Shredding Success

Trent bought a shredder.  Jorge has questions.

Together, we discuss success, perspective and challenges and how to relate our experiences to our children.

And the story behind Trent's moving back to California in '15 is revealed.

Enjoy,

- J & T

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I went through and I did all the audio testing already. And then it's still not gonna work for some reason. Well, I felt like I feel like your microphone needed a little more juice. So I've given you more juice. And I don't know why. I think it's because even though we have the same microphone, they are about 20 years apart from their manufacturing. One of them is brand new, the other one is like the original line of blue snowballs. Blue snowballs. Behind the scenes. The microphone is called a snowball because obviously it's white and it's spherical and it looks like a snowball. Yeah. The company that makes it is blue. That's what's on them. And they're famous for the Yeti microphone, the blue Yeti. That's the big that was like the big podcasting microphone for like 15 years. This is kind of like an all-purpose mic. Yeah. Emily bought her hers because it's it's good for like recording acoustic guitars and things like that. I like just ambient music. Yeah. I use them because I like the tone. So whatever. I I grew to love the tone and but it is what it is. So we've been gone for a month.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Has it been a month?

SPEAKER_01 1:29

A month of Sundays. Actually, I think it's been I think the last one was April 17th. So it's been almost a month.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 1:36

We are in the shame we we did we are in the shame corner. Our listeners were ready to revolt. At least the one that I live with. Uh uh, she was like, Are you guys ever gonna get back to I was like, Yeah, we get busy. Yeah. You know, George is a busy dude. You've been working hard doing stuff, and I have been I've been on the shredder thing. Yeah. Uh I do want to share the shredder story, but I want to I want to do the intro first. Go for it. So we'll push the button right here. Uh I'm Trent. Across from me is my good neighbor, George, and we bring you this whenever we remember that we have to. No, that's not right. That's whenever we feel like it. Whenever we feel like the problem with the no the problem. The problem with the no plan, no problem, problem. Uh we I don't know that we uh have decided to like we really enjoy this. We do this for fun. This is a fun thing to do. Yes. We haven't prioritized it because we let our lives. Yeah. We're both pretty laid-back fellows.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah. But it's nice to have it where you're not, it's not necessarily planned out.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, I I don't want to make it, I don't want it to be stressful. Yeah. But I do want to remind I do want to have fun from time to time. So we should we should just lift it in our list of priorities a little bit. Yeah. I think that'd be nice. You know, for the listeners' sake. But uh I do want to uh share with you this. Um No Plan No Problem has actually almost caught up to Trent Takes On 2.0, my original podcast, which has over a hundred episodes in its second run uh already. We are up to we're we're almost identical in listeners. So I don't know how many of that's crossover or how many people have found this and not found my other one. I don't know. But I promote this on my other one, so I'm guessing that there's a lot of crossover. Uh so to all of you out there, welcome back. We're still here. Uh it's been it's been a minute.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

We actually just sit here the entire time, make it look like we have lives, but we just sit here until it's ready to record again. And then it's like, oh go.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Uh anyway, we're almost to summer. Oh. Almost to well, kids' summer. Summer starts when the kids get out of school, right? Basically, yeah. That's we're almost there. Um what you got going on? What's what's up, what's what's new in uh Georgeville?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Um, not much. I mean, usually we to we take a couple of different trips um, you know, to go see family who live in other states and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

That's right. You have family in other states? I have a little bit of family left in in another state, but most of us are here.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yeah. Or another country, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

That's true. Typically, we haven't done that. We've only done the Watemala thing one time in January. Um That was the that was my 50th birthday. You happen to be out of town. Yeah. Um I think it was like right before we decided to do the podcast, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Uh it was over a year ago. Yeah. It was a long time ago. I'm 51 now.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

What's what does that mean? Um don't you stop aging after 50?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

I don't I don't know. I've got a a whole thing on aging. Uh I I think that Gen X, I think my generation, especially the older ones, the people who are like five, ten years older than me, have kind of figured it out. Gen X is the first, I think we're the first generation to by and large just say to hell with it. We don't care. Yeah. We're just aging. Like we just don't care. Yeah. I stopped getting haircuts. You know, uh people, people Gen X, they stop, they don't dye their hair. They don't care about the wrinkles.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

They don't I mean, it's like whatever, don't care. It's coming back though. I feel like Gen, Gen Z, Gen Alphas, they're starting to care too much about that. About the like the well.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Well, I think the influence is there because of social media, but I think when you're young, you'd you care more in general about your appearance and and you know keeping yourself up and stuff. Gen X, we were notorious. Older millennials too. The kids of the uh of the 70s and 80s were notorious for just being apathetic about a lot of crap.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Uh I think it's because our parents were so we were the generational latchkey kids, and the instant that you feel like your parents are like, whatever, your whole perspective changes. Oh, mom and dad don't care. Why should I?

