Alrighty, folks. Welcome back to SD YT the podcast. Again, I'm Porter. I'm your host. Here in the month of June, recovering balance, learning and loyalty.

 

Is our 3 primary core values for the month. Now, as we've mentioned pretty much all throughout this year so far, the character of your character, is an important aspect and theme for the entire podcast. So what does it really mean?

 

Well, it's the values that you embody. The decisions that you make, the processes that you use to work your way through those decisions, and how you wanna relate and emulate and carry that forward to other people.

 

So this particular interview, 2 weeks ago, We interviewed a guy by the name of Adam Renny.

 

And if you listen to that interview, you know how eloquent of a speaker he can be, but where it left us, With some of those topics was sort of a gaping hole, whether it's philosophy or the legal system or family matter specifically is irrelevant.

 

The fact is what we talked about is loyalty to your family, loyalty to yourself and accomplishing your goals and balancing that against the loyalty to your family even.

 

What about outside of a family sphere? See, because people all over the world define families differently. Maybe you're born into it. Maybe you created it yourself and you've sort of stumbled your way into it.

 

But what about you as an individual? Right? You start to rely on things that maybe there's a familiar smell or a familiar sound or song. Familiar TV show, something that maybe on your lower days, brings your spirits back up.

 

And on your happy days, helps you relax and remember how things were when you were a kid or how you want them to be when you're older. And we'll get into a lot of that stuff before we do though, if you're new to the podcast, welcome.

 

And if you're a continuing listener, welcome back. To everybody listening all around the world. I'm Porter. I'm your host. And this is SD YT the podcast. Alrighty folks. Welcome back to SDYT, the podcast where values still hold value.

 

Now I'm Porter. I'm your host. This is actually our first part 2 ever in this podcast history, but we're bringing back a good friend, Adam Renney down out of Georgia taking a break from law in the legal system so to speak.

 

So we can talk a little bit more about balance learning and loyalty.

 

So Adam Renney, What's up buddy. Welcome back. Hey, man. It's good to see you again. Glad we could could hook up, especially at the combination of busy schedules. Glad to be back. Yeah, man. Me too.

 

There was, as I said earlier, a couple things I wanted to recap from part 1 just to catch up some of the listeners, especially if they haven't had a chance to listen to it yet that we talked about and so feel to elaborate as we go if you want.

 

1 of the things balancing a loyalty to your family with your own ambitions and goals. How's it been going for you so far over the last few weeks?

 

Oh, that's a big question. So it's been I'll be honest, it's it's hard and good. And the reason I'm allowed to say that is actually because I have such a support system when it comes to my my wonderful wife and my daughters.

 

Taking a summer semester, I signed up for a a class in criminal law and it was an intensive class.

 

It was several it was 14 weeks crammed down to 3. So there was multiple modules, multiple chapters, multiple videos, tons of stuff to watch, and especially this past week was very, very heavy.

 

There was a lot of information thankfully, I have a a wife who is so self sacrificing and so loving and she recognizes she says, hey, these this is the priority right now.

 

You getting through school, getting us to a stronger future, that's that's a priority. So this past week has been very heavy. So, you know, last time we talked about balance being, nothing that's static.

 

You know, whenever you see people doing a balancing act, you see some shift to the left, shift to the right, and in order to and in order to be able to achieve some of these goals where we shifted on 1 side, my wonderful wife counterbalanced on the other side.

 

And so now that we get a a little bit of a break, so to speak, it'll be nice to pull those diametrically opposed weights closer to the center.

 

Yeah. Well, that'll definitely help you manage your stress in your workload for sure. And I'll tell you something you just brought up. I don't wanna misquote or misrepresent the quote.

 

The gist of it was, in trying to define love regardless of any religion, they all basically define them the same way and with a few nuanced pieces where Christianity may define love based on service or sacrifice, Islam may be more regarding suffrage.

 

And that that's how you sort of show your love for somebody else.

 

I think in a general construct in any relationship, you to yourself, your family to yourselves, you to your country, you you to your family, whatever, it really all comes down to, I think, compromise and being able to understand that just because you're subservient to whatever degree, and this is 1 party to another husband to wife, wife to husband, husband, husband, whatever party to party, I think is irrelevant.

 

But to understand that humility plays a role, communication plays a role to a certain degree, empathy plays a role and maybe that's why you put your goals second.

 

Right? But have you guys, you and your wife in you pursuing your schooling and her pursuing her life goals.

 

And, obviously, both of you taking care of your family, have you guys noticed that there's any sort of competition there, like fighting for time to try to get things done?

 

Alright. Fine. I'll take care of the kids today. You make dinner tomorrow to try to accomplish what you wanna do? So there's definitely there's definitely back and forth But I wouldn't say there's ever been a competition.

 

There is this for sake of using a cliche, this united front. The amount of open communication that my wife and I have really started from when we were dating because we were living in different states, and so we face timed every day.

 

So there wasn't a lot of the distractions I can get in the way of some core ship, specifically like too much physical attention.

 

And I'm not gonna fault anybody for that. My intent on this 1 to say like my wife and I had to really express a lot of love and adoration and admiration through through open communication verbally.

 

And so, that built a good foundation for here we are. We strive to do our best to put the needs of the other person ahead of our own and still recognize priority.

 

So my wife being as sweet as she is is often told me, she's like, no, school right now is the priority. We need you to finish school, we need you to get through law school, and we need those things because we need them as a family.

 

And that's why I say it's kinda cliche with the united front concept However, it's 1 of those conversations that we have.

 

And then I'll see specific days that she'll come home from work. And I recognize the toll the day has taken on her. And I can sacrifice certain things I hate going to bed alone and I hate my wife going to bed alone.

 

So there are some days I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna put away what I was working on. I'm ahead of the schedule. I will sit down with my wife. I will rub her feet. She's been on them all day long.

 

I will put her physical needs as priority number 1 right now. I would rather do that, go to bed with my wife and wake up an hour, an hour and a half or 2 hours early and get started on my work rather than say, you go to bed alone.

 

And the reason being is because that's our time to reconnect That's our time to have a little bit of conversation. That's our time to to speak to each other.

 

And going back to what you were saying about how you express love, There is the the book, the what is the 5 love languages. I'm a I'm a physical affection guy. I'm like, oh, you're having a rough day.

 

Let me rub your shoulders. Let me rub your feet. Let me hug you Let me be physical. My amazing wonderful wife, again, she is an acts of service person. Her way of trying to say, I love you is let me make you dinner. Let me make the bed.

 

Let me do these things to make our house a comfortable and wonderful place, which has taken me actually a considerable amount of time to really recognize her in that format, saying when she does whatever active service to go, that is her way of saying, I love you.

 

And so now, I'm still not great at it, but recognizing that, I'll see something kind of like you're saying at this competition and be like, oh, I can go clean this up, I can go do this, I can go do this, so that way she doesn't feel obligated to do it when she gets home.

 

And then when we can talk about it, and she usually says, she's like, yeah, I noticed that the dishwasher was emptied and put away and the dishes that were in the sink were then in the dishwasher I recognize that the countertops were wiped off.

 

I recognize that the toys were picked up.

 

Thank you for doing that. And it's 1 of those, oh, this was my way to express love in a way that she recognizes it. And that's why I say, it comes down to a competition of how do I tell you or how do I show you I love you.

