In the journey of life, some of the most profound growth comes when we face our deepest fears and make difficult choices to reclaim our authentic selves. The courage to walk away from security toward uncertainty—especially after experiencing trauma—represents one of the most transformative decisions a person can make. Breaking free from others’ expectations to forge a path that aligns with our true nature isn’t just brave; it’s essential for healing and reclaiming personal power.
When Matthew James Jones found himself scraping crusted nacho cheese from restaurant containers as a teenager, he saw the military as an escape route—a path to education, advancement, and life experience. Thirteen years later, that same military career had become a cage he needed to escape, not because of the security it offered, but because of what it had asked him to become. His journey illuminates the profound relationship between trauma, personal transformation, and the creative process in building a life that serves rather than diminishes the human spirit.
“After Afghanistan, you know, I was involved in drone war,” Jones explains. “So there became a moment of, like, the price is actually pretty high, and there’s a good chance it wasn’t actually, you know, put on this earth to be a human weapon. You know, there’s a good chance that my creativity is not for hurting people.” This realization became the catalyst for a complete reinvention—from military officer to teacher, poet, and ultimately, published author.
The transition wasn’t simple or linear, but the essential question remains relevant for anyone standing at a similar crossroads: What happens when we choose to pursue healing and creative expression over security and the familiar, even when that familiar landscape has become unbearable?
The Weight of Security Versus the Cost of Staying
For Jones, leaving a career with a “fat pension, medical coverage plan, and career advancement” meant facing legitimate fears about financial stability. These practical concerns often keep people trapped in situations that damage their spirit long after they’ve recognized the need for change.
“Going from a job with the…let’s call it a fat pension…medical coverage plan and, you know, career advancement, the same things that drew me into the military in the first place in my position of precarity, scraping out the nacho cheese were the things that made it difficult to leave,” Jones reflects. This tension between material security and emotional well-being forms the foundation of many life-altering decisions.
What makes Jones’s story particularly compelling is how the decision to leave was ultimately driven by the recognition that staying would require a greater sacrifice than any financial insecurity—it would require continuing to live in discord with his deepest values. His experience showcases how trauma can simultaneously be both the invisible chain that keeps us stuck and the clarifying force that eventually makes staying impossible.
“When I came home from Afghanistan, having spent a year watching super violence, Turbo violence…every time I closed my eyes, the video, this like, montage of people blowing up would just be playing in my head,” he explains. These flashbacks became a physical manifestation of the psychological price he was paying to maintain his career trajectory.
Amy Stone asks the question that gets to the heart of this dilemma: “Before you left the military and went on to…just really boldly, with your master’s degree in literature and your experience in a poetry festival…what were your fears and concerns about making this leap? Or did you not have any?”
The question acknowledges the courage required to walk away from certainty, especially when that decision means embracing a notoriously precarious creative career. Jones’s response reveals how trauma can ultimately become the motivating force that makes the security of the familiar less appealing than the uncertainty of the unknown.
Finding Your Voice After Trauma
One of the most striking elements of Jones’s story is how his traumatic experiences ultimately provided the raw material for his creative expression. The book he eventually published, “Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures,” directly confronts the reality of drone warfare that became part of his military experience.
Rather than running from this difficult past, Jones transformed it through a blend of realism and magical elements to create something meaningful. “I did have a lot of fun when writing it as well,” he explains. “Every time I made myself cry, I made myself laugh.”
This duality—finding both the pain and humor in traumatic experiences—illustrates a powerful approach to processing difficult life events. It suggests that healing doesn’t necessarily mean leaving our past behind but rather integrating it into our understanding of ourselves in a way that creates meaning rather than just suffering.
The excerpt Jones reads from his book vividly personifies the drones as characters with their own tragic backstories: “When Predator was a child, he was never invited to picnics. His hands were full of missiles that he thought were flowers. He was a strange boy, too quiet, always muttering to himself and wanting to be older so his bombs would drop.”
This creative reclaiming of his experience demonstrates how art can transform even the most difficult experiences into something that connects with others. It’s not merely therapy for the creator but potentially healing for the audience as well.
Building a Bridge Between Worlds
Jones’s post-military journey took him from Nicaragua to China to Paris, creating a life that continually bridges different worlds. This geographic wandering mirrors the internal journey between his military past and creative present—never fully abandoning either, but finding ways to integrate both into a coherent identity.
“I try to go home every year back to Canada to stay invested in those family friends as well. But it is hard to stand in two worlds,” he acknowledges. This challenge of maintaining connections while creating something new represents a universal struggle for anyone making a significant life transition.
What makes Jones’s approach particularly noteworthy is how he’s found ways to use his military experience constructively in his new creative life. Teaching leadership at the School of War in Paris allows him to remain connected to the military world while bringing his evolved perspective to those still within that system.
“Having gone down, you know, the PTSD journey and gone and gotten all the therapy and written through all of my experiences and stuff, and then seeing these guys who are still in it, I’ve become the toxic man whisperer,” he explains. This role as a bridge between worlds allows him to transform his painful experiences into something that helps others, giving purpose to his suffering.
The concept of becoming a “toxic man whisperer” speaks to a larger theme about how personal healing can become a catalyst for helping others. Jones describes his mission as healing men—”give them back their feelings”—suggesting that the most meaningful transformation isn’t just personal but ripples outward to impact others.
The Importance of Life Experience for Creative Work
One of the most counterintuitive insights from Jones’s journey is how his delayed entry into writing may have actually strengthened his work. Rather than regretting the years spent in the military, he recognizes how those experiences gave him something meaningful to say.
“It’s hard for me to truly regret the decisions that I’ve made because my book is all about the war. And my…what I’ve learned have…have been the difficult things that I’ve learned through crazy experiences. And I have more to say now than I would and a more human perspective,” he explains.
This perspective challenges the common notion that pursuing our dreams should happen as early as possible. Instead, it suggests that sometimes the detour—even a painful one—provides the very substance that makes the dream meaningful when we finally pursue it.