SPEAKER_00 6:37

You know, you see more of these places that are like peptide and red light and cryo, and you know, apart from the plastic surgeries that's been on the rise and all that type of stuff. You see it everywhere now. It's a business, and it's a it's a huge business, and they're not just getting people in their 50s and 60s who still want to look young. They're getting young people who you know are doing small little things that you never would even notice. And I don't know how I feel about it, to be honest. I don't know how I feel about it, but like it's you're shredding away your natural self, you know. And I'm I'm using the word shredded on purpose. Shredded, yeah. She went to give me maybe get to the shredding.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Uh it's I'll tell you all right. I didn't actually bring a topic today. I'm more like freelancing today. Right. Totally freelancing today, but I've been doing this shredding project. Um Emily and I have been holding on to a box, a big giant ass box that is currently in our recycling pit. For we've been I've been moving this damn thing around for years. Years. This thing is he was so damn heavy. It was nothing but paperwork to be shredded, and we kept missing the shred events. Or we actually went to one. This is a true story. We went to a shred event that was here on property, and we got rid of half of our stuff because there was a limit on how much you could do. Yeah, we got rid of half of our stuff. So what I had left was just half of 15 years of paperwork. Uh old uh invoices, old bills, you know, paid bills and and old paycheck stubs and and stuff like that, just unbelievable amounts of you know receipts from healthcare garbage. And and one of the biggest things I know I noticed was credit card applications. I don't know who it was that told the world that we had no credit cards and needed credit cards, but boy, we got a lot of credit card applications. Or why you even kept them? Like well, you you want to shred them. You don't want people applying for credit cards in your name, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

But the irony is it's so old school. Yeah, you've done this shredding, it's funny because it's like nobody's digging in trash cans anymore. That's what I was I had this whole discussion with Emily. I go, nobody is doing this. It's so much easier.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

We've had our identity, people have taken out shit in our name. Right. People have cloned our our cards for our bank cards, but they did it all online. Yeah. No did you just make a whole bunch of purchases in uh Romania? I'm like, no, I've never been to Europe. So probably not. It's probably not me. Are there any other lists? Uh uh, oh yeah, you made a you made a transaction in uh in uh Ontario this morning, Ontario, California this morning. I'm like, yeah, that's where I live. Yeah. So how the hell did I get from Ontario to Romania in the same day and back? Yeah. In the same day. No, that's not me. This is why you called. And they're like, that's right. You you think they wouldn't need you for that one though, you know? Yeah, well, some of them should be pricking dirt obvious. Anyway, this whole shredding thing is such an old school it's such a weird old school thing to do. Nobody digs through trash to steal identities anymore. It's such a it would be such a fruitless exercise. Yeah. But at some point along the way, I became very Captain Ahab about this. And that box of shredding material is my Moby Dick. I am taking that son of a bitch down. And so for two for the last two weeks, I bought a bought a shredder. Yeah. Not an industrial shredder, just a shredder to put under your desk. Yeah. Eight sheet maximum shredder. And don't put eight sheets in an eight-sheet maximum shredder because it just and you're like, ooh, damn, that doesn't sound good. So I'm feeding this thing one and two sheets at a time for the last two weeks. I filled up, I think the final count was 12 garbage bags. Wow. Kitchen garbage bags of shredder. Oh, by the way, I learned a lot in the process. Like, don't try and fill the bag to the top. Fill it like three quarters and then just close it off and you're done. Because if you keep going, you can't get any more in there, and then the wind will pick up, and then you've got confetti blowing around. There's gonna be little bits of paper all over this apartment complex for the next, you know, three weeks. But man, what an it is truly cathartic to finish. I finished this morning. It was it was absolutely amazing to put that last and then I took that box, the original box, and I threw bags in it, bags of shredding into it, and I wheeled it out and I tossed it in the recycling today, and I have officially I I washed my hands of this, and I gotta tell you, it feels amazing.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Is that what that guy was doing over there on the sidewalk?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

He was over there taping them together. So the shredding is done. Nice. Moby Dick is dead, and that giant box that sat in the corner of my garage is gone. And what's up next? Aluminum cans. I'm gonna take those over to uh recycle. Those are ongoing sometime soon.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

I always let mine fill up and then takes forever, and then that's like seven bucks. Seven dollars. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Okay. And you're like, great. I could afford a latte on the way home. Yeah. Oh, or a gallon of gas. Yeah. A gallon, yes. A gallon of gas.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

It's crazy the difference in the different places where one place is six dollars and forty cents, and you go half a mile down the street, and it's like six dollars and twenty cents. And you go a couple miles somewhere else and it's under six dollars. Well, you know, the the this gas is better than that gas. Blah, blah, blah. So they say, you know, I I don't know, man. Look, I I I've been to some shady gas stations where definitely you put some gas in there and your car starts shaking, and you're like, I'm not going back there.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

And that's the most expensive place, too.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