 

Because she does the same for me and going back around the beginning, there's this concept of trying to put the other person's needs first, and your second knowing that you can't pour from an empty cup.

 

So I recognize that I have to take care of myself.

 

But when certain things are taken care of, I can tip that cup out a little bit and pour some into somebody else and know that I'll fill it right back up for my extra 2 hours that I sacrifice of sleep the very next morning.

 

Have you ever seen the movie a beautiful mind, Russell Crow?

 

It's been a long time. But I I mean, I have. Alright. Well, I'll I'll give you a quick recap. And for any of our listeners, not to spoil any details, but if you get the opportunity to watch it, check it out.

 

So here's the premise of the movie. There's a guy in the fifties attempting to become a student at Princeton in mathematics. And as he goes through this tenure, I guess, at Princeton, he runs into some issues.

 

Namely, he doesn't attend any classes. But he's trying to get his doctorate and to get his thesis published. Well, a lot of his other classmates get works published and he has yet to attend 1 class, let alone get a topic approved.

 

And as he's working with the teacher's trying to come up with something, his general point of reference is I wanna come up with something original.

 

And so far, everything I've read that all of you have written, there is not 1 intelligent intelligible original thought in anything that you've written. He ends up and this is this is based on a true story.

 

A man by the name of doctor John Nash, he ends up coming up with a theory, which I can't remember for the life of me, what it's called, but it it centers around this concept of equilibrium and game theory.

 

That since he came up with it in the sixties and seventies, and as it developed over the decades, he won the Nobel Prize in 19 94 from mathematics because of this theory that he put together.

 

And essentially, it had then been used in loads of different formats, antitrust cases, conflict resolution, negotiations, all sorts of different frameworks from economic industries to diplomatic and military applications.

 

The point being, essentially, if you were looking at 2 platforms, where you're on 1 and your wife is on another.

 

Right? And I'm I'm using you as an example here since you were telling your story, but this could be anybody who's listening.

 

Right? You and another party. But in this case, Randy, where you're on 1 platform wife is on another. You've got essentially 3 options, because there's always the third which is do nothing.

 

But of the other 2, 1 being you grab blocks and add them to your platform to get yourself higher, and then help the other person, or you grab blocks, build up the other person's platform, and they help you get up.

 

And so by each person working to help the other person, you both become better or higher in this example.

 

So John's theory was as far as what's now considered game theory is that some games revolve around competition, baseball, basketball, football, whatever, some games don't.

 

But it's still an element of teamwork that's the middle ground, that's the constant.

 

And so what was the presiding theory of the time in the fifties was in order to do well at a competition, the individual had to look out for themselves.

 

He flipped it and added a piece that said, well, Actually, given the setting of any sort of competition and again, this is with game theory being either competitive or not, If the individuals collectively work to better themselves and also better the team, wherever that compromise lies, that equilibrium is the optimal point of efficiency and efficacy for the effort put into the problem set.

 

That was a really long winded way of saying that's exactly what it sounds like you and your wife are accomplishing as well.

 

Where you help each other out to help the team, and that's the compromise of balancing your efforts. There's a lot of famous people who have done kind of like what you're talking about.

 

There's athletes who have taken pay cuts to work with a particular sporting team so that way the team can do better. So everybody ends up with the trophy at the end.

 

I believe I was listening to Tim Farris a time ago. And he was interviewing I wanna say a billionaire of whom he would not actually name. When he asked him, like, how how are you so successful?

 

He's like, I've always put everybody else first. He's heard the same axioms that we've all had. You know, you've got 2 years and 1 mouth and you should use them accordingly, or you should listen twice as much as you speak.

 

And he would speak to his employees and speak to investors and speak to other people, but he would let them do the talking.

 

And he said he always just had other people walk away feeling better about themselves and he promoted everybody as if they were part of the team.

 

So it's almost like how you can leverage the tools a thing you were speaking about that hit 1 of my memory banks was Simon Synek. He talks about infinite games and finite games.

 

Finite game football game. You know the parameters, get the ball over the line, kick it through the post, score the points at the end of the time frame, whoever has the most points wins, you recognize that.

 

But in an infinite game, business, marriage, friendship. Who's the winner? And I've talked to other people about this. You can definitely have a loser. You can have a loser in marriage. You can have a loser in friendship.

 

You can have a loser in business. It usually in a lot of cases comes from selfishness. But if you have a a good relationship with anybody, who's the winner? I've got a great friend on the the Pacific Northwest.

 

We may not talk every single day, but when we do, we pick right up where we left off. I've got another friend who's here on on the East Coast. Who's the winner in our friendship? We both are still friends.

 

We're both still very happy when we speak to each other. But am I gonna get a trophy for saying, I'm a better friend than you. I won. No. Because the game is infinite. It's gonna keep going whether I'm alive or whether I'm dead.

 

Thinking about that like who's gonna win? Well, in my marriage, I want my marriage to win. So if I treat my marriage itself as a third entity, I wanna invest into that. I wanna leverage my tools to make sure that it does.

 

And the moment that it transfer at least for me in my own, if it ever transitions from us to me, usually when I start to see a crack in the foundation or whenever things start to get uncomfortable.

 

Not that discomfort is bad, but there are levels of comfort that you can deal with and then levels of com or discomfort that you bring upon yourself. Yeah. And some of that comes down to internal and external locuses of control.

 

We had a friend come on Alec Littman and we talked about this concept of things that you put effort into, that you can effectively to whatever degree control, and things that you put effort into that you really can't no matter how much you want to or have the capability of controlling.

 

Of what you can control, these internal factors, your desire to make your marriage work and be more beneficial for everybody involved.

 

Your desire to take care of your wife and take care of your family, your desire to to keep that a priority despite your goals and aspirations and inspiration in some cases says a lot.

 

I don't think that applies to everybody. Here's what I mean. Have the military in common. Let's use that as a baseline for a second. Things are going well at work, I e in the military. And At home, I mean, it's normal.

 

Whatever normal is is relative, but that's what it is. Right? Generally speaking, based on time and service, there's a little bit of merit involved let's just say you're more senior and you get promoted.

 

You go home, it's still normal. Maybe you've got more income, but it's still what it is. Now at work, you've been promoted, but you get a new set of responsibilities for whatever reason. What those responsibilities entail is relocation.

 

But your contract ends in a few months. So if you take this reallocation of responsibility and you relocate to somewhere else, It's going to mean a few more years working in the military.

 

Your family has stable schooling, stable jobs, stable friends, support network, all of these things where you're at.

 

And maybe they're willing to relocate, but aligning with what's going to be best for the group or the team, and what's going to be best for me as an individual.

 

Like the point you just brought up, sometimes if you treat that relationship as a third entity, I e marriage in this example, it gives the the opportunity and the nutrients to the soil to further grow your relationship.

 

And then I think the end state becomes a little bit more apparent. Maybe you get out maybe job, maybe you don't. But then you don't have to stress about it so much because you focus on this third entity.

 

Have you found that to be applicable in your life? 1 of the things you just brought up that, yes, I do. And I'm also looking at it from Jordan Peterson's perspective.

 

I heard him speaking to another political pundit. Just to remain apolitical. And I I really like what he said. Whenever you think about yourself and you say, what's best for me? Well, what version of you are we referring to.

 

And I believe he goes on to talk about it as a trans temporal self as yourself over time. Because you say, what's best for me in this moment? Usually, when you act on what's best for me in this moment is is fairly selfish.

