Re:Building Together EP 332 — Wayback Wednesday

Host: CEELOS (@CEELOSFIGG) with cohosts ValerieKates (@valeriekates_) and Baked (@Bakedmetax) · Wed, Sep 23 2026 · 1:10:40 · 5 speakers

TL;DR

• Wayback Wednesday's prompt: the people and moments from your past that shaped who you are — "for better or worse."
• CEELOS framed his own life around skateboarding at 11 ("I'm 44, but in reality I'm 33"), and the older skaters who set the template for how he now treats younger ones.
• Jed (@jed_131) delivered three lessons from his father and an old gambler, plus the idea that the worst things in his life produced the best.
• Bored Osaka (@BoredOsaka1) laid out his "cognitive behavioral reset" — reframing have to as get to, joy over happiness, and talking to yourself like you'd talk to a friend.
• The emotional center: Baked, normally quiet, opened up about a rough upbringing and said out loud for the first time that at 28 he's doing better than both parents combined — hands shaking and all.
• CEELOS closed by reading the words of affirmation his 16-year-old daughter wrote him for his birthday.

Highlights

[8:30] The prompt. CEELOS set the table: moments or people from the past that left a mark, good or bad — friend, family, celebrity, whoever. "Wednesdays is where my brain starts going backwards." Meanwhile Baked reported in from the interstate, doing 85, "driving with my knees," which set the tone for a space where the vulnerability arrived at highway speed.

[11:00 area] Do we actually grow up? Baked offered the thesis that nobody really changes much past 18 — "they just learn to maneuver a little bit better in this world." CEELOS drew the distinction between feeling a certain age and thinking a certain age, which is where the whole hour eventually pivoted.

[12:25] Thirty-three years of skateboarding. CEELOS explained his half-joke that he's really 33, because that's how long he's been skating: "I didn't really know who I was until I started skateboarding." He tied it to the lessons that bled into everything else — if you want something you have to be willing to fail, adjust the trick, adjust your body position, adjust your energy.

[15:05] Valerie and the stranger on the plane. ValerieKates told a story about being 16, flying between Texas and California, asking a stranger to buy her a drink — and getting, instead, a drawing in her journal with a line about being told she's beautiful or she'll wilt. She realized only later how much acknowledgement drives her. He also told her to stop drinking and stop hitting up strangers on planes for alcohol. She still has the art; it was dated exactly a month before September 11th.

[25:03] Jed's three lessons. A gambler asked him how much he wanted to win, and the point was that there is no number — so you'll always give it back. His father's second: "life is fucking boring, get used to it," followed by the first-fifty/next-fifty framing. The third was on friends: identify people's flaws, accept them, or you'll never have any friends.

[30:11] "I welcome the kitchen sink." Jed, declaring himself the elder in the room, offered the throughline of the space — the worst things that happened to him produced the best things, though you won't see it the next day, maybe not for years. He traced his own reset to 9/11 and realizing that waking up in the morning is the whole blessing.

[39:40 area] The cognitive behavioral reset. Bored Osaka arrived mid-print-job and delivered the space's centerpiece: reframe "I have to" into "I get to" — you joyfully get to pay taxes, pay the parking ticket, change the diaper. He distinguished joy (constant) from happiness (comes and goes like the tide), illustrated via a strip of bacon that gets progressively less astonishing bite by bite.

[41:32] "Be kind to my friend." The turn that landed hardest: Bored Osaka asked everyone to speak lovingly to his friends — Celos, Baked, Jed — meaning themselves. "Because society wants us so much to abuse ourselves so that we can continue to abuse others."

[56:56 / 57:01] Baked breaks his silence. Prompted by Jed's opening comment, Baked said he'd never felt like a kid, was forced to grow up early, and — "I've said it in my head before, but I've never really said it out loud" — at 28 he's doing better than both parents and grandparents combined. He and Jed then worked through the question of blame, with Baked landing on [1:02:08]: three parents, addiction, low income, and no blame to assign, because "if it wasn't for all that, I wouldn't be doing what I am now."

[1:05:01] Shaking hands. Closing out, Baked admitted his hands were shaking uncontrollably from having said any of it out loud — and that it felt good anyway. Jed answered at [1:05:33] that the sharing becomes medicine, that the DMs come later, and that the spaces sometimes pop up exactly when you need them. Bored Osaka immediately flagged Jed's habit of saying he hates doing spaces, and Jed conceded he's pulled back on the H-word — but will keep saying he's annoyed by them purely to annoy Lyss, because that brings him happiness.

[1:08:11] Chapter two. CEELOS read the affirmations his 16-year-old daughter wrote in a book she made him for his birthday: your feelings matter, you are enough just as you are, you are becoming the person you want to be. "Shout out to my baby girl Chrissy. Can't believe she's 16, but with a mindset like that, I feel like me and her mom are doing all right."

Topic timeline

Notable quotes

• "I'm 44, but in reality I'm 33 because I've been skateboarding for 33 years as of my birthday." — CEELOS [12:25]
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  0:38
• "I have family that isn't blood, and blood that isn't family." — ValerieKates [15:05]
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  0:38
• "Shout out to the fucking old dudes that fucking give a shit." — Jed [20:20]
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  0:38
• "You joyfully get to pay taxes, you joyfully get to pay that parking ticket, you joyfully get to change your kid's diaper." — Bored Osaka [39:40 area]
• "You talk to yourself the most. You should try to be kind to yourself because you hear yourself the most out of anyone." — ValerieKates [49:15]
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  0:38
• "At 28, I'm doing better than both of my parents combined have ever have, both of my grandparents." — Baked [57:01]
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  0:38
• "This shit winds up becoming a medicine, bro." — Jed [1:05:33]
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  0:38

Who said what

• CEELOS (^*, @CEELOSFIGG) — host; set the Wayback prompt, anchored the hour in skateboarding as the thing that taught him who he was, and closed by reading his daughter's affirmations.
• ValerieKates (^*, @valeriekates_) — cohost; ran the mid-space reset, brought the plane-stranger story, reverse psychology as parenting, and "thank you instead of sorry."
• Baked (^*, @Bakedmetax) — cohost, on the road the whole time; silent for most of the space, then delivered its most personal stretch about being made to grow up early and where that put him at 28.
• Jed (^*, @jed_131) — the self-appointed elder; hardship as character builder, three inherited lessons, and the argument that sharing in these rooms eventually becomes its own medicine.
• Bored Osaka (^*, @BoredOsaka1) — joined mid-print-job; the cognitive behavioral reset, joy vs. happiness, generational cycles, and the line about being kind to his friend (you).

Worth a full listen

• [38:42] – [44:55] — Bored Osaka's uninterrupted run on the cognitive behavioral reset. It's a monologue with a shape, from morning breath work to the bacon at De Stefano's to "secure your oxygen mask first," and he lands the plane himself.
• [57:01] – [1:03:18] — Baked's self-reflection and the way Jed, Bored Osaka and CEELOS catch it. The value is in the pacing and the pauses, which no summary can carry.
• [1:05:01] – [1:09:27] — The close: shaking hands, Jed on spaces as medicine, the H-word negotiation, Matt down a Bored Osaka username rabbit hole, and Chrissy's chapter two.

* some voices are identified from context; those names are marked as likely.