Jones reflects on young writers: “When you’re 20, it’s pretty terrifying, I think, to jump directly into a creative career, unless you get into the right MFA program and then you meet the right nerds who have the right connections.” His path suggests that authentic experience, even difficult ones, can provide a foundation for creative work that might otherwise lack depth.
This isn’t to glorify trauma or suggest that suffering is necessary for creativity, but rather to recognize that our life experiences—all of them—contribute to our unique voice and perspective. The integration of these experiences, rather than their rejection, can lead to more authentic creative expression.
The Journey Forward: Healing as an Ongoing Process
Although Jones has successfully published his first book, his story doesn’t present transformation as a singular event with a neat conclusion. Instead, he describes an ongoing process of evolution, with writing itself being both “cathartic and painful.”
His current project focuses on leadership and healing trauma, particularly for men, suggesting that his own healing journey continues to unfold and inform his creative work. “We need to heal the brokenness of men and give them back their feelings,” he explains, connecting his personal experience to broader social issues.
This perspective offers hope for anyone in the midst of their own difficult transition—healing isn’t something that happens once and is complete, but rather a continuously unfolding journey that can keep yielding new insights and creative expressions.
Jones’s experience also highlights how the most meaningful healing often comes from connecting our personal pain to something larger than ourselves. By using his military experience and subsequent trauma as a foundation for helping others heal, he transforms what could have remained private suffering into a force for positive change.
Finding Your Own Path Through Difficult Transitions
The story of leaving security for creative uncertainty isn’t unique to military transitions or even trauma recovery. Many people find themselves in careers or life situations that once made sense but no longer align with their values or needs. The decision to walk away from the familiar, despite legitimate fears about security, represents one of life’s most challenging and potentially rewarding inflection points.
Jones’s journey offers several insights for those facing similar crossroads:
- Security comes with costs that aren’t always obvious until they become unbearable
- Creative expression can transform traumatic experiences into meaningful connection
- Our past experiences, even painful ones, can provide the substance for future contributions
- Healing is rarely a straight line but an ongoing process of integration and growth
- Finding ways to help others with similar struggles can give purpose to our own difficult experiences
What makes transformation possible isn’t the absence of fear but the recognition that staying in misalignment with our values ultimately costs more than facing that fear. As Jones puts it when describing his military experience after Afghanistan: “I think I had just reached a limit. I think each of us has a limit of how much, you know, violence and poison we’re willing to put into our heads.”
Recognizing and honoring our own limits—whether related to trauma, burnout, or simply growing beyond a previous version of ourselves—is not weakness but wisdom. The courage to act on that recognition, despite legitimate fears about security and identity, represents one of the most profound forms of self-care and self-respect.
This article was inspired by a thought-provoking interview with Matthew James Jones and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Interview Transcript Matthew James Jones with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | June 13, 2025
Amy Stone [00:00:04]:
Matthew James Jones. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. Are you ready for a fun chat?
Matthew James Jones [00:00:11]:
I am highly caffeinated and ready to go.
Amy Stone [00:00:14]:
Very good. And for those of you watching the video, the second guest is Claudia. Claudia the friend here for the interview. I begin every interview by asking my guests what. Where they call home and where they’re talking to me from. So where, where do you, where do you live?
Matthew James Jones [00:00:32]:
Well, initially I am a Canadian, although currently you find me in a little suburb of Paris called Ponton, which is just a bit to the north along a lovely canal on a very nice sunny day with all sorts of glorious people walking up and down the canal, sitting on terraces, sipping drinks. It’s quite idyllic here after we’ve, you know, survived the so called winter.
Amy Stone [00:00:57]:
Very nice. Yeah, absolutely. So in a second we’ll get to the topic of the day, but before we do that, I want to get one more like a bit of information about you as a person outside of work and outside of your family. Would you like to share with us a hobby, a pastime, a passion project, something that you enjoy doing?
Matthew James Jones [00:01:17]:
Well, most of me has gotten sucked into the whirlwind of book promotion right now.
Amy Stone [00:01:22]:
Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:01:23]:
But I do keep one thread going, which is, of course, fitness life. I started a workout club a few years back, basically for veterans. And the premise is that we’re lifting logs in the forest.
Amy Stone [00:01:39]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:01:40]:
Over the years it has developed and it has grown and now we just mostly run around in parks along this, the aforementioned canal. But it remains the log gym. I run the log gym, basically.
Amy Stone [00:01:55]:
That is amazing. I’ve asked a lot of people that question. That’s the first time somebody said that they lift logs in the forest. So I love that. I love that. All right, the topic of the day, what we’re going to talk about is you making the decision to leave the security of the military to become a writer. Does that sound like a decent conversation?
Matthew James Jones [00:02:15]:
I am ready to do this.
Amy Stone [00:02:16]:
Let’s do it.
Matthew James Jones [00:02:17]:
The old fear and paralysis is surging back. Now the topic has come up.
Amy Stone [00:02:23]:
Okay, I think that’s good. Fresh, top of mind. All right, let’s back up because before you could decide to leave the military, you had to decide to join the military. I know from the information you told me about you as a person on the intake form that you say you joined when you were 19. Do you remember what appealed to you and what attracted you to the idea of joining the military, the Canadian military at that point?
Matthew James Jones [00:02:47]:
Point, Amy, I am more than what I wrote on the intake form.
Amy Stone [00:02:51]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:02:52]:
I am more than your intake form. Okay. Well, I remember when I was. When I was 18, 19 years old, I was living in a little town, Kingston, Ontario, which is about two hours outside of Ottawa, the capital. People should know the capital. And I was working in an American chain restaurant called the Lone Star in the kitchen, in the lowest rung of the kitchen hierarchy, which is, of course, the dishwasher. If you’re familiar with the Lone Star restaurant, you know that they serve buckets of guacamole, buckets of nacho cheese. So at some point, there is one poor bastard at the end of his shift who has to cut the crusted nacho out with an actual knife and scrape out the rotting green gunk of the guacamole container. So at some point doing that job, I was like, hey, you know what? I was wearing a hair nut. Hair net. So this glory was. Was shielded from the world. I said, I think my ambition actually goes a little bit deeper than this job. And maybe one day making it up to fry guy. No offense to the fry guys out there, but I figured in the military, I can get promoted. I can go get cool life experiences, I can get my education. They’ll help me pay for my education and so on and so forth. It will offer me higher quality of life. But of course, there was a price to pay.