You know, no, it was like Arco, Arco, like you know, cheap hash gas. But otherwise, there's a sponsor will never be. I don't I can't tell the difference. Um, sure, the composites in your engine and your fuel injecting system can build up over time and blah blah blah blah, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

But at the end of the day, let's be honest, neither one of us is driving an MD500 racer here. Yeah. I mean, high performance is not important in my Honda HRV.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

And I'm like, yeah, I mean, no one's gonna want to clean my fuel injecting system these days. They're just gonna try to sell me on a new car. It's just time. It's interesting when I was in Iowa, they had like ethanol. Yeah. And they had like um like corn base or whatever it was called. Like they make it with corn. Yeah. And so, and I was just like, it was really cheap.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

A large amount of corn that is grown in the United States has just turned into fuel.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Yeah. But it's like, it's funny because I'm like, I feel like my gas doesn't last as long on ethanol. Like my tank goes empty quick when it was on ethanol. So I'm like, yeah, I'm paying way cheaper, but it doesn't really matter. I'm just taking more trips to the gas station.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

I've started another rewatch of Mythbusters just in the background of when I'm doing stuff. And I loved this show. Absolutely loved this show. It's science in action.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

And they did an episode where they ran a car on cooking oil, used cooking oil. Oh wow. Uh all you have to do is strain all the crap out of it, and you could put it directly into a regular combustion engine and drive. Now, newer cars it doesn't work on because it's it's not the same as gas. It's it's not as fine. But amazingly, you can run cars on used cooking oil. That's interesting. Uh it's just another one of those wild. And again, I watched Mythbusters, I watched every episode, I've seen every episode, I don't know how many times, but a lot. That show to me, like holy crap, dream jobs, dream jobs for Trent would have been like dueling piano bar piano player problem. I can't play piano. Yeah. Uh Mythbuster would be number two. And I had the skills to do that too, be able to m build stuff and think scientifically and test these wild myths.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Well, now that your shredding project is done, there's nothing stopping me.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

There's nothing stopping me. I can reboot that entire freaking thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

You just have to film it, is all.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

I know they own the anyway, discovery. I don't want to deal with those discussions.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

It's still really popular. But the problem is that everyone's doing that on Instagram. Yeah. You know, so it's like they're not there's not a whole lot of money in it anymore.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Yeah, there's no money in anything anymore. Oh uh I had an interesting discussion with uh with my teenager about success. You know, what do we what do we think of as success? This would be a fun topic.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Um I like I said earlier, I'm fifty I'm in my fifties now. And I've seen some shit, including every episode of Mythbusters several times over. Um regardless. What is success? You know, this this stems from a question. We were listening to um a podcast where they were talking about uh an interview that that AOC did, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes did, where she said billionaires shouldn't exist because there there isn't a billionaire that hasn't gotten there by cutting corners and cheating the law, cheating workers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I it's a rich point. I I don't want to debate that. Yeah. Um but uh it brought to mind, well, what is success? And and I'm sitting there with with the the teenager, ne almost teenager, and I said, you know, I want you to live a life that isn't you know bound by other people's definitions. I want you to decide what success is to you. And I want you to live your life as broadly as you can, because that's where you really get to perspective, which I think is the most important thing in the world is perspective. I said, because success could mean anything. Is it chasing billions of dollars? If it is, the chances of you getting there from the point where you're starting are really slim. Right. So I don't recommend like setting the bar there. I recommend looking at what makes you truly happy, and when you embrace that, chase that feeling, like that's what success become became to me. Yeah. Um when I got I I would I really enjoyed work. I really enjoyed weirdly, I enjoyed middle management. I'm one of those people that just like I and I still felt like I f still felt like an everyman. I was still, you know, working on the line. I still like to do stuff with my hands. Right. But I also liked, you know, being in charge of things and and being the filter between the top management and the line level employees. Like that I enjoyed that, which I nobody does. I don't know why. Uh I did. But when I left work, when I was blackballed out of that industry, that really hurt. And I couldn't do it anymore. And I felt like I was really getting close to success. And it turns out when you get close to success in middle management, upper management gets threatened by you and they they off you in the parking lot. Uh but I've had to re kind of rediscover what I think of as success. And just does that ever do you ever think about shit like that? All the time. All the time. All the time.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Um I don't know who does and who doesn't. That's why I asked. This is a very probably Gen X response to that question. And is it what does it matter?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Like I'm not talking about matter to anyone else. I'm talking about matter to you.