 

It's usually some sort of self gratification in that moment. When you think about it, you're like, what's best for me next week or what's best for me in 5 years?

 

What would be best for me in 10 years? Or looking yourself in 10 years, would you say was that best for me? You get married to somebody. You believe that getting married is going to be the best thing for you for a long time.

 

Traditionally, you think I'm going to spend many, many years. With this individual. Your recognizer will be hardships. Well, I hope your recognizer will be hardships. But it's not strictly like Oh, yeah.

 

I'm gonna get married to this person so I can have this thing right now. I should go get married so I can get a tax break right now. And when you say what is best for me in the long run, And I also, you have to do that.

 

But if you look at what is best for you, looking at yourself on a trans temporal level in balancing what is better for the moment, or for future success, what would you rather do?

 

And I think we spoke about it a little bit last time, the the philosophy of the stoics.

 

Their concept of Memento Mori, I like the transition or the translation that says death comes for us all, but it can be translated to death as everybody dies.

 

Or remember, we all must die. So if it's best for you in the moment and you know you're gonna die, you know your time is short.

 

But the other thing that it really leads to kind of what you also brought up with 1 of your other interviewees, is what you actually have control of.

 

I can do my best to implement every tool to balance my life. I can do my absolute best. To balance my use of time, my use of resources, my use of love.

 

But according to the stoics, and I do agree with this, there's really only 4 things that you ever truly have control of, and those are your opinions, your pursuits, your desires, and your aversions.

 

These are all internal things. I say that because you can say, oh, I'm averse to pickles. Don't like them. But you could then choose to say, well, I don't have to be anti pickles.

 

Just leave them alone. Like, in my situation, I desire to go to law school. I desire to be a lawyer. Don't know if I wanna be an attorney, but I have this desire. I could change that desire at any minute.

 

I could have an opinion of of a particular app This app is absolutely fantastic or this app is trash. Well, I can change that opinion at any time. Those are the few things that you have in control.

 

Everything else you can execute a little bit of influence. But I cannot control my wife's thoughts, her opinions. I can exact a little bit of influence and hope that her opinion will be changed, but I can't control it.

 

Whenever it comes to my time, I can come upstairs and I can create a plan. And what if something interrupts my plan? Was outside of my control. Therefore, I can't really say that I had control of my time.

 

I'm gonna do my best to exact my influence on it. So looking at that thing, what is best for me overall? I can really base it off the things that I can control, an opinion, a pursuit, a desire, or an aversion.

 

And then I can work from there and include those of whom I love around me. Now, speaking of of loving somebody the the way the stoics viewed love and family, I don't necessarily agree with, but I see the the validity to their argument.

 

Controling what I can, ignoring not so much ignoring, but not worrying about what I can't and thinking about what's not strictly best for me on a selfish level because I recognize that tomorrow will come whether I'm here or not.

 

It's part of that infinite game.

 

And hopefully, I'll have another tomorrow and another tomorrow and another tomorrow, and those tomorrow will add up to weeks, add up to months, add up to years, and I'll have shared that time with somebody.

 

So whatever choices I'm making today, I'm trying to look at future me because I want that person to be happy as well.

 

And I think rounding it all out to what your point is, I don't wanna be so focused in the moment that I lose what I have. I don't wanna lose sight of what's going on around me in the moment because I'm so concerned with me in 10 years.

 

Hey everyone and Stack's here. Just wanted to take a moment and give a shout out to my wife, Julie. She is a artist of sorts, but she has a Facebook page called the bee and the Bear creations.

 

And what that page is or is basically if you wanted to do a specialized item like a tumbler or a hat or a vinyl a decal or a shirt, you can go there.

 

You can ask some questions, look through the wares, but then give a DM and try to sort it out. And then work at adjust pricing. But if you're interested something like that, go ahead like her page.

 

It's the b and the bear creations on Facebook. So Go enjoy. If you're looking for high quality locally sourced groceries, The Keystone farmer's market is the place to be.

 

Alongside our signature homemade boiled peanuts, we strive to offer only the best locally sourced pasta, baked goods, Jams, and Jellies, farm eggs and dairy products, meats, and even seafood, as well as a great selection of fresh produce.

 

That's the Keystone Farmers Market. 12615 Tarpon Springs Road in Odessa, Florida.

 

The place with the boiled peanuts. Alrighty, folks. This is Porter with SDYT to Podcast. If you're enjoying this interview and you've listened to some of our others, then you already know we're playing on Spotify.

 

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Jonesie. So there's a lot going on, and folks from me to you, I appreciate you taking the time to listen and support the station. However, For the time being, for different perspectives with shared values.

 

Guys, I'm Porter. I'm your host, and this is SDYT the podcast. And I think rounding it all out to what your point is, I don't wanna be so focused in the moment that I lose what I have.

 

I don't wanna lose sight of what's going on around me in the moment because I'm so concerned with me in 10 years. I agree. Balanceing that out obviously present and future you it has global applicability. Right? So there's India.

 

There's a caste system. Right? Where at least publicly, you may not have your or act on your own opinions, for example. Iraan, comparably, more control exerted, China, comparably more control exerted, Saudi Arabia, more control exerted.

 

Not that there's anything right wrong or indifferent about any of them, respective to their regions, that's sort of what they need.

 

It's sort of a parallel concept to a movie called the thirteenth Warrior. Have you ever seen it? Same thing. I saw it a long time ago. Alright.

 

Well so in the movie, the thirteenth warrior, Antonio Banderas is an Arabian guy that basically goes up to I can't remember what they called in the movie, Northern, essentially, ride Norway, Finland, Sweden, Upper, that area, basically.

 

And and he ends up up there. And there's a war of sorts coming in through the village. 12 warriors are chosen, and naturally the thirteenth can't be 1 from the same group.

 

And lo and behold, it's gonna be Antonio Menderes. So he ends up there as the thirteenth worry. But at the end of the movie, he's talking to these I think they were Vikings, but he's talking to this group of dudes.

 

He says, look, you don't have to believe what I believe. The Viking guy says, 1 God might work for you and your people, but we're in need of many.

 

And I think a lot of that principle carries through to these things where I don't or you don't or anybody else around the world doesn't have to understand why regions do things differently.

 

But at that present moment in time, you kinda just need to respect that they're gonna do things differently.

 

And that's it. At least as a baseline aspect. So what's neat about your point, this stoic concept you brought up, that everybody has these 4 controls because they're all internal.

 

The ability to voice your opinion? Well, that may not be as widely applied, but you can have your own opinion.

 

Right? Or your ability to pursue your goals may change, but you can think through how you would accomplish it if you had the capability or the money or the time or the opportunity, the pursuit is still available.

 

The desire to accomplish something doesn't change.

 

It might be you want food and a roof, It might be you want a fan in cold water. It might be you want a billion dollars in a Lamborghini. I don't know. But whatever it is, materialistic or otherwise.

 

Right? The desire following your opinions, your goals, your your mentality, and your perspective, applies to everybody. And then, obviously, aversions is is the same parallel where you can apply that to everybody around the world.

 

It's not even a trans temporal identity. It's not even a a geopolitical or geographic consideration, it's it's got global applicability and moreover, the stoics collectively came up with this concept.

 

I'm assuming thousands of years ago. And it still has relevance today despite all the changes that have happened. So that's that's a powerful point you just brought up in 4 words summon up 2000 years of human existence.