Amy Stone [00:04:13]:
There’s an investment. So tell us. I see from the fact that you do the workout program primarily for vets, like many of the people that I know who’ve been in military service, it becomes a part of your life and carries on. Tell us a little tiny bit, if you want to, about your service, where you served and how long you were in.
Matthew James Jones [00:04:35]:
I served for 13 years in Canada. The half. First half of that was doing sailor stuff. I joined the Navy and I joined up as what was then called a Mars officer. Mars was a narcissistic reference to the God of war, but also an acronym that stood for Maritime surface and subsurface. We’re basically the guys that drive the ships who are on the bridge of the ships. Kind of like a little bit like Star Trek, except fewer aliens. And we were basically. We are basically crisis response people on the bridge of the ship and coordinators of the humans on the ship and communicators with external traffic and stuff like that. And the constant point of liaison for the captain, basically the right hand of the captain, the bridge of the ship. So I did that work for six or seven years, weirdly, usually going north.
Amy Stone [00:05:34]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:05:35]:
Or I became this weird Long haired, cosmopolitan, bohemian hippie that you’re talking to. I saw a lot of wasteland in the Arctic. Greenland, no offense, Greenland. Alaska, no offense, Alaska, and so forth, sailing on both coasts, going up north. Transitional time in my career began when I started working in military headquarters, particularly in Ottawa. They figured out that I could write, so they enjoyed throwing all kinds of little writing projects. I became a personal aid, slash editor, slash ass wiper of various high ranking officials. And eventually I started working. What’s that? Grimace?
Amy Stone [00:06:15]:
No, I have no grimace.
Matthew James Jones [00:06:18]:
You gotta wipe an ass, Amy. And then I started working in operation centers, which are like, I don’t know, dispatch centers, equivalent of dispatch centers in a civilian world. And it was in that context that I eventually deployed to Afghanistan in 2010, and I served there for a year and came back about 10,000 years older. That’s when I went back to school. I did a few more projects with the military, including developing a fair amount of drone warfare doctrine, slash training. And then I did one extremely long pseudo professional rucksack march called the Ni Megan March, which is 160km over four days before I officially retired from the military and began my travels.
Amy Stone [00:07:11]:
All right, very, very good. So they found out you could write while you were in the military. How long have you felt like you wanted to be a writer? Or is this something that you’ve known for a long time? Really? If I was to go back and ask the high school version or the middle school version of you, if you wanted to be a writer when you grew up, would you have said yes or what would you have said you wanted to do?
Matthew James Jones [00:07:34]:
I would have definitely said yes. I think in high school. When I look back on my high school yearbook, which I never do, but it would say, I think I was voted the most likely to write a book one day.
Amy Stone [00:07:48]:
Oh, really? Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:07:49]:
When I was like 13 years old, I won my first writing contest. It was a story about a kid who burns down the school, naturally. And the writing was always on the wall that I was good at this one thing. But just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean there’s a career in it.
Amy Stone [00:08:08]:
That’s true.
Matthew James Jones [00:08:09]:
You kind of have to have a base and a voice and people who will buy your book and be chosen by publishers and be chosen by editors and learn the ropes. So when you’re 20, it’s pretty terrifying, I think, to jump directly into a creative career, unless you get into the right MFA program and then you meet the right nerds who have the right connections, but people don’t actually like me, me in that way. You know, I have to, like, work at developing relationships with people. It just doesn’t fall into my outstretched hand like an apple. And at the same time, it’s like. It’s nice when writers have gone and done something.
Amy Stone [00:08:50]:
Yeah, no, of course it’s. Writing a book is one of those things. So many people say they want to do it. I read something a couple months ago that 8 out of 10 adults, if you surveyed them if they wanted to write a book, they say, yes, but not. Not everybody does it. Right. So you’re in the military for 13, pretty long time. So you. And you wanted to be a writer from a very early age. When you left the military after 13 years, did you jump straight into writing? Was that when you were able to do it, or was there something else that you did as sort of a bridge before you were writing?
Matthew James Jones [00:09:25]:
Yeah, fair enough. Let’s say about. About the riddle of everyone wanting to write a book. There is some kind of, like, narcissistic fantasy about writing the book where you’re like, and all the attention will be on me and it will be glorious. The actual reality, as I mentioned a bit before we. We turned on the. The recording, it’s like a grueling, lonely process. And there’s a. It’s like learning to play the piano. And you got to go spend seven years by yourself, learning all the chords and grinding your chords. And then finally you accumulate the skills and you start to get publications and stuff like that. And then at some point along your writing career, you realize the only way that this job and this vocation is going to be satisfying and fulfilling is if I write a book that’s actually bigger than my own ego. So you actually have to kind of crush, slash, squash the ego on the very journey that perhaps you began as an ego trip. So I think it’s important to write a book that’s, like, bigger than you. That’s where themes come in. You want to hold on to those important themes. So when I left the military, I immediately became a unemployed guy with a undergrad and a master’s in literature. And it was like, oh, what do I do with this? So my then partner was volunteering in Nicaragua, so I followed her to Nicaragua, but because I had zero Spanish skill, they didn’t accept me as a volunteer. But I just went because suddenly I had no gig. And it was. Ended up being quite important because capital Managua, at that time, at least maybe to this day, I’m not sure, wasn’t super Safe. We had to get potable water from the grocery store. So every other day I would get this huge jug of water and carry the water back. And I was a useful pack mule. And every day my partner would go off to work and I would write.