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. Like, what what is what does it even matter if I achieve what I achieve? Oddly, right? Um someone was talking about you know, Matthew McConaughey's little speech at the Oscars years ago, right? And his concept of you're always gonna be chasing something. And if you're not, then what are you doing, type of a thing, you know? And I've come to realize that, right? Like if I have a project that I just feel is just so monumental, like I'm never going to finish this project, and then I actually do finish it, the next day I'm simply like, well, now what? Yeah, like you feel good, right? You feel good, don't get me wrong. Like you feel good, you take your time, you're proud of it. It doesn't last long, right? The the dopamine that you get from finishing something feels great, but it doesn't last long. And it's it's always gonna be now what? And I was funny enough, I was thinking about that this morning. Uh you have people who love their career, but they don't like their family life. Or they love their family life, but they don't like their career. Or you have people who love their career and their family life, but there's something else out there that they're still wanting and they're still chasing. And there's a lot of people out there that I see that are always chasing the next thing, right? And I'm not just talking about like the grass is always greener, sort of thing. I'm talking about like, no, like they they do well, right? They've accomplished certain things, um, but it's always kind of like now what? You know, and I think as human beings, this is a natural thing that we find, right? Um, I do think that there's some people who like, I don't necessarily want to be a billionaire, but they start out, they start getting successful in terms of making money, then they go to the next thing, they make more money, and that just becomes a norm for them, right? Like they don't start thinking about like, well, I'm making millions of dollars now. They're just like this is just the expected norm. And it's almost a scary thought to think that I would lose that, you know? And that just sort of piles on and piles on and piles on.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

There's a perspective to appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Yeah. And I I yeah, and I I'm not sure if I'm gonna dive into the appreciation thing. Maybe there's some psychology to that, but I just think that for a lot of us it's just like what's the next thing? You know, and then I think the baseline becomes the new norm based on what we've achieved, right? Uh I think there's these societal aspects to things, there's this media that's out there that tells you like this is what success looks like, and blah blah blah. Yeah. And I think there's a ton of people, even nice, genuine folk, right, who literally tried to abide by those rules, by those concepts, right? Um it's one of those things why I have an issue with things like gender norms and the the expected standards of what that even means for people. And I think the same thing applies to areas of success. And some people say, well, I don't care about success, I care about happiness. But is your happiness then defined by your success?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Right. Okay, yeah. Well then now we're just getting into d do do definitions really matter? And in some cases, I think I think you you're on to something here. They don't. They're unnecessary.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah, and well, and the thing is, like, we can say what we want to say in the moment. Like we want to be as genuine as possible, right?

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

But living day to day with people around you and seeing people around you, it has an effect on you, right? Like, you don't care about money, but all of a sudden, you know, rent goes up like crazy and gas goes up like crazy and groceries go up like crazy, and all of a sudden you need to care about money, right? Because you would like to be in a position in terms of money where you don't have to think about it in a way, or you don't have to worry about it.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Thinking about it is fine. You don't ever have to worry, even even if the economy goes haywire and everything's crazy, you're still not worried about it. That for me would be a good baseline to have. I don't I'm not interested in being a millionaire or a billionaire or anything like that, but it'd be nice to be in a position basic financial security. When yeah, when you're when you're when people are talking about gas prices going up, I'm like, I don't really feel it.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Right? When eggs prices go up, I'm like, yeah, it sucks, but I don't really feel it. That's for me, it would be a good place to be. And that line's gonna change, right? That's not always gonna be the same. Uh huh. Right. So we're living in a different world now, right? Like, I think since 2008, people really didn't realize what 2008 really was. The the uh real estate bubble crash. Yeah. Well, most people just saw like this big economy crash, financial crash, but it was the home loans. It was home, right? And it's homes. Home loans in certain areas, because the majority of the country, they don't care about home loans.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Uh yeah, it depends on the the quote unquote value of your home.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah, well, it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Like if it wasn't a big it wasn't a big deal to my my uh my aunt and uncle who had bought a place, built their own place in Oklahoma in the 90s. Exactly. They were like, whatever, we owe like forty grand.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah. And even even if you don't, it doesn't matter. Like even if you own your home straight up, who cares? Like it's not worth any more than you bought it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Like that's the anything is worth whatever you paid for it at the time. It doesn't matter. Right. It's what it what do you do, what do you get when you eventually sell it? Yeah. That's the true worth. Yeah. It's like uh when people quote unquote lose money in the stock market. Well, I have a thousand shares of this and it went down twelve dollars. You didn't sell it.

unknown 25:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

You know, if you didn't sell it, then you didn't lose anything yet. It can go back up, and it most likely will.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

And what did you start with? You probably started with twelve dollars, so you're still up seventy-five dollars.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Like the end result is whatever you put in you compare to what you put into it, not where it was.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

But that's the mindset that I'm talking about so many times, right? It's like gambling, right? You go in, you start with a hundred bucks, all of a sudden you make three hundred bucks, like, oh my god, and then you lose twenty bucks and it feels like someone tore your fucking heart out, right? You're like, oh my god. Some people some people lose the 20 bucks and it's like I don't care. Right. And I think that's good. Like, I'll be honest, I'll be one of those people, like, if I made like 200 bucks, I'd feel great. And if I lost 20, I'd be like, oh my god, I need to go make that up again. And I would keep playing and playing and playing, and then I would lose all my money, right? Because of the panic.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

So luckily I don't do that with my actual finances. I just do that with gambling.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