 

So good on you, man. Well, thank you. That's very kind. You brought up something right now speaking of the movie if I recall correctly again, I don't remember if there were Vikings, call them Nordsman, call them call them what you will.

 

But all 12 of them spoke a language that Antonio Menderes does not speak.

 

Did not. And that's actually kinda what I wanna get to is he sits there and observes. Now, he could've at any time shut down and been like, to heck with these guys.

 

What do I care? It doesn't. And the thing that I really wanna bring up is specifically about learning language and what you can learn about learning a foreign language. You and I are speaking in English. You understand English.

 

You know how to manipulate English to get a point across. You could even make up words right now that most English speakers would understand and it would be just fine. We have that kind of that kind of command over the English language.

 

Now, in this movie, Antonia Bandaris, he just sits and listens and listens. And if you dial out of the myopic and you look at it, when you're learning the language, You don't have to understand what it is you're saying.

 

You just have to know that they will understand what you're saying. If you've heard somebody who's learning English and they're stuttering through and they're struggling, the point gets across.

 

They might have not understood the words that they said, but they were trying to convey a meaning. You understood the words. So kind of going back to what they were saying, 1 God may be good for you, but for us, we need many.

 

The ability to say, we recognize where your understanding is. Recognize where our understanding is. So this is what happened to me whenever I went to when I was living in Guatemala. Do I did not speak Spanish when I went there.

 

If I faked the funk as long as I could. And there were plenty of times that I struggled, struggled, struggled to to get my words out And I had a friend who was from Puerto Rico. He's like, you don't have to understand.

 

They have to understand. You'll understand in time. They're the ones who have to understand. Which, if I remember, this kinda goes back to our our last meeting, is between lessons learned and lessons taught.

 

I have to, in my family, ensure that the lessons are understood. It doesn't have to make sense to me in the moment because as I learned the language of somebody else, it will make sense to me in time.

 

As long as now, they understand what I'm getting across. And I say that in not strictly like in the language, perspective, but as an illustration of the thirteenth warrior, these understandings of other people.

 

And going back to your theory, if you understand their pursuits, their opinions, their desires, their aversions. You don't necessarily have to agree with them nor do you have to understand them, but you could respect them.

 

And if you help and bring some blocks along, and help them stand up and like that billionaire that I talked about from Tim Farris.

 

Listen more, speak less. And you help them get up in a lot of cases, humans will show reciprocity and they will help you up. And if I remember, that's kind of the success story of that movie.

 

He listens. He listens. He listens. He listens. And then he learns the language, and then they fight as a very cohesive unit. You think about movies as metaphors. You could apply that to anything.

 

It's easy not to. Don't get me wrong. Or TV shows even, like, I'm a big fan of street sharks. Right? Or Ninja Turtles, or I don't know, double dare or or whatever. I got it. These are all nineties references. Don't get me wrong though.

 

Like, I I can get down with some matlock in a pinch, but I'll just I'll just watch the show. Here's an example. When I was a kid and this is to your point about speaking different languages because it could be metaphorical.

 

Right? We're talking movies TV shows as metaphors to sort of gain the bigger picture here. Entertainment has taught people more than school has ever. And that's relative to any time and era in my opinion.

 

Right? So if you find you're entertained by something, you're generally gonna retain more about it. So When I was a kid, grandma would come over and babysit. I don't remember how old I was or or why she would come over, but she would.

 

And there was a certain window of time in the afternoon around lunch. I'll just say 11 to 2, where My older brother and I could not be in the living room watching TV.

 

And we only had 1 TV, and we only had basic cable, so we're talking 2 or 3 channels. Options were very minimal, and Internet wasn't a thing.

 

Right? So it was a struggle. And to your boredom point from part 1, it was very real on a lot of days. But in this window of time, Gremma wouldn't even let us in the living room because she had to watch her stories.

 

Now her stories are just soap operas. It was nothing fancy, but Novellas in some places as a parallel case, but like bold and beautiful, young and the restless.

 

It was just people being people very dramatically. And 1 of the shows that she would watch, mind you, she's born, I think it was 19 29, was a show called In the heat of the night. I don't know if you're familiar with this show.

 

Okay. Alright. Well, to our listeners, in the heat of the night, you can look it up. At face value was just sort of some cops in the south, in the states, culturally assimilating into that stereotype. And then being cops.

 

And that was the premise of the show. That was it. A lot of what was in there, you couldn't play on TV today, call it cancel culture, call it editing, call it whatever you want, it just wouldn't be allowed to be on the air.

 

But a lot of the stuff that was in there that you might think as threatening, abrasive, overbearing now, I didn't know anything about until really arguably the last few years.

 

It just wasn't even on my radar. It was just a show to be a show. Yeah. You could say the same thing about maybe, I don't know, full house, first prince of bel air, family matters. Right? Like, at face value, everybody loves Raymond.

 

Arthur and DW. Right? Just running around being, I don't know, aardvarks, but kids, at face value is just entertaining. Right? But the lessons that you learn about, call it conflict resolution, how to communicate with people.

 

How to be honest with yourself, how to trust other people, how do all of these inherent social norms and necessities, disguised as entertainment, in movies, in TV shows, in music.

 

Right? It's it's all the same case, but I think the premise underlying all of those things is that the metaphorical value of entertainment isn't always broadcast. And so what gets pushed is the face value sort of superficiality of it.

 

That's where the direction of balancing nostalgia with reality or with modernization starts to come in play because you've got what you remember things to have been, and then that's what you teach to your kids or to other generations, nephews, nieces, whatever.

 

As opposed to, okay, well, this is where they're at now.

 

And this is what I had then and then finding a way to meet in the middle. What you remembered or what's what's the actual conceptual lesson to learn. And I I think that can bridge generational gaps too.

 

You got any crazy stories like that? Old grandparents beat you with a cane or something? No. I mean, I don't. But I do remember Matt Lock. I do remember in the heat of the night. I remember Ruder, she wrote.

 

I remember a bunch of shows that my Walker, Texas ranger, you brought up some daytime TV shows. 1 that still going is days of our lives. Let me ask you about that then. What do you think makes people continue to watch?

 

Not not even just that show, but, like, to give shows like that longevity, that love of longevity. The Simpsons, 30 some seasons, like Man, that is that's a great question because I don't have an answer for it.

 

We don't watch a lot of TV. I think I brought this up last time. We don't watch we don't have television service. We've got internet service. We canceled our Netflix.

 

We don't use that. We have Disney plus so the girls can can stream some things and watch those. And we've contemplated getting rid of Disney plus in lieu of curiosity stream. It's another streaming service. It's very inexpensive.

 

It's just documentary after documentary and you get to see parts of the world talking about what you were just saying, like, the different aspects of different cultures from across the world things that could broaden your mind and your your insight It's a really good question.

 

I don't know what keeps bringing people back to watching those same shows.

 

You know, as a child, I thought soap operas were goofy. You know, like you said, overly dramatic individuals. I as a child that didn't appeal to me, you brought up Arthur.

 

I rarely watch Arthur. But my little brother loved Arthur when he was a little boy. Yeah. Mine too. A watch dragon tails, spongebob was my younger brother's thing, but I couldn't even get into that.

 

I also could not get into spongebob. I did love Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and it's interesting that you brought that up because what triggered in my mind is 1 story that gets told when Will Smith is overly excited.

 

That his dad is coming to town. And he's overly excited that he's gonna leave with his dad.