Amy Stone [00:11:22]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:11:23]:
Was when I developed the discipline of daily writing, as well as during the masters itself, when I was volunteering at a poetry magazine. And I ended up being the artistic director of a poetry festival. And I met a bunch of nerds that way. So even as I was kind of leaving the military, I was starting to network and connect and be inspired by people who were kind of deeper in the tunnel. While in Nicaragua, I got a job teaching at a university in China.
Amy Stone [00:11:54]:
Okay. I got a big jump.
Matthew James Jones [00:11:56]:
I got a gig in the town of Xinjiang, which I’ve just brutally mispronounced, teaching English to a bunch of diligent students. I’m going to call them diligent, kindly. And so I spent a year after that teaching in China. If you want to talk about transitional journeys, I have been a teacher for 10 years as my writing career ramps up. But at the beginning of the. Of this transition, leaving the military, I was teaching mostly English and then finally made my way to Paris. And increasingly, my teaching is getting weirder, which I think.
Amy Stone [00:12:40]:
What do you mean by that?
Matthew James Jones [00:12:41]:
I think it’s a good sign that I’m doing what I’m supposed. Well, for example, I teach at this one university, Science Politique, or Science Po, which is one of the most prestigious in France. Somehow they. Somehow they’ve let me into the door, and I teach three classes there. One of them is on creativity and the writer’s craft.
Amy Stone [00:13:00]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:13:02]:
Just an excuse to get my students to buy my book. Actually, no, I’m joking. In case any of them are listening to the podcast. I do my best to teach them the things that I’ve been learning over the last decade. The other one is rhetoric. You know, the magic of bullshitting each other, which obviously I think I do well. And the third course is monsters.
Amy Stone [00:13:24]:
So are you teaching at Science Po? You’re teaching in English or in French?
Matthew James Jones [00:13:28]:
In English.
Amy Stone [00:13:29]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:13:30]:
I also teach leadership at the Eco Militaire. I think that’s probably in the. In the bio somewhere. Pitched a school recently. I said, hire me to teach word math to engineers.
Amy Stone [00:13:43]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:13:44]:
Just. We’ll do advanced grammar. We’ll make it nerdy, and I’ll trick them into doing poetry at the end. I’ve done a lot of public speaking stuff. And I said, okay, okay. I will even teach low level English students, and we’ll call the course pirates. Day one. You roll your character, you, character, generate your pirate, and then every week I’ll just come in with a different pirate adventure, and we won’t. I won’t even pretend to teach them English. We’ll just do pirate adventures. And by the end, they’ll be like, oh, now I’m fluent. How did that happen? I’ll just, again, trick them into learning English through a pirate journey.
Amy Stone [00:14:20]:
Very good. So the students that you’re teaching in English now, Are they French students who speak English, or are they international students?
Matthew James Jones [00:14:30]:
A combination.
Amy Stone [00:14:31]:
A combination. Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:14:32]:
Largely French, but also some internationals.
Amy Stone [00:14:36]:
Okay. Yeah. No, just curious. Not on topic, but I was just curious. All right. So you knew that you wanted to be a writer when you left the military. You describe it as being the precarious career of being a writer, which I think you’ve sort of fleshed out on already, that you have all these teaching gigs while you’re also writing. Before you did this, before you left the military and went on to. Just really boldly, with your master’s degree in literature and your experience in a poetry festival. Festival, what were your fears and concerns about making this leap? Or did you not have any?
Matthew James Jones [00:15:15]:
Well, going from a job with the. Let’s call it a fat pension.
Amy Stone [00:15:21]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:15:22]:
Medical coverage plan and, you know, career advancement, the same things that drew me into the. Into the military in the first place in my position of precarity, scraping out the nacho cheese were the things that made it difficult to leave. I think the military can kind of become a second adolescence for people, particularly if they’re a bit messed up, if they’ve got some trauma or whatever that they’re carrying around, and they don’t actually need to leap forward into adulthood. They can just have a new, angrier mom and dad who they’ll call, like, the sergeant and the captain or whatever, and then, you know, suspend, snooze, button the hard work of growing up and showing up for your life. But, like, there’s there. After Afghanistan, you know, I was involved in drone war.
Amy Stone [00:16:12]:
Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:16:13]:
So there became a. A moment of, like, the price is actually pretty high, and there’s a good chance it wasn’t actually, you know, put on this earth to be a human weapon. You know, there’s a good chance that my creativity is not for hurting people. And indeed, I’m perhaps better suited for communicating, reaching, helping, healing, instead of, you know, rationalized, justified, codified murder.
Amy Stone [00:16:42]:
And that is how. So that was the equation going on in your head where you know, one became clearly motivation to make the change.
Matthew James Jones [00:16:50]:
So, well, well, when I, When I came home from Afghanistan, having spent a year watching super violence, Turbo violence.
Amy Stone [00:17:00]:
Right. Active war. Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:17:04]:
And it’s, it’s a new kind of form of warfare where all of the images of the, of the killing can get like, filtered back into one central node. And so by the time I was going home the first few months, particularly when I was back in Canada, every time I closed my eyes, the video, this like, montage of people blowing up would just be playing in my head. And I.
Amy Stone [00:17:28]:
But it wasn’t a movie. It was stuff you had actually seen.
Matthew James Jones [00:17:31]:
Very intense flashbacks. Even when I was going back to school, I remember one professor was writing on the board and the chalk broke and I had a flashback of seeing someone like, holding their own intestines. And I was just like in the moment in the class, back in the war. And I think I had just reached a limit. I think each of us has a limit of how much, you know, violence and poison we’re willing to put into our heads. I think military and perhaps the culture of being a dude is really good at telling us our feelings don’t exist or our feelings don’t matter, but they seem to catch up with us. They seem to catch up with us and let us know when something’s broken.
Amy Stone [00:18:15]:
Yeah, no. Well, the. I mean, trauma is a popular word in 2025, but the most defined example of it is the experience of the soldier in both ways. How to prepare people to go against their instincts. Your instinct would be to run away from violence, but how to charge in, how to keep going when you don’t want to be there. And then the second part, which is the less but hopefully becoming more, which is how to help people re acclimate when they’ve experienced something so overwhelming.