You you have an you have an addiction, addictive pro uh uh gambling addictive personality. Good to know. Maybe that's why I don't gamble often. Uh-huh. Yeah, I I am familiar with this. I come from a family of addictive gamblers. Yeah. So uh yeah. Stay away from it as much as you can.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Yeah. I don't gamble often. I don't really enjoy it, but and if I do it, I usually play it safe a little bit. Makes you feel a little sick to the stomach. Yeah. Like when you're doing it. Part of it is just my competitive nature.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Okay, fair enough.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

But part of it is just like, I know I can beat this thing and I don't know why I'm not beating it. And then I realize, no, it's designed for me to lose. Correct. Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

There's a skill involved.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

So yeah. So I don't I almost never play this the the machines, right? If I gamble as I go play poker, sure, there's luck there still, but there's at least there is a a degree of skill that can you know mitigate the luck. Luckily, yeah, luckily I don't consider myself a great poker player. I feel like I'm decent and if I'm playing at home with people, but when I go to a casino or something and I sit down next to someone and I look at them and they're like, they know what they're doing, I'm like, I better get the fuck out of here.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

I can smell the good on this guy.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

I'm humble enough to be like, yeah, they they've got me figured out real quick here. So I'm I'm gonna leave with what I got, you know. But but I like to enjoy it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

But like the kid in a hoodie with the sunglasses and the airpods is probably not somebody I want to mess with. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

But you know, I I I just think that, yeah, I think our baseline changes depending on where we're at. And I think it's interesting, right? Like looking back at what I grew up with, you know, when my family was considered to be pretty well off, but didn't have a whole lot. Whereas now we're like we're okay, but we have a lot more. You know, it is just like and part of it is things that have changed and governmental regulations, right? We don't deal with lead paint, we don't deal with toxics in our you know, and all these things that we found out and changed in in good ways, you know. So I don't know. It it's it's a it's a relative concept to think about success and what that means. But I think for me, I would at the very least like to be to the point where you're financially secure enough to have everything that you need, and in case of an emergency, you still have that that that's a buffer. And then I think you also have to have uh what I call you know power off.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Power off. Uh that's my uh Bluetooth speaker. No nobody pay attention to that. Uh you need screw around money. Mess around money.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Yeah, you can.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Um on top of your basic needs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Because you you have to be able to enjoy life.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Yeah. You gotta be able to like uh scratch that itch every once in a while of uh oh I really need a new paper shredder. Um the thing is you're going to no matter what. And so I I went and I dropped 70 bucks on a paper shredder, and and that was and today I'm telling you, that's the best 70 bucks I've spent in a while. Uh now I have to go get some three-in-one oil and uh get it all cleaned up and and ready to go, and then I'm gonna inst install it under the wife's desk so she can just toss stuff into it as uh as we get it.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

So you're gonna continue to shred.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

We're gonna continue to shred some. Well, yeah, I bought a shredder. But now you're gonna do it as you go. Now we're gonna do it as we go, so it's never gonna be a big project. Um for me, the learning I'm on wife number three. I got I got an adult kid and two little kids, and I live a long way from where I was. I've changed careers a couple times, uh, and now I'm in living in semi-retirement. Uh honestly, success for me is comfort. It's it's not feeling fear. It's uh realizing that I can get old and I'm okay with it. Um for me it was escaping anxiety. Success was escaping anxiety. And it's it's temporary, and I know that anxiety still like it knocks on the door every once in a while and goes, You still in here? Yeah, you get to get I hate what's going on in in the world around me. But I do my best to mitigate the damage that it's doing to my kids and their future. Just by giving my kids perspective. And that's what things like this, like this podcast is part of my perspective that I'm handing to my kids, to the world, to say, look, man, shit is crazy beyond our four walls sometimes. Yeah. And you try to ad you try to address it as well as you can, actually change things as much as you can, but sometimes there's not a whole lot you can do. You can talk about things, you can put great ideas into the world, hopefully. You can uh you can vote, you know, do your civic duty, you can go to protests, you could participate in boycotts, you can you know, you can run for office. You can volunteer for people running for office, you can volunteer for charity work and things like that. Those are all good things. Those are all affecting the world around you in a positive way. But man, in the grand scheme of things, am I gonna be able to make sure that my kids have clean air and water? Not personally. I can't do that. No, it's a it's a problem that's so big that it takes millions of people working together to overcome.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

It's the coordination of of lots of things that need to happen for things to actually get better. And I think you hit on a point too, right? It's like no one finds success by themselves.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

And I stress that a lot with with my kids. Uh with with Emily and I. We talk, we look at each other and we tell this is what success feels like is being able to partner with somebody and knowing that, man, we're we're just so much better off together than we were when we were separate. Right. And that's the case with so much more. It's such a big world. Yeah. And we have a tendency to kind of trivialize it.