 

There's a lot of stuff online about this particular scene, and his dad walks out on him again. Even look at that in every individual, that story is going to touch them in a different way if you grew up with your dad.

 

Maybe it just makes you respect and love him more. Or maybe you grew up with your dad and and it makes you go, I wish you would have walked out on me.

 

Like those are diametrically opposed opinions and ideas. Maybe you didn't grow up with your dad and you're like, man, I can I can associate with Will Smith? Shedding tears because of the extreme disappointment.

 

But I remember loving that show. Yeah. TGIF watching Family mat. Yeah. Family matters. Boy meets world. But I did. I loved the entertainment and as kids you watch it because you associate with the kids.

 

You think that, you know, I can't say you. And I'll go with me. I was like, oh, yeah. I can totally relate to to this show because that's definitely me.

 

It's what you believe it is in in the moment, but I don't know what keeps bringing so many people back to to watching the same show. I never watched the Simpsons growing up, but it's crazy that it's it's still going. Is it still going?

 

I think it's still going. I don't know. It might be reruns by now. Remember growing up that satire was beyond my bandwidth for comprehension. Like at all. Right? My my step dad my step dad would watch God, I don't know.

 

I think the first time I noticed and I heard him talk about the Simpsons or whatever, but first time I just sort of tuned in and got out of my head, and here's what he had on the TV was I think it was Robin Williams live on Broadway.

 

If you haven't seen that -- Okay. -- it's everything you would hope and imagine and picture coming from Robin Williams on a stage solo.

 

A lot of the jokes he was making remember standing there in the living room. I walked around the corner out of the hallway, and my step dad was sitting on the couch watching this on TV, and I said, hey, what is so funny about this?

 

He's what's because he he's not making fun of people, but he's making fun of people.

 

That's why you can't do both. He said, no. It's it's called satire. And what is it what does that even mean? You're not you're not mocking. You're just playing up what everybody remembers as somewhat nostalgic, and then -- Mhmm.

 

-- tweaking it a little bit so people can find humor in those moments or around those people or in those circumstances. Right? And I couldn't, for the life of me, figure it out.

 

Same thing with South Park. I could never get into it. And right wrong or indifferent, they're still creating all sorts of stuff that even now I get a little bit better or a little bit more in-depth, I guess.

 

But I was never as critical or cynical as I am now 20 years ago. So then here in my friends at school talk about South Park.

 

Man, I don't know. I don't I don't get it. It's just kids being dumb. Like, I I don't understand. And what I've come to, to your point, as you've been explaining this, I'm not a doctor.

 

I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, whatever. But I think it's a psychosocial aspect of these shows where it gives you some way to empathize with either 1 of I think 3 things.

 

1, could be something you have in common with these characters like your point with Will Smith and his dad in that episode.

 

Something you don't have in common with these characters, but you're familiar with because you've got friends who do or whatever other siblings that might, or something you have nothing in common at all, and it's just new, and that's what makes it appetizing to you to pay attention to.

 

But what types of I guess opportunities are there for that type of appeal now. As you understand it, as you see it in the world. Is it news?

 

Is it video games? Is it hobbies? And also a good question because I haven't put enough research into it. I know that, you know, for YouTube, for example, I don't know if it's in its peak, if it's in its prime, if where it is.

 

But there's a lot of people out there who have mastered the art of YouTube, There's plenty of people that put out material all the time.

 

If I recall more information gets released online in 1 day than what would have happened within the last, like, 200 years or something.

 

The whole point is that everybody has such an outreach with YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, any Twitter, you name it, that they can reach so many people And I know we were just talking about television, but even YouTube has kind of its own television series.

 

Kobra Kai was originally a YouTube remake of the karate kid. William Zabka and Ralph Machchio, they come back. And it's just a a different version of the story.

 

And I didn't finish all of it because they showed it for free for a little bit, but then I was like, I'm not gonna pay. But there's a lot of people on YouTube every single day. I follow people on YouTube.

 

I follow people that are telling stories about their productivity or about different games that they do or or whatever those things the entertainment there, I wonder if you if you're kind of writing the idea that it's just it's something new and going into the well ingrained concept of mass consumerism.

 

I saw a post the other day that was talking about your our brains today are in this point of mass consumers.

 

I mean, the point the person was making is like, have you ever just sat on the couch and mindlessly scrolled through Instagram and you're like triple tapping your phone, you'll 1 tap flips up really quick, but then you double tap on the next thing.

 

You give it the heart and you like it and you just do that.

 

Constantly. Like, I've done that on on my Instagram before, where I'm just like, oh, I like this. I like this. I like this. I like this. Because giving a heart giving a like doesn't mean anything to me.

 

But for some people getting all those hearts, it means everything. But then they have to move on to something new. So there's this weird cycle of consuming constantly. We're always consuming media.

 

Another reason why we're like, oh, we don't want a whole lot of television service. We don't want too much Internet in the home we want. Some of those old nostalgic things that we had growing up. And I'll I'll ask you this question.

 

When you were a kid, we'll go end of elementary school, middle school age. Was it common for you during summertime to go? Hey, mom. I'm gonna go ride my bike and then you went and I'm gonna do air quotes here.

 

You went and terrorized the neighborhood. Yeah. And in a manner of speaking, yes. I had a very different a very different junior high experience about bicycles.

 

My parents divorced, and mom wouldn't let us leave the driveway unless she was outside. Dad on the other hand would encourage us to leave the block, and then he would come outside.

 

You know? So it was a a different sort of dichotomy. But to your point, yes. That's how summers went. And so that's kind of like what you're talking about. What was okay back then?

 

I would tell my mom, hey, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go ride my bike. Okay. I'll see you later. She knew what, like, how big my neighborhood stretch was. I'd come back in, lunch, whatever, and she'd be like, where'd you go?

 

I'd say, I went over to this place. I went over to this place. I went over to this And she goes, okay, you're getting a little bit far for what I like. I'm like, okay, fine. And and we would play that game year after year.

 

And it got to the point where I'm like, hey, mom, I'm gonna ride to the grocery store. Now from my parents, they still live in that same house, to ride to the grocery store is about a mile and a half away.

 

Now, if you're on a huffy bicycle with 1 gear, that's a trip. Okay. Yeah. So that wasn't gonna happen when I was in elementary school.

 

But in middle school, when you have your 12 speed mountain bike, not that big of a deal. But I'd be gone for hours. Hours hours. Is that acceptable today? I want that to be acceptable for my children.

 

I want them to be able to feel safe and I too want to feel safe in my neighborhood where I don't have any aversion to letting them just go outside and play. We've got a small little creek down the hill from the back of my house.

 

I don't want to be afraid if they're gonna slip down that hill and scuff up their knees. Because you're like, hey, you've you've gotta experience that. I want my children to have experience.

 

And I wonder If today, people are supplanting and substituting experience for other people's experience because they've been able to capitalize on something like YouTube or TikTok or whatever the case may be.

 

And these individuals, whoever they are, have the means necessary to go experience life and then you're just like, oh, yeah.

 

I'm definitely following this person, and I watched their YouTube channel all the time because it just I love catching up with their family. Well, that family might be doing whatever it is that they're doing.

 

And I I do have a curiosity to to know if our culture today is supplement not supplementing, but supplanting like exchanging real experience for other people's experience.

 

And that's why I want my girls to be able to know what it's like to run around during summertime and to come back in and be like, we did this and we did this and we found a snake down by the river.