Matthew James Jones [00:18:50]:
Yeah. I mean, soldiers don’t have the monopoly.
Amy Stone [00:18:52]:
On trauma, or they don’t, but it is the most easily. Like the two big examples that are easy for people to understand because they are so extreme are soldiers and first responders. And then also like extreme accidents, like plane crashes, car crashes, stuff like that. Those are easy for people.
Matthew James Jones [00:19:11]:
Yeah. And the example of, okay, last month we had a super tough, physically near invincible man in the prime of his strength and health. And this month we have a broken guy who cries in the supermarket. Like, it’s quite dramatic to go from fully functioning turboman to, oh, my God, my feelings have taken over my body, or I’m. I’m messed up back in the war, but if I had to point to the most common, you know, source of trauma in human history, I’d probably just say childhood.
Amy Stone [00:19:42]:
Well, childhood. Yes. No, absolutely, absolutely. One of my kids, I’ve got a bunch of kids. And when one of my kids was little, the pediatrician said, I don’t know why people talk about childhood as being easy. It’s like it’s constant hardship, you know, it’s like everything is hard.
Matthew James Jones [00:19:58]:
Yeah, yeah. Everything feels larger than life. And destabilizing things when you’re a kid last forever.
Amy Stone [00:20:04]:
Right. And you have. Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:20:06]:
Arc our personalities forever.
Amy Stone [00:20:08]:
Absolutely.
Matthew James Jones [00:20:10]:
30 year old emerges at some point. But a traumatized like 6 year old, 4 year old or whatever, like you’re gonna, at some point everyone’s got to go and do the work.
Amy Stone [00:20:19]:
Basically, at some point everyone’s got to go and do the work. That’s true. So you gave us the, the story, the moving that you did afterwards. So you’re, you grew up in Canada and you, when you came back, you then went to Nicaragua, which you shared with us that part. You went to China, now you’re in France. Is there a reason or a story behind why you didn’t go back to Canada?
Matthew James Jones [00:20:43]:
Well, there was a series of cliches.
Amy Stone [00:20:46]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:20:48]:
Sometimes that’s all we have. There’s a series of cliches. The first one being the cliche of Paris in love.
Amy Stone [00:20:53]:
Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:20:54]:
Here with my ex. And she kind of had the dream job and that kept us here for a long time. And then after that I transitioned or we broke up and I stayed with the, the second cliche, which is the cliche of Paris as this hub of the artistic life.
Amy Stone [00:21:11]:
Oh, I love it. Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:21:12]:
Of course it is. You know, so I was enmeshed, or I felt enmeshed, perhaps I’m still enmeshed in these, you know, culture, cheese, champagne, beautiful bohemian hangouts, parties, clever people, banter, delicious. Riding home on your rented bicycle at three in the morning, too drunk to stay on the road. Like, like there was a certain magic to Paris. And the thing, it’s like, I’m not making this up either. Like the cliche of the, of the art life in Paris is quite real. But then at a certain point I’ve withdrawn somewhat, not completely from the art life in order to focus on my actual projects and being a writer and being an independent person who makes money and teaches and lives and is an enthusiastic cat dad. And now I think I’m here because over the last eight years, the people have become another family to me.
Amy Stone [00:22:13]:
Best place to be there. Best reason growing up.
Matthew James Jones [00:22:16]:
Things were tenuous, things were kind of fragile in the family. So I learned to imprint onto friend groups and treat friends as family. And I try to go home every year back to Canada to stay invested in those family friends as well. But it is hard to stand in two worlds.
Amy Stone [00:22:36]:
Sure. No, absolutely. Paris is one of the world’s greatest cities. I don’t. I think it’s on every list of top, top cities in the world. And so I don’t know that you would have had to give me too much of a sales pitch for why you live in, why you choose to live in Paris. But it is always curious when people don’t move home. So now, when did you start writing the book that is out now? You have a book out. And so I think this is your first book.
Matthew James Jones [00:23:04]:
This is the first published book, the second or third book I’ve written. Way it goes.
Amy Stone [00:23:11]:
Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:23:12]:
So when I was in China, I was working on my first book and then I spent maybe a year or two editing it and polishing it. And then I started working on this. Predators, reapers and deadlier creatures. Then called simply drones. Although drones, the word changed and it became a children’s toy that I see in the park. I’m like, ah, oh, it’s the modern kite now. But in those days, the drone was an armed drone, or it was for me. So then I’d say I worked on it for a good like four years. Done. I’ve done more than 10 drafts. I’ve had about 15 editors work on this thing. I got a grant from the Canada Art Council at one point, so allowing me to pay a bunch of editors to help me, ran it through many, many, many hours of workshopping, got an agent, got some edits, lost the agent, got another agent, got some more edits, got a publishing house, lost the publishing house, got a new publishing house, just like the writing was years. And then the getting of the publication has been a stormy roller coaster, up and down, wild ride.
Amy Stone [00:24:24]:
I believe it.
Matthew James Jones [00:24:25]:
Resilience and pure human stubbornness.
Amy Stone [00:24:28]:
And in so. Well, I’ve never heard. Well, I suppose because I’m not talking to people who had the easy experience, but there’s actually. There’s only one publishing story I have of somebody who had an easy publishing experience. I interviewed somebody who did a book about Kurt Cobain and she emailed, blind, emailed Genius Publishing with her idea. And they were like, yes. And that was it. She then went and wrote the book. Other than that, other than that, people generally have a frustrating experience or a long story about how they actually bring their book to creation. So tell us about the book and we’re going to put the link for where people can find it in the show notes. And that goes out to everybody who subscribed@imperfectadulting.com, but tell us what it’s about and how you had the idea to create it and why it was worth four years of time to you.
Matthew James Jones [00:25:22]:
Well, longer. Longer it and hyping it and pushing it.