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah, I I think we we live in a world more and more where isolation becomes more of the norm. It's a safe space, like it's a trust thing. It's hard to know who you can trust. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Ironically, it's that's always been the case. We just didn't think about it before. In the 80s, we did shit that like today, oh no. You just did drugs and got over it, you know. Yeah, yeah, well, you know. You can't do that anymore, you know. Uh, even the nine even the nineties, like we were we were living life like, you know, fewer repercussions. We just didn't think about it. But it was just as dangerous and untrustworthy as we are as it is today.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah. I mean, look, I I think there's it's twofold, right? I think in the positive sense, we've become more aware of things, we've labeled things, we've put so we've started treatment plans on things, you know, therapy for things that just didn't exist before, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:18

We've identified dangers that we didn't even actually have identified.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

And some people look at it as like, oh, these new things are published. No, no, no, no, no, no. These things have always been there. Yeah. We just have names for them now, right? We just have or or we've we've recognized that they happen. Right. And on the on the other side of things, right, is the trauma, right? Where we weren't recognizing it.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

And so, you know, the reason why you keep yelling at your kids in the way that you do is because of your trauma that you didn't deal with, because you didn't know that you needed to deal with it, right? That sort of thing, right? So there's there's good and there's bad, you know, because some people want to come back and say, like, well, back in the day we didn't have to worry about any of that, we were just fine. And I'm like, No. That last part isn't true. Yeah. You weren't just fine.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

We we didn't worry about it, but it still wrecked us.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Right. You know, and and you just saw the repercussions in other places, right? Whether it was alcoholism, whether it was drugs, whether it was, you know, re-traumatizing the people around you, whether it's just being a bad boss, whether it was whatever it is, right? You know, you've got bosses who will yell at their employees, and I was looking at that, I'm like, what is wrong? Like, what why?

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Yeah, what is going on that this is necessary?

SPEAKER_00 35:30

But yeah, but why is that your natural visceral response to things is to raise your voice so much to the point where your blood is boiling and everyone around you is uncomfortable. Like, how is that gonna be marked as a trait of success? So you have your own business and you're the boss, but you literally hate everybody when the some small little thing breaks. Are you really that happy? Right? Like, you're not convincing me. Right? And so I've seen people run businesses and they were successful in terms of running their business, but they were miserable throughout the whole process. I've seen people find their trophy partner, right? And it doesn't last. Or they realize it wasn't everything they wanted, right? I've seen people stay in their statuses of need, meaning they were the popular kid who was kind of the ring leader in their friend group, and they were sort of still there, but they haven't moved on from that, you know?

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Yeah, yeah. So I'm just like I can't imagine I can't imagine that.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

It's just like again, yeah, what what are you defining it as an but on the other token you have the other thing where people are just like screw it, I'm just gonna, you know, do me and stay with me and F everyone else, and blah blah blah. And I'm like, I'm not sure that's the route to go either. With withdrawal into into self self-uh focus. Yeah, but it's getting harder and harder, you know? It's getting harder and harder. Um, especially because we have so much access to the world with our phones. We feel like we know what's going on even when we're not part of it. And I think that has allowed us to disengage and re-engage in a way that isn't necessarily the best.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

I I yeah, I think it's the illusion of engagement that that can get us. You know, I uh it's why I left X, the the platform formerly known as Twitter. Yeah. Um Does anyone call it X actually? I just I don't know why I just did that.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Everyone just still calls it Twitter.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

It was like it's just Twitter. He just dumbass put a different name on it. Um I left Twitter because Well, there's two reasons. Number one, it I felt like I was engaged when I really wasn't in certain things, and then uh a couple of conservative dick bags made a couple comments that just I was like, no, it's just it's just not worth it anymore. Yeah. You know threatening my kids is not okay. So whatever.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Yeah, I mean, and yeah, it's the thing. We we've seen the other things.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Yeah, there's there's definitely social media is such a cancer. I mean, it's just it's just straight up a cancer. And one of the reasons is this this false engagement.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

And you think that you're actually engaged in something that you're not. You know, you want to get engaged in politics, go volunteer.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Go run for something. Yeah. Try you like you, uh you meant you told the story of uh collecting signatures for for a petition, petitioning for a uh a ballot measure.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Go for it.

unknown 39:03

All right.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Knock yourself out. Ain't as easy as you think.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

No. But you'll realize that people aren't as brave as they think in person. People aren't gonna threaten your kids in person.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