 

And then we found a box turtle. And then we had to do this, and we ran scared, and I ran straight through a a spider web, and it's all in my hair.

 

I'm just like, man, Sounds like a average summer afternoon. That's an adventure. But I want it to sound like sounds like an average summer afternoon. Good job. Go clean your hair. Like, that's what I I want. Yeah. Of course, man.

 

That'd be that'd be ideal. Right? And you gotta think too, elementary school. And and again, we're talking early nineties type. Elementary school in the States are not attributed to any other country because I don't know.

 

We would go to the library in the librarian after she got done teaching us about the Dewy decimal system again that week, we would go find a book and she'd read us part of it.

 

You know? And that was our library time, and we'd sit around in a circle on the rug, and she'd read us about the Swiss family Robinson or something.

 

The opportunity at that point to learn and encourage other people to learn other people's experiences was through books. That was just the medium of the day. Print media, I guess.

 

But now it's just digital media, but it's the same example the same similar experience where to learn from other people's experiences or to encourage other people to learn from other people's experiences happens to be digital where you're not reading, but the the concept is similar.

 

Right? So if you think about -- Okay.

 

Like you said supplanting your experience for another person's experience. I don't think we're really that far off the mark. It's just a different method and to say that Well, I I don't want to either be afraid or I want to feel safe.

 

Is the world really that different today than it was 30 years ago, or are we just more aware of how it is now compared to when we were kids, we just weren't as aware.

 

You know, maybe our parents are taking similar risks or we're taking similar risks that we're weighing out today.

 

I think there's a duality to it. I think there's a yes and a no. Why do parents not want their kids running around by themselves in summer?

 

I'm sure if I ask that, I can get a plethora of answers. You know, there's too many perverts out there. There's too many people who are gonna abduct my children. There's like, okay, do the facts stand up to that?

 

Do those facts stand up from saying, looking at, you know, my childhood from the nineties versus my children's childhood from the 20 twenties, would reported crime, especially in abduction, would they have a parallel?

 

Or is it that because of this media reach, we're so highly aware and humans love negativity. Maybe that's why people keep returning to their stories. They love the negativity.

 

They love the drama of it because now you can just get on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, you can jump on somebody's and like, oh, look at the the protesters out here screaming these things and people love to follow it and love to comment and and maybe that's the new soap opera.

 

But to the point, have we really changed that much? I think, no, we haven't changed as much, I wonder, but also yes because we now have such a global reach and there's so much media that can come in.

 

There's so much information that we can pull at any point in time that will then bias you towards other decision that your parents might not have had the bias towards.

 

Or they just wouldn't have had the information to do it. I didn't get abducted as a kid riding my bicycle through the neighborhood. But there was also about 20, 25 kids that were always doing the same thing.

 

Did you ever do nerf guns growing up? Sure. We did not do nerf growing up. We did not do it. As a matter of fact, I had a rubber band gun 1 time, and I remember that my grandfather was over at our house.

 

And my grandfather was a World War 2 Navy vet. And I jumped around the back door and I pointed my What is that called? My rubber band gun at him and he snatched me up real fast. So, I'm get over here.

 

Right now, I was like, oh, man, I didn't. He's like, come over here, talk to me. And I was like, oh, no. We do not point guns at each other. Do you understand me? All my friends, they play nerve guns. They shot each other all the time.

 

And even today, people do that. What was different about my grandfather from, say, anybody else? It's just an older generation. Maybe because the fact that during being World War 2, he saw people point guns at each other.

 

Maybe that was the case. You know, it didn't bother my dad. He didn't care that I had a riverbank gun, but it bothered my mom and obviously she was raised by my grandfather.

 

So I didn't have nerve guns. That information was just different for him at that time. Now, I say this, I bring this up to you as both, you know, you still being the Marine Corps, maybe in Marine Corvette, treat never keep keep.

 

We recognize these things, you don't point guns at each other. But does it not apply to nerf guns? It shouldn't have applied to my rubber band gunner and the nerf gun that my grandfather knew there was gonna be no true case for injury.

 

But for him, the intent, you do not point guns at people. I I remember the lesson. Have I played with nerf guns since?

 

Yes, I have. Have I shot people with nerf guns since Yes, I have. But I still remember the lesson and I remember the intent behind it. Nastalgic in its point, but have we moved on to modernize how we think about certain things.

 

Yes, we have. I still also believe that there is a lot of value in older ways that people used to think and their rationales behind their thinking.

 

And I think that's it right there, right the rationality behind why you make the decisions that you do make Right?

 

And you have mentioned earlier opinion, pursuit, desire, and aversion being things that you have control over, growing up, In any area at any age, the things that you can't do as often or the things that you want to do more often.

 

When you get older, You start falling back on those things. Like you said with the nerf guns.

 

Right? You're like, alright. Well, I'm an adult now. I've learned more. I understand the rationale so I can weigh out the risks the benefits and I'll make my own decisions and shoot somebody with a nerf gun, like in your case.

 

Mhmm. I think there's a certain sort of subconscious addiction to being able to have control over what's in your head, your own decisions, your own desires, your own pursuits, opinions, whatever.

 

Regardless of the lessons you learn, that as you get older, you either I mean, it's your rump springer.

 

You know? You go around and you experience different things, and then you make your own decisions after that. Alrighty, folks. Woman Clown.

 

Host of Scott Scott's stories on survival of the WhiteT. Also, you can find me on TikTok now reading a few in the books. Wanted to stop in to let you know, in my opinion. It's the people with imagination that will succeed in the future.

 

How do you encourage it? You read. You communicate. That's the importance of it. Being literate means you have to learn, be willing to unlearn, and relearn again with that folks on Woman Clown. Look forward to seeing you next time.

 

On survival dead y t, Scotch coach stories. Alrighty folks. This is Porter with SD Y t the podcast. If you haven't heard about Anchor by Spotify, it's the easiest way to make a podcast with everything you need all in 1 place.

 

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Regardless of the lessons you learned, that as you get older, you either I mean, it's your rump springer. You know? You go around and you experience different things, and then you make your own decisions after that.

 

I don't think it goes away, and I think that's a generic concept for everybody. You know? You just you're going to do what you want to do at some point in your life at least once no matter how many times somebody says, don't.

 

So let's talk about that concerning addictions for a couple minutes. You mentioned to me off the air, you're starting, I think you said, a a 30 day challenge of sorts?

 

Actually, today was day 30. At the beginning of this month, I decided I'm spending too much money and I've got too much enjoyment out of drinking caffeine.

 

You know, to call it an addiction, some people would find it offensive. So if you are out there and you have battled with a stronger addiction, forgive me.

 

It's not to make lights or to insult the the challenges that you faced. But there was a point in time that I was drinking 2 pots of coffee a day. When I was Yeah. For anybody who can't see Porter's eyes just shot up wide open.

 

Yeah. It came down to this is I didn't drink coffee growing up. I didn't drink coffee in high school. I didn't really even think about coffee very much until after I had graduated and then also when I was in the Marine Corps.

 

When I was at work, it just happened that I would always fill up the coffee pot. And I take, like, a little cup. I drink some. I go back and fill up my cup. Man, the pot's empty and I'd fill it.

 

And I got to the point. I was like, hey, who's drinking all the coffee and never filling it back up? This is unsat, guys. I had a staff sergeant come out soon. He's like, Hey, sergeant Renny. You're the only 1 who's drank coffee today.

 

And I was like, oh, no. So I realized I just had this yeah. It was bad. So then I had quit drinking for a while. The same friend who got me into stoicism is the 1 who introduced me to Bang several years ago.

 

And when I finished out my active duty stint at Victor 32I was drinking 4 bang a day like it was nothing. Yeah, dude. You because you can go over to the p x and you can get them for 2 for 4. Yeah.

 

So if you're in the Marine Corps and anybody knows if vets know this, that you're that caffeine like, it's almost like monster sponsors in the Marine Corps, the amount that people either drink monster or bang or rain or whatever the the caffeine choice would be.

 

When I left active duty, was like, okay, I need to stop because I was spending a lot of money, man. I was spending anywhere from 10 to 15 bucks a day on caffeine. And that's why I'm saying. Like, you can still call that an addiction.

 

It wasn't so much an addiction to the caffeine. It was the it's kind of like what smokers have talked about when they're like, it's that motion of moving something up to your mouth all the time.

 

Or when I was sitting at a desk as a log chief, type, type, type, type, grab a sip, type, type, type, grab a sip. Oh, I've gotta go to a meeting, grab my can, take my book, go to the meeting, sip like it was just that constant thing.

 

It's the same thing with people that dip in the marine corps, that idea of just spitting into a bottle. And I wasn't getting the great benefits of being highly awake and alert I just really liked the strong flavor of it.

 

Now why am I bringing any of this up? Because you and I talked about this off air is, yeah, technically, not even technically. You literally like, yeah. Randy you have an addiction. You're spending a ton of money.

 

I could literally look back and be like, dude, I was spending 300 dollars a month on caffeinated beverages. That's a lot that's a lot of money for me. And I decided, okay, I'm gonna wean off. Well, here we are a couple years later.

 

I'm a year out from having left the reserve service. And I was kind of do the same thing. I was drinking 2, maybe 3 bang a day. Or my wife has discovered a different supplement company that makes an energy drink called Alani New.

 

And they have great flavors. They're smaller cans like the the medium sized red bull cans. Same thing. I would drink 2, 3, maybe even 4 a day and I realized, dude, I'm drinking myself out of house and home.

 

I don't need the caffeine. And so at the beginning of the month, I said, I'm giving myself 30 days. I'm gonna wean off caffeine because if I cold turkey, I'm gonna have a severe headache, it's not gonna work.

 

That's what I did. I said, this is my limit. For every day for week 1, cut it by a can, cut it by a can. So on week 4, I was like, you can have 1 caffeine as I would say.

 

I'm doing air quotes again, 1 caffeine a day. Well, today was my last 1. Now, I have changed it, so instead of drinking as much caffeine, now I've got an algae bottle and I can watch myself drink down the bottle.

 

Additionally, I use an app called Do, DUE, which you can set an alarm and it nags you. You can set how often it repeats. So I set an alarm at top of the hour, and it's just called water.

 

And I set it to repeat every 10 minutes. So every 10 minutes, I'm re sipping water. I'm more energetic, I feel better, I've lost weight, and we're on a well with a pump, so water is free.

 

It's purified, it's cleaned. I only bring it up again because something else has taken control of me. I like the strong flavor. So what am I gonna change it out with?

 

Well, water's not a really good excuse guys. I'm not gonna lie to you. 1 of the other things we did like my wife has discovered is this Alani new company is their BCAA's is the the peach ring flavor.

 

So if you've ever had the candy peach rings, it tastes nearly identical to it. So I'll grab I'll I'll grab a shaker cup, I'll put 20 ounces in there, 2 scoops of BCAA's, and I'll sip on that intermittently between my water.

 

The point was is that I was addicted to strong flavors. But now I'm drinking more water. The caffeine though, that much caffeine wears on your heart, wears on other aspects of your body. And I needed to get rid of it.

 

So I needed to exchange it for something. Now, I've heard in the past that once an addict, always an addict, and I do believe that. But I don't believe it in the sense that with the stigma that gets carried with it.

 

When I was working at a crossfit gym in South Carolina, there was a gentleman who had done some time in prison. I don't like to use the word a felon because, again, that carries stigma.

 

He paid his time. He doesn't deserve to have that title anymore. But he also had a severe drug addiction before he'd gone to jail. When I met him, he was getting into fitness and he was still struggling.

 

He found his support group at the gym ended up working at the gym, but he would also be there for if he wasn't doing any of his construction stuff, he could be there for 6 hours a day.

 

He exchanged 1 addiction for another 1. The other 1 was the high from working out and you know this, you know what it's like after you do any 1 of crossfit benchmark workouts.

 

You're just drop dead afterwards, but you get that runner's high. You're just like, whoa. This is crazy. He switched his addiction for something else.

 

And I believe that, I believe there is a mental part to it and that's kind of where I wonder when the philosophy of stoicism and personal choice kind of butt heads. Because if you're addicted to something and again this goes to anybody.

 

If you're addicted to alcohol, drugs, tobacco, it does affect how your brain works. It's not just as simple as being like, oh, you could choose to not desire those things.

 

You could choose to make that an aversion. Tell that to somebody who's going through withdrawals for heroin, tell them that they can just choose to to quit.

 

It's not as simple. So finding a therapy to do it. For me, the therapy was I'm gonna whittle down the amount of caffeine that I drink.

 

I'm gonna supplant it with the amount of water that I'm drinking. If I'm craving something that has strong flavor, I'll choose to use something that is caffeine free that still has a benefit to my body like the BCAA's.

 

I like that theory because I've got friends that are either addicted drugs or alcohol legitimately, right, to the point where and for the let me just back up for the sake of clarity here.

 

I'm saying addicting based on if you removed them there would be relative levels of damage in their lifestyles.

 

Physical mental, emotional, whatever, but relative levels. Okay? So addicted to drugs, addicted to alcohol in varying levels and scales.

 

In giving up 1 addiction, feeling that void with helping other people to find options or opportunities to get through their addictions to become better versions of themselves is in effect the same comparison of supplanting your experiences for somebody else's.

 

But it also gives you the opportunity to work through and process the why and the rationale behind why you might be or have been doing what you were doing.

 

Right? Take this podcast, for example, everybody's got demons to a certain extent you've got to process and work through.

 

And for me, I ran away from them for years and ignored them that was easy the easiest way for me to process at the detriment of my family at the time and my own mental health.

 

And so then I turned to tobacco for the better part of 15 years up until March 20 21. That was my last time with any tobacco. And so far still hanging in there.

 

But then I didn't have it. So then I went 6 months burying my bank account in gum. And it just you know, aside from me realizing I was spending so much money on zebra Stripe and Bazooka that my dentist was like, hey, man.

 

Look, we need to talk. Is is there an intervention staged with my hygienist? No. But it was there, you know?

 

So then I swapped it with the gym. And I'd go to the gym all the time. 2, 3 times a day for an hour or 2 every time just to fill this desire for something because I hadn't stopped to think what am I really trying to get out of this?

 

It was just filling this hole. Right. And then I realized that there's lessons there. To teach and to discuss, but more importantly, I'm not the only 1 going through this, and other people aren't the only people by themselves.

 

Going through these things, there's commonalities we can have. I don't know what it's like -- Right. -- being you.

 

I only know what it's like being me. But by us having conversations and talking in this platform, over shared values, it gives us the opportunity to almost vicariously build each other back up so then everybody does a little bit better.