Amy Stone [00:25:25]:
Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:25:25]:
Book is called Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures. The simplest pitch I can give it is that it’s about a drone operator in Afghanistan who doesn’t want to kill. Along the path, he falls in love with his boss, which is a taboo relationship. The base is stalked by a taser rapist who preys on men. Underneath the barracks, the narrator discovers a gentle, kind hearted, but brutish Sasquatch and they develop a bizarre friendship. Is it real? Is the narrator losing his mind? We have no idea.
Amy Stone [00:26:02]:
So it’s like it’s fiction and it sounds like a tiny bit of like, I don’t know, like. So suspense or mystery or fantasy. Where do you. How do you describe it?
Matthew James Jones [00:26:13]:
I would describe it as a. As a magic realism.
Amy Stone [00:26:16]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:26:16]:
Describe it as a fusion of a hard nosed war story and a surrealistic critique and lampooning. I mean when, when I look at where the publishers put the book in, in the categories on Amazon and it’s all like absurdist literature and stuff like that because it’s like hypercritical of the war but extremely pro human. Pro human, pro soldier, pro, pro victim, pro reader. If you like, I can read you a spicy excerpt.
Amy Stone [00:26:50]:
Sure, let’s do it. A spicy excerpt. I’m excited.
Matthew James Jones [00:26:59]:
Well, not too spicy, you know, because I can’t give away any of the. Can’t give any away of the. Of the. Of the meat, you know. But here we open almost at random. The day of the spark. I woke and reached for my dreams, but they had become starchy pages that crumbled when turned when leaving the barracks. I always half expected that the world would have turned soft and green. Since I slept. Imagination painted a unicorn’s glade of trees and vines. But it was always a Manticore’s heath of blowing sand. Avoided Tic Tac for two days after his meltdown. And the sun was a vicious bastard too. I pulled my bush cap low over my eyes on the walk to work. The stench of poo pond and meatloaf had blended and swept over the camp. Paused at the mess to eat an omelette and found a tasty treat inside a cigarette butt. Just outside the cafeteria, I stopped. There was a drone. I was so used to looking through them, but never at them. On the other side of a fence, the drone idled on the tarmac in front of a bunker. It stood as tall as I did, shark like, with two pectoral fins that extended from its sides like a traditional plane. Yet the stabilizing fins at the tail pointed down in an inverse V. Gray, gray with white patches, a camouflage of cloud. The most disconcerting thing was its eyelessness. Easy to imagine planes with cockpits and windows and World War II pilots mummified in looping scarves. Not these flying robots piloted by science and logic. The drone seemed to have a face, but without eyes it was blank, expressionless. Instead, it saw through hypersensitive nodes on the back of its neck and chin. Drones have no agency. They obey the voices in their heads, clutching close their clusters of bombs, four in each armpit. This type of drone was the Predator, little brother of Reaper. I met its unblinking gaze for a moment. Truly, it was a predator. As unfeeling as they wanted us to be, its job was to hide in clouds or the glare of the sun, to lurk behind bunkers with a Taser. When Predator was a child, he was never invited to picnics. His hands were full of missiles that he thought were flowers. He was a strange boy, too quiet, always muttering to himself and wanting to be older so his bombs would drop. Always rubbing his nose on the legs of teachers. No one wants to be your friend, Predator. The only thing you know how to do is assassinate people. You think because you’re unmanned you can cross borders and kill in other lands and no one will think that is war. You’re on the wrong side of history. You could be so noble flying into radioactive areas, dumping water on thirsty crops, detonating yourself in the eyes of sharknadoes. But you were seized early by powerful men and made a weapon, same as the rest of us.
Amy Stone [00:30:09]:
Very nice. I like the Sharknado reference. Anytime that I’m coming up with an idea that I’m wondering if it’s a good idea, I sometimes remind myself that they made more than one version of that movie. Which means that there were maybe hundreds of meetings where they got together and said, is this a good idea? Should we make a movie about tornadoes with sharks in them? And people said yes, over and over again.
Matthew James Jones [00:30:31]:
There’s like six of those movies.
Amy Stone [00:30:33]:
There’s a bunch of them, there’s a bunch of them all Right. So. Very good. So in a minute. So are you ready? Let’s close this up with some random fun questions.
Matthew James Jones [00:30:43]:
Well, I could. We could definitely. I do like random fun, I think. Okay. The book is called Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures. Right. So the Predator and the Reaper are the names of armed drones and the implication. Oh, the deadlier creature, is it a Bigfoot? We don’t even know. So that was my critique of the Predator that I just read.
Amy Stone [00:31:04]:
Yep.
Matthew James Jones [00:31:04]:
If you’d like balance and you could also just edit me out later.
Amy Stone [00:31:09]:
All right.
Matthew James Jones [00:31:10]:
I could read the Reaper.
Amy Stone [00:31:13]:
Sure. Let’s do it. Let’s do it.
Matthew James Jones [00:31:15]:
And then bring on your bizarre questions.
Amy Stone [00:31:17]:
All right. They’re not so bizarre. They’re just random. Okay. But yes, let’s hear from the. Let’s hear from the Reaper.
Matthew James Jones [00:31:23]:
The first day of the fighting season started. Typically, I left the dining facility with heartburn and the taste of cigarette butts in my mouth. I had only eaten cucumbers. I walked past the little airfield where I had once seen a Predator, and over a short fence spotted a new drone. It was twice the size and length of its little brother, uglier and lumpier, bulging at the nose for the communications package and at the rear for the larger engines. Its skin was a cool gray and smooth, lacking seams. This was the Reaper, the size of a jet plane, but with its rear fins jutting diagonally upwards. An aggressive posture like a cobra poised to strike. Still no face, though. It had no eyes and no smile and no expression and no anger. Just the impression of a brutish sloping forehead and overdeveloped jaw. Packed in its chest was not a thrumming heart, but instead four 500 pound bombs. That’s enough power to flatten a village or gouge a mountain. When it has dropped its deadly payload, there is no pilot to feel remorse. Not that grief ever brought anyone back to life back in robot grade school. Reaper wore glasses. He could barely see at all. Bull necked, barrel chested, he was too strong to care. He was blind. As he bit the head off the class gerbil, he flushed our goldfish bubbles. The boys played king of the castle, and Reaper clawed his way to the top of the playground and defended his perch so viciously that he killed the game. So he stood there alone on the top of the playground for the rest of the lunch hour, gloating. You were never like the other kids, Reaper. You liked hurting people and you didn’t care who. There is no tragic loss in you. No wasted potential for good. Deep down, you are Always a mass killer. One who reaps the innocent and guilty alike. You will only ever be a blunt instrument of genocide. So long as the feeblest spark of love or joy animates our species, there will always be someone, no matter how small and ineffective, to raise a pen against your ugliness and dub you abomination. Horrific, blurry eyed dragon with the breath of the sun. And so I spat the taste of cucumbers and cigarette butts directly at the eyeless face. Watched the fluid trickle run down, drip. Fuck you, Reaper. I’m never going to be like you. I live for a future where you are scrapped in endless fields of waste and rust. An airplane graveyard of tangled wings. I will fucking dance when the last of you is slain.