Oh, hell no. Right. Hell no. I you know what my new thing is? All right, I'm gonna tell you this is my new thing. When I told Emily I'd do this, she fell out a little bit. So I go to Costco. Uh oh, Costco to fill up my gas tank. Because it's probably a dollar cheaper than anywhere else. Dollar twenty right now. Yeah, it's it's ludicrously inexpensive. Oh, by the way, don't go to Costco for gas. That's my thing. Yeah. So my new thing is the thing about Costco gas is there's always all every pump is full. Like there are tons of people filling up their tanks. You gotta go in the morning. So even in the morning. So what I do now is I go, and when it's my turn, I get out of my car, and I go and I scan the thing, and as soon as I put my my uh my my gas thing, my get what do you call it, the gas nozzle into my car and I start pumping? I just do this. Who's excited about these wartime prices? And I just yell it. In Rancho Cucamonga. In Rancho Cucumonga, and everybody turns around and looks at me. And some people will go, hell yeah. Yeah, this sucks. I'm like, yeah, you bet your ass it sucks. But Emily's like, oh my god, somebody's gonna lose it on you. Like, no. No, they're not. They think that they're brave, they're keyboard cowboys. Right. But you know, that guy with the and I've done it with here's a here's a Tesla Cybertruck right across from me. And everybody who bought a cyber truck did it knowing who Elon Musk is because that thing came out after he came out as a total bag of crap. Right. I have so many expletives I could have squeezed him.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

I mean, forget who made who made it. Yeah. If you bought that, something's wrong with you. It looks like a trash can on wheels. Come on, son. I don't care about style.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

I don't I'm not someone who You don't buy a cyber truck to not make a statement. Right. You're making a statement. Right. And I know I uh I don't get into that off the pot. I know somebody who owns one that I just want to like shake it. Uh it's I I'm not afraid to say it. Just really aloud. And to your to your point of being people being brave in the real world. Yeah. Like, look, I'm in the right. I don't have to be brave. You don't have to be brave when you're in the what you do a little bit. But courage, courage isn't fearlessness. Right. Courage is knowing what could happen, but doing it anyway. Right. Um people could lose it on me. Absolutely. But it wouldn't really matter though. What it what are you really gonna do? You know?

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Just someone's violent because they're just like, yeah, they're they're looking for an excuse if they're gonna get violent.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

But usually people have to have be drunk or something, but no, I just doesn't usually happen at the Costco gas station at 8 45 in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 42:19

Yeah, you probably not got to worry about it then, but you never know, right? But you you would be a statistic.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

I also can't live a life where I think about that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

I just can't. If if you if you walk around thinking everybody's gonna pull out a gun and shoot you, A, you live in the wrong place.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Because damn. There are certain places where you have to think about that.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Absolutely. Oklahoma, if you don't allow weapons into your establishment, you have to have a sign on the door that says no weapons allowed in this establishment. Think about that for a second. Right. Not you can bring your gun in here. Not that it's no guns allowed in here.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

One of the reasons that I left Oklahoma when I did was I was walking home. My walk home was literally two blocks, rural blocks. So I could light a cigarette as I stepped out of the back door of the newspaper and put it out in my ashtray by my front door. Right. That's how short the walk was. I was walking home, and there's this guy mowing his lawn, wearing his jeans, a pair of sneakers, no shirt. And as I'm and he's mowing, he's walking mowing away from me. As I walk by him, I notice he has a pistol tucked into the back of his pants. And I'm just like seriously. Well, just in case someone comes and steal your lawnmower, you never know. Seriously. Seriously. And looking at this guy's front yard, that pistol is the most expensive thing he owns. And I was like, yeah, I gotta get out of here. I can't raise a kid here. That's crazy. You need a pistol to mow your lawn? How insecure? How small are you? You know what I mean? How wow. Anyway, maybe you got mug mowing his lawn ones. Maybe. I guess. Again. And this is a dude wearing not wearing a shirt that should be wearing a shirt. I don't mow the my lawn without a shirt on. Yeah. And I look like I could be in a magazine compared to this dude. Anyway. I don't worry about I can't live in a world where I worry about that. If you do, move. Right. Live in a better place. Right. Or start comp campaigning to reverse that trend. We are way too amosexual in this country that there is a the the fetishization of guns is out of control. I never really understood that though. I've seen it. I grew up in it. It's legit. People love their guns. Love them. Love them. I had an argument with a guy out here who's a brother of somebody that we know. We were at a party. And he was like, he was explaining, he was all proud of his AR-15. He got his new AR-15 with all this stuff and I'm like, how many kids you got? He's like, I got four kids. I said, they all live in your house with you? He's like, yeah, they all live in my house. I said, why do you have that AR-15? He's like, to protect my family. I said, have you ever shot a person with it? Yeah. No. Of course not. Right? Do you know how unwieldy that gun is in a home? Now, fun fact that gun, firing one bullet, will go all the way through every wall in your house. Right. So if you shoot, even if somebody's in the way.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

He was like, what are you getting at? I said, that is the worst possible weapon for home defense.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

You're more likely to accidentally shoot your family than you are to shoot the perpetrator. Your family.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

Your neighbors.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:32

You are more likely to shoot your neighbors.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:38

I said, if you want to s if you want to defend your home, defend your home. Get a shotgun.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:47

That weapon is for a s it's it's an assault rifle. He goes, no. That's not what AR stands for. I said, it doesn't matter if that's not what AR stands for. It's a high muzzle velocity weapon with fires practically armor-piercing shells. Right. I said, that thing is for assault of a of a of a hardened position.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