 

You know? And and I think that's an important aspect not to plug the podcast.

 

There's a benefit to that in in to just having a conversation, and sometimes that can be your own therapy. Even if you don't go to actual therapy to get through some of these addictions as well. I agree. Addiction is a funny thing.

 

And the whole point that we started this with June was about balance. So if you have something that is a major identifier or a prime identifier in your life, we'll use tobacco. I'm a smoker. You know, that's the identifier.

 

I'm a dipper. That's the identifier. Right? I'm just throwing it out as kind of an example. If you cut it immediately, kinda like what my wife has talked about about filling the void or the law of the vacuum.

 

If you sucked out something that was a major identifier of your life, What's gonna fill that vacuum? If you don't find something to fill it, usually relapse.

 

It happens with alcohol addiction very very often. And so that's why the 12 step programs, they have shown to work. But you're gonna be out of balance because a lot of what's been hard hardwired in your brain is your smoke break.

 

A lot of what's been hardwired into your brain is grabbing that bottle. For me, what was hardwired in the brain, it felt out of balance, it felt out of sync to not have my can around.

 

It felt out of sync to not be sipping on a bang or a red bowl any 1 of the other energy drinks that are out there. It felt out of sync. So, if I know that, if I'm out of balance, I'm gonna tilt to 1 side.

 

So what a lot of people like you said yourself? Okay. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. When I have that thing, when I have that stressor, I'll go to the gym.

 

I'll relieve that stress that way. Mentally, you're still gonna do the same thing. You're gonna give your your brain is gonna execute the the reward centers of your brain.

 

The dopaminergic pathways, the serotonergic pathways, they're all gonna initiate, they're all gonna activate. You're still gonna do the same thing. But the parts of your brain are not gonna recognize what it is.

 

They just want that that reward. And if you're not getting it, you're gonna feel sad, you're gonna feel out of balance. Lately, especially lately. I've been waking up in the morning and I'm awake.

 

I haven't been like Oh, man. I need my caffeine. I need my morning coffee. I need my I need my bang. It's like I get up and I take a quick second to do a self audit and go, oh, I am awake.

 

I really Don't need caffeine, but I'm craving. Oh, I gotta go grab the cold can because it's got that strong flavor and that's what's gonna wake me up.

 

You're like, oh, man. It wasn't about the caffeine. That's where I've ended up right now. I know I need to drink more water, having so many personal training certifications.

 

I know what happens to the human body. If you drink a lot of water and remove other your caloric intake as far as a liquid. If you stop drinking sugary anything and even false sugary things, you just drink a lot more water.

 

Your body optimizes. You lose weight you can gain muscle. There's a lot of crazy things I have when we're just drinking more water, and that's where I needed to be.

 

And I felt more awake. I didn't need the caffeine, But my body was like, oh, man, that that strong cherry slush flavor of the Alani new, that peach mango bang. The the Miami Cola Bang because I loved it.

 

I I hope anybody listening to this is is not saying like, hey, what a jerk, that's not a real addiction. Because, again, I haven't had to suffer through nicotine addiction, alcohol addiction, drug addiction.

 

You know, my heart goes out to those people who are battling through those things. There are plenty of programs and there are plenty of ways to get through that.

 

I just don't have any experience with it. Okay. Well, first off, Sure. You're a jerk and that's not a real addiction. Let's just get that out there now, knock out the elephant in the room. No. Got it. Let's just say it's not real.

 

Okay. 1, how do you qualify and define what a real addiction is. If it's something that you feel like you need to have and it's no longer a want in your life, Then technically speaking, in my opinion, it becomes a real addiction.

 

But to that point, you said it's not about the caffeine. Well, for in the shorter scheme of things in that moment, it might be. Right? But based on this trans temporal identity crisis, maybe it's not about the caffeine.

 

Maybe it's just about some other need to do something. You said maybe it's picking up a can, maybe it's dipping or moving your hand to smoke, or whatever, Maybe maybe if an addicted personality is a constant.

 

Like you said, once you're addicted to something, you stay addicted, to a certain degree, maybe not to that thing, but that thought process, you just keep filling the vacuum, filling the vacuum, filling the vacuum, Well, if it's because you feel out of sync and that personality type is a constant and again, we're not doctors here.

 

We're just sort of talking as regular dudes about regular topics.

 

But if that out of sync identity crisis type addicted personality is a constant, And that's when you feel out of equilibrium, well, then it really comes down to what of that.

 

What of that is driving you that direction? Why do you need to feel those things? Why do you need to feel that way Good.

 

Yeah. That's I I feel I like that question. Well, I I think to that equilibrium point and and really even more to the beginning of what we brought up with doctor Nash, and his game theory considerations from a beautiful mind.

 

If we're talking about how to strive to get equilibrium at An individual perspective and a team perspective to try to make that even, and that's the point of efficiency.

 

If the teamwork piece is you and your emotions, and your bearing and your character, and the individual is you and your ego.

 

Well, then you've got to find a middle ground between those things. And and I think finding ways to relieve stress or resolve conflicts.

 

You've got to identify why you're doing what you're doing. How can you do it better and how can it benefit other whether you want to or not because like you said in part 1, we're all just walking each other home.

 

Yeah. And that's a again, I was a quote I got from my wife. Yeah. It's a weird sort convoluted thing when we talk about conceptual reasoning.

 

It's cross cultural and it's cross temporal and it's cross geographic and it just is the framework for being human I really appreciate you making some time and the opportunity to talk about these things.

 

To recap a little bit, though, for any of our listeners, if you wanna get in touch with Renee, we talked about Inc and idioms on Instagram. That's the calligraphy business, which I assume is still up and going.

 

Yeah? Still it's still up and going. It's not highly active. Again, my primary pursuit right now as much as I would love to be a professional calligrapher and and to go into that realm.

 

Is to finish my education, especially getting into law school, so then I can be a lawyer. Yeah. That's the biggest that's the biggest 1 right now.

 

So it's still available. It's still there. Cool, man. And then, obviously, we'll be able to tag you in some of the ads for this interview as well, up on Facebook and Instagram And you have mentioned your email address in part 1.

 

If people wanna be able to reach out to you, I assume a message on social media would be the easiest though.

 

Absolutely. So that way, if anybody has any questions or wants to reach out to you, just pick your brain a little bit and make a new friend.

 

There you go. There's a few opportunities for you. But man, again, I appreciate this speaking of opportunities to talk a little bit more and especially dive into this part too.

 

So thank you. Thank you. I appreciate like I said, I'm super humble that somebody would be like, I feel like you've got something worth hearing and so I very much appreciate this opportunity to sit down and talk with you.

 

I've got plenty of other opportunities for bookings throughout the rest of this year and then obviously into the future as well.

 

If you're interested and you're able, feel free, and any of our listeners If you wanna hear more from Renny about his perspective, his topics, feel free to send out an email to survival dad y t at g mail dot com.

 

Reach out through direct message on Facebook or Instagram at survival dad y t, TikTok at survival dad YT1.

 

Twitter as well. Try this down. Don't forget we're playing on YouTube, including streaming this podcast as well. So without further ado, folks, I appreciate you taking the time out to listen to this interview between Renny and myself.

 

Thank you very much for coming out. I hope you guys are rounding out June as well as we have. Thank you very much, guys. I'm Porter. I'm your host, and that was SDYT the podcast.