Amy Stone [00:33:53]:
All right, so I know you’re in the throes of promoting this book, but I’m curious whether or not you have other book ideas and story ideas bouncing around in your head. And I’m sure you do because you’re a writer, but do you think that you’ll stay in this theme of military drone warfare type stories?
Matthew James Jones [00:34:18]:
I think the only way I would write another war book, like a full war book like this would be if there was some kind of extremely generous offer.
Amy Stone [00:34:28]:
Okay, so you think this is it on this topic?
Matthew James Jones [00:34:31]:
I just broke my heart multiple times writing the book and dug open things that maybe I needed to dig open, but at the same time, I deserve some peace like everybody else.
Amy Stone [00:34:42]:
Yeah. So did you. Did you start this based on. You started this based on personal experience and your knowledge in the area? Was it helpful or just torturous to go through this plot line and see in this kind of thing, given the fact that you were. This is what you did for such a long time?
Matthew James Jones [00:34:59]:
Well, because it’s a fusion of reality and surrealism. Because I could put in hilarious characters because I am a jokester, as you can see. Talking. I did have a lot of fun when writing it as well.
Amy Stone [00:35:12]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:35:13]:
Or every time I made myself cry, I made myself laugh. And I think because I’m a weird little empath who’s seen too much. A lot of that goes into the book. But I do have other ideas. Okay. So I’ve been teaching at this. The School of War, the Occult, Militaire in Paris for, like, five years now. I’ve been teaching these hardened soldiers because, you know, I. I mentioned standing in two worlds, and now I stand in the civilian and the military world all the time, too. And partly having gone down, you know, the PTSD journey and gone and gotten all the therapy and written through all of my experiences and stuff, and then seeing these guys who are still in it, I’ve become the toxic man whisperer.
Amy Stone [00:35:56]:
Well, because you’ve walked the. You’ve walked the journey. Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:36:00]:
So I think the next book will have to do with leadership and having been exposed to hundreds of these incredible leaders and personalities and being this kind of bruised veteran guy and writer nerd encountering all of these leaders, I’ve sketched out the next book. I’ve written about 50 pages of it, but can I apply myself to it every day? No, I cannot. So it remains the next project.
Amy Stone [00:36:32]:
I think there’s. You mentioned that everybody’s got trauma and everybody’s got stories in the childhood, and one of the things that makes that so hard is that it’s very hard when you’re going through it to know that it’s happening to you. Which just means it’s very important for people who’ve stood in both sides to help people identify the people around them who are suffering when they’re suffering themselves, and be the people who help them walk the next few steps. So the leadership book is probably pretty important.
Matthew James Jones [00:37:01]:
I think. We live in a. In a very strange time.
Amy Stone [00:37:07]:
That is definitely something we can agree.
Matthew James Jones [00:37:09]:
On, to make the understatement of the century. And one of the things that’s so fragile and messed up about our time is the lack of trust and warmth between the genders.
Amy Stone [00:37:23]:
Sure.
Matthew James Jones [00:37:24]:
The sexes, you and I, this conversation being quite amicable, being an exception to all of the. The wounds that men carry and women carry and the historical wounds that we seem to carry around and have accumulated. And I spend a lot of time thinking, how do we get through this moment of mutual resentment and moved into. Towards a world of peace? And for me, that means we need to heal men. We need to heal the brokenness of men and give them back their feelings. We also need to heal women.
Amy Stone [00:37:59]:
Right.
Matthew James Jones [00:38:00]:
My mission is to heal men.
Amy Stone [00:38:02]:
No. Which is very important. And one of the things that is the purpose of this podcast and talking to people about the choices they’ve made and the story and the way it impacts their life, is that a lot of times when we’re in a spot to make a choice, whether it’s joining the military, leaving the military, writing a book, starting a family, breaking up with somebody, the people who surround us are very much in the same position we are. They’re our same age, they’re going through. They’re at the same spot in the problem. And so listening to people who can tell a Story from. This is why I think I did this. This is how this choice impacted me. These are the things that hopefully will bridge age gaps and people will be able to hear opportunities and why. Why it’s okay to make decisions, why, you know, what happens when we do these things and what the choices are as sort of, you know, be heard and the benefit of other people’s stories.
Matthew James Jones [00:38:58]:
Well, we spoke at the beginning. You asked me, and there was kind of like a map. Why didn’t you just become a writer immediately?
Amy Stone [00:39:05]:
Right.
Matthew James Jones [00:39:06]:
And I look back and it’s hard for me to truly regret the decisions that I’ve made because my book is all about the war. And my. What I’ve learned have. Have been the difficult things that I’ve learned through crazy experiences. And I have more to say now than I would and a more human perspective. I had to go and have my heart break and broken a few times in order to speak for the humans, you know.
Amy Stone [00:39:34]:
Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:39:34]:
So it’s impossible for me to. To regret the path that I’ve taken because it’s how I got here. And it is a big step to become an artist and to say, oh, yeah, that’s what I do now. And if you try to do it when you’re 20, you’re going to be competing with guys and girls who are 40, have been doing it for a long time. So everyone’s always going to try to find their own path through it and using the experiences that they’ve had as the fodder. And I recognize what you’ve said as well, Amy, and you’re like, you know what, Matt? I’m a healer too, and I bring people together. And you are Amy, and I see it and. Thank you. You’re welcome.
Amy Stone [00:40:16]:
All right, now I’m going to ask you some. Now I’m going to ask you some ridiculous questions and we’re going to close this up and I will release you to your day because you’re. It’s late where you are. It’s only. It’s still mid afternoon where I am. But you’re ahead in time. All right, so three random questions. Is there a food item that reminds you of childhood and home?
Matthew James Jones [00:40:36]:
Boiled turnip.
Amy Stone [00:40:38]:
Really? I don’t think I’ve ever had. I guess I have turnip mashed. Mashed? No, that’s parsnips. I don’t think I’ve ever had boiled turnips. What in the world does that. That was a meal you had growing up.
Matthew James Jones [00:40:51]:
The smell of cabbage farts.
Amy Stone [00:40:54]:
Oh, yes. Well, okay. All right.
Matthew James Jones [00:40:58]:
Anything Boiled.
Amy Stone [00:41:00]:
Everything boiled. My.
Matthew James Jones [00:41:02]:
My parents are both from Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada, which is a beautiful place where the humans are very warm, but the culinary culture is not that advanced. So I enjoy trolling my mom when she listens to my interviews, and she sees me taking these jabs at the turnip and the cabbage rolls. But for my aunts who make me the cabbage rolls, please keep making the cabbage rolls.
Amy Stone [00:41:28]:
Cabbage rolls. Got it. All right. When you want to relax, what is something that you do?
Matthew James Jones [00:41:35]:
Well, as you’ve noticed, I have a. An emotional support cat. And even when I was doing the reading of the Predator and Reaper excerpts and allowing my voice to pick up and get a little bit more elevated for a little theatricality on your podcast, the cat jumped up onto the table, sniffed my face, rubbed her little head against my beard, and was like, does he need to be soothed, or is he just acting again? She made a snap judgment and was like, hey, he’s fine. And then she carried on and went, I don’t know, cleaning herself or whatever it is she. She’s doing. So we have a number of games that are very good for my blood pressure, the most popular being sand worm.
Amy Stone [00:42:18]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:42:18]:
She goes under the sheet and just allows her viciousness to escape. And under the safety of the sheet, I can. I can poke her, and she’ll snarl and spit and try to claw me, and it’s the only way she can be 100 aggressive without destroying me. So.
Amy Stone [00:42:35]:
Oh, so sandworm, like, like in from Dune, like the. Like.
Matthew James Jones [00:42:39]:
Yeah, I dropped the pop culture references.
Amy Stone [00:42:42]:
There you go.
Matthew James Jones [00:42:42]:
More Beetlejuice or.
Amy Stone [00:42:44]:
Okay, all right, very good.
Matthew James Jones [00:42:46]:
Very good reference. They remade that movie.
Amy Stone [00:42:48]:
Yes, no, absolutely and absolutely. So, all right. What is something that today, like, a talent or a skill? This is not a serious question. This is a random, just discussion question. A talent or a skill that you cannot do today, but you really wish you would someday be able to do it. Maybe you’ll try and learn it someday, or maybe it’ll be something you’ll never be able to do.
Matthew James Jones [00:43:13]:
I have so many legitimate answers to this question.
Amy Stone [00:43:16]:
Pick one. First one to come to mind.
Matthew James Jones [00:43:18]:
Well, I would like to speak French as well as I speak English.
Amy Stone [00:43:23]:
Okay.
Matthew James Jones [00:43:24]:
I’d like to write French as well as I write English, and that’s very, very intimidating. But I can order a croissant now, which took a long time even to get to that level, because when I first showed up, the lady at the boulangerie would just refuse to understand my terrible accent, and I would have to point at the croissant like a gorilla. And then eventually I would get a croissant out of her. So today I can actually get one without reducing my dignity.
Amy Stone [00:43:55]:
I have lived that experience. I did my last year of college in France, and the first couple weeks I was there ordering breakfast, they would not listen to me because I was not pronouncing it the correct way. So just trying to get my cafeteria bread and butter and coffee in the morning, was there. My other hilarious story from that that you’ll enjoy, is that I was in school as an American taking French classes, and we were reading Albert Camus the Stranger, and I got so confused reading it in French. It was all French because it begins with the sand and the desert and all of these things that I went to the bookstore and found the English version to verify that I understood what I was reading. I was like, is this really just about the sand coming in through the window? And I was like, I can’t believe it. I was like, oh, I am understanding what I’m reading. Okay, back to work.
Matthew James Jones [00:44:52]:
My mind.
Amy Stone [00:44:53]:
Yes, exactly. It’s just absurd. And so, you know, everywhere you go.
Matthew James Jones [00:44:59]:
I think we’ll encounter one of the things I’ve discovered traveling around. You’re going to encounter a kind of national ego. Yeah, people are always going to be proud and thorny about certain things. I mean, we see this now with the threats to annex Canada and Canadian nationalism is rising, and we’re all just like, we’re a sovereign nation. We really love being our own nation. And for some people, this is quite shocking. But it’s like, no, no, no. We can be thorny and proud about who we are and, you know, history of being there for our allies.
Amy Stone [00:45:33]:
Yeah.
Matthew James Jones [00:45:34]:
Hurt me personally, having served in an American war, to have, you know, the saber being rattled to Canada. It does. It does a lot because I went and did my part and more.
Amy Stone [00:45:45]:
It is a. It is a very strange time to be alive in the United States and probably everywhere, but definitely, definitely, it is. It is a peculiar time to try and read the news and figure out what is going on, but that’s it. Matthew Jones, thank you for being a wonderful guest today on the Art of Imperfect Adulting.
Matthew James Jones [00:46:07]:
Absolute pleasure to be here, Amy. Thank you so much.