It's not for defending your house. Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:10

Yeah, and like you you have to be a marine to know how to accurately use that in the moment anyway. When you're waking up in the middle of the night, if someone's and like if someone's trying to rob your home, they're probably gonna run the second they see a light. The chances that you're gonna have to defend your family is is is so funny to me.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

It's you know what? You know what you need? You don't need you didn't need an AR-15. You need a dog. Yeah. Just get a dog. You defend your house, get a dog. I have issues with how responsible people are with their dogs. Any dog that barks when people are around, and it's not even they're not even gonna be scared of the dog. They're gonna realize the dog is gonna wake everybody up. Yeah. Go to a s they'll they'll move on to a softer target. That's how it works.

SPEAKER_00 48:00

Well, and again, people who live in nice neighborhoods who have that stuff, I'm like, you know that that is not the real reason why you got it. No. It's a toy.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

That's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

And it gives you a hard on.

SPEAKER_01 48:12

That was the argument that I was making. Look, if you love your gun, just admit you love your gun. You love the way it makes you feel. It gives you a dopamine hit when you get to go to the range and shoot it. And admit that that's why why you have it. And once you admit that, put a trigger lock on that thing and make sure that your kids never touch it.

SPEAKER_00 48:34

Yeah. Don't let it be this thing that's accessible just in case something happens. No, it is for the gun range. Put it away. Yes. Take the pin out, put it together when you're at the range, take it apart when you're at the range. Be responsible with it. That's what I ask.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Don't shoot your neighbor when you're trying to shoot a home intruder that never actually broke it.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

And chances are that won't even be the case. You're probably going to shoot your neighbor because you're fucking playing with it. Playing with it, cleaning it, cleaning it, doing something. Yeah, you know. Yep. So, yeah, I mean, again. Hold on. That was a total tangent.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

And I apologize.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

But it does tie into it, right? Because it goes to the thing. It's like when you have money, you can afford to go spend a few thousand dollars on this AR-15 and become a toy thing. You know, you didn't spend a thousand dollars to protect, but even if you did, right? Not everyone gets to do that.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

It's a very dangerous, very expensive toy. I liken it to like a sea do or uh a really great motorcycle, like dirt bike.

SPEAKER_02 49:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

Those are high-end toys that are dangerous that you need to take to a special place to use. And when you do, you need to be thoughtful and blah blah blah. And if you do all those things, more power to you. Right. Uh but as far as like I uh this all came from me being am I not scared of getting shot at the gr gas station? No, I'm not, because you can't live a life like that. And if you do, move. And I did. Yeah. I followed that advice.

SPEAKER_00 50:13

But again, it's it's it's one of those things where I think for a lot of people it's it's like that that need to feel some sort of power, some sort of control over others, is how we as society have told people you you have some sort of level of success. Because you met you made an interesting point that a gun was the most the most expensive thing he owned, right? So, you know, is he really proud of his home? Is he really proud of his lawnmower? Is he proud of walking around with no shirt because he's fit? You know, he's probably none of those things. Right. So the gun gives him some level of status. And that is the expectations that we have set in society, whether it's guns, whether it's money in American society. Yeah, whether it's a title, whether it's, you know, who's by your side and how they look, right?

SPEAKER_01 51:02

Um status symbols, but we want the highest status we can get.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

Right. But mo but when you really talk to people, you realize that nobody really cares about that at the end of the day. They want to feel good with the people they're with, they want them to be good people, they want to be able to hang out with people and have a good time with them. Like, you want all of these things there, you know? And yeah, like I start to think about the things that my kid starts to worry about and not worry about, you know? And you know, how does he start to define success? It's already started, you know, and even the standards that they put on him at school, I think are s they're outlandish sometimes, you know, and I want him to do well, and I'm glad that he's a good student and all that type of stuff. I don't want to push him away from that. But at the end of the day, it's just like, dude, like if you didn't get the A, but you learned something, that's more important, you know, and and and I I've I've had this discussion with so many teachers since I work with teachers, right? It's like, how do you guys even sit down and make up your grades? Like your rubric just seems so arbitrary. They're like, oh yeah, yeah, I get. I'm like, you spent all year with a kid who is probably like at a D level, right, who's getting D's in a lot of things, and you worked on them to where the end of the year getting B's. Right?

SPEAKER_02 52:25

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

You've made a jump with that student in growth, in development, in their journey, and there's just so many things that happen there that you could define as a golden success story that they will never get on a stage and get a certificate for. Right. But the straight A student who started with an A and ended with an A, everyone's like, Oh my god, they're so amazing. You know, and and and I do think about this because my kid's one of those kids, right? He's he's he's you know, a great student all the time, you know. But I'm like, We're very fortunate to have kids that care about their academics. But we but where but where are you being challenged? Is the question.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

Well, my the title of my would-be comedy special was gonna be Challenge is overrated. Oh, interