This could be something. This is, this something I could try on.

Mark Hardcastle [00:26:46]:
It’s a code I can put on and see if it fits. It’s a way I could create my own captaincy. So if I can, if I can help them with that, that’s, that’s very rewarding to me. And then the other, the other thing that I’m considering as far as that, I’m looking at maybe building that out a little bit and just see what it turns into. Yeah, that’s me sharing my experience, my expertise over 32 years as an airline pilot, seven years as a captain. Happy to share that. It’s rewarding for people to ask. But beyond that, outside the airline business, are there leadership lessons that might be of interest to corporate America? Team building, personal interactions? How can you be more effective as a team leader, as a manager in your segment of your company? And so I did some of that in the past.

Mark Hardcastle [00:27:32]:
I haven’t, I haven’t done that since the pandemic, but pre pandemic, I was giving speeches, I was talking to civic clubs.

Ryan Doolittle [00:27:37]:
You might be interested in doing that again, you’re saying.

Mark Hardcastle [00:27:40]:
Or I might be ginning that back up. I’m just about to finish another manuscript that is stories from my time in the cockpit, lessons learned, leadership lessons and that kind of stuff. So that’s something I’m looking at maybe ginning that back up again.

Ryan Doolittle [00:27:54]:
As we sort of wrap up here, I wanted to ask, I had asked you, do you consider yourself happy? And I was really interested. Your answer was that maybe that shouldn’t be a binary thing. You know, you’re either happy or not. So. So tell me what that, what that means for you.

Mark Hardcastle [00:28:11]:
Yeah. So there are aspects of my life that I’m really leaning, leaning into now that I’m really starting to like. There are other aspects of my life that are still up in the air, that are still chaotic, and those cause stress. And like I said, I’m 10 months into this thing now where this. I got really stressed, really stressed right out of my retirement, and that is settling down now, but only just. And so that part of my life has been hard to deal with, and that stress spread out across every part of my life. So as that settles back down, then again, like I kind of joked about it before, sanity is starting to remanifest, reassert itself. And so that negative, if you will, is abating.

Mark Hardcastle [00:29:07]:
But it was very real and it remains real, but not to the degree that it was before.

Ryan Doolittle [00:29:13]:
Yeah.

Mark Hardcastle [00:29:14]:
That said, there are still parts of my life that I. That do give me reward. Simply walking now in my meadow, the meadow of wisdom, I call it, where my, my brain kicks in after about 45 minutes. That gives me content for my next book. Be it down there in the meadow is soothing and peaceful and. And I, I tell you, Ryan, my, my highest priority in life right now is to have peace, peace in my life. Because for 40 years of my work life, the pace created chaos. And I am done with chaos.

Mark Hardcastle [00:29:55]:
If I’m going to have an intentional life going forward, it will be free of chaos other than chaos that I intentionally bring in because that’s associated with something I really want to do.

Ryan Doolittle [00:30:05]:
Yeah.

Mark Hardcastle [00:30:05]:
But as a general rule right now, being in a place of peace and harmony and joy, I seek those out. Walking in the meadow is great for me. Being at live music events is generally something that has brought me joy. And I’ll tell you the best thing. One of the questions you asked is, what’s an Ideal day. An ideal day is a clear, blue Colorado sky and breakfast with a good friend. Yes, that is life to me. Yeah, I’m leaning into those and recognizing the joy of fellowship with my close friends.

Ryan Doolittle [00:30:42]:
Well, from the cockpit to the meadow. The Mark Hardcastle story, right? Yeah, exactly. I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. And is there anything else you want to leave our listeners with, even if it’s just telling them about your book or could be advice, I want to give you the last word.

Mark Hardcastle [00:30:59]:
Okay, so here’s my tagline and this. If you read my first book, it’s called, the title is the symphony of your life restoring harmony when your world is out of tune. It reflects my avocation, my passion, stories of my life with music as a central metaphor. Well, the point of the book, lessons learned, all boil down to one thing. If you want to have success in life, you simply have to stay in the process. If you exit the process before you get what you want to have, by definition, you lose, you fail. But you don’t fail as long as you stay in the process. My one rule of success in life is just, you know, stay in the process, whatever it takes until you have what you want in your grasp.

Mark Hardcastle [00:31:44]:
That’s my parting shot of wisdom. So the book is available on Amazon, and I got another book that is in editing right now. It’s going to be stories from my life as a captain in the airlines.

Ryan Doolittle [00:31:57]:
All right, well, Mark Hardcastle, thanks so much for landing the plane of this episode.

Mark Hardcastle [00:32:02]:
Nice. Well done. And, Ryan, thank you so much for the opportunity to visit. It’s been just very fun to have this conversation with you, and I would like to do it again.

Ryan Doolittle [00:32:12]:
All right. Love it. Okay, well, you have a great day.

Mark Hardcastle [00:32:15]:
Awesome. Take care now.