Welcome to Conversation Cab!! I am your host Joseph McDonald!

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I want to present the rideshare world from my perspective and take you on a journey with me as I reach 1000 episodes, and other content including questions/answer shorts, and the deep and meaningful experiences I have had in my time driving.  

I have reached a point where I want to do more with the skills as a communicator, listener, and hopefully share some bits of the wisdom I have gained by spending over seven years as a driver of over 28,000 passenger rides across multiple rideshare platforms.

 

I started doing social media to promote a book I have been writing.  It started as part of process to understand how to communicate and connect better with people.  I grew up in a family of sixteen kids and always felt I would have a voice if I just tried harder.  As an adult you realize that our parents didn't exactly hate us, they just didn't have time for us all.  

Favorites were chosen: parent to child, child to parent, and sibling to sibling.  To grow up with so many but to feel alone so deeply was part of the reason I joined the U.S. Navy and left after high school.  I took a tour in Japan, even though nobody wanted to go the the USS Kitty Hawk because it had a horrible reputation.  

The Friends and Foes I had while aboard that ship changed and shaped me to see the world differently.  The people of Japan taught me how to respect and help others.  I went from a young man to a seasoned young man in three years.  I was salty getting out, like the rim of a margarita glass on a Friday night in Tijuana; ready to spill into something dangerous and make it fun.

Returning home to Phoenix, AZ was a horrible mistake.  Not because I went to ASU, or got a degree in Construction Management that was half helpful and half useful to boost my ego.  Not because I married someone I felt sorry for because her parents ruled her world and I was a rebel fighting a to cut out mine.  It was a mistake because I allowed my siblings to put me into a role of the younger brother and I knew I was so much more than a sidekick.

I felt my world shrink so quickly when I was around my siblings, and spent years trying to change their capacity to love and forgive each other.

Ultimately it was my divorce that showed me that if I didn't play the role they wanted me to play in their life, then I was replaced.  When you replace something, the old just evaporates, and the feeling of it squealing before you get a new one makes it easy to discard.

It is funny how many times when you want to run away from your family, but then they run away from you - one by one.  That sense of am I good enough stretches as your connection becomes a budgie cord.  Your failure to entertain is the cord hitting you in the face as you fall.  The pain of it didn't come from them letting go, it came from the weight you allowed yourself to put on the other end of something unstable.

My siblings are amazing, resilient, sharp and witty.  BUT, 25% of my siblings also remind me of our father because they don't forgive, don't reach out, and lack the skills to hold a family together but want to be the boss, the "Big Shot."

The one saying my dad always told me when I was having a tough time, "You get it out of your head that you will be better than me.  You think you are so smart, you will never be better than me."  The last time I physically saw him was in 2009 when he was receiving a 10 year prison sentence.

Having a daughter was tough, and beautiful.  But then you have a child and all the repressed memories of growing up poor and homeless at times kick in as your mind races to understand this life she will live.  All the beatings and abandonment from a father that was also a mean husband.  All the Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde moments as he slipped in and out of manic episodes of rage followed by love bombing so you would take him back or help him out.  

Being a father that forgives my father took years to figure out.  He is stuck in his own world, but not like Wreck it Ralph.  We needed him to be the hero that rebuilt what was broken, instead he would run away because he didn't know how to control himself or his duty as a father.

Charging all your kids rent at the age of 10 was tough, but it brought us together and made us resilient and resourceful.  Spending all the money on his own collections and not giving us anything to start our lives at 16 made us sharp and venomous.

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I could tell you my story and parts of all my family story, because the only thing we take to our Lord we pray to is our story.

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Conversation Cab is about stories.  I started the important bits of the first half of my life.  I want to hear other peoples stories they have polished or have not written.  Often the most defining moments in our story that starts the "Hero's Journey" is the call to action.  Your struggles and defeated boundaries may lead you to seek the sword, the hammer, or the cloth.

My hero's journey starts everyday I choose to embrace a new character, destination, or upgrade.

If you like my content and want to be a part of this chapter of my life, please reach out and introduce yourself.

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Welcome to Conversation Cab.

 

[these are my cheesy tag-lines]

"Conversations and people getting where they want to go!"

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Sometimes it's not about the destination.  It is about the ride

 

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* Disclaimer:  

I recently lost a close friend and watching him slowly go over the last few months has put a pause on the content creating.  Grief isn't about saying goodbye to them, it's about embracing the change they made in you.  All the jokes, all the lies, and all the unsaid races through your head.  As a writer, poet, and philosopher I have narrowed it down to this.  

"Grief is that beautiful window your ego allows you to open up -to the Lord of Your Universe you toil around within - so "I am" can complete all the unsaid things you never had the strength to say."

I am not in a rush to return to the life without God, and to post more content.  I am enjoying telling my Lord all the things I loved about Bob, and apologizing for all the times I was unable to say it will get better.  Sometimes waiting for a better day to say it never comes, but your lord has your back and can complete the task you could not.  So, if you are not religious then I suppose you can scurry to whatever you hold most high and tell it your woes to it or them, but we all reach for something more.  

Just please choose a lord that is greater than yourself, because death is the only thing we all must face in life and I only pray the the creator "The CEO" and to the grace of his son that is trying to get me a job after my preliminary education is complete.  

-Joseph McDonald; June 26th, 2026 - RIP Bob, June 23rd, 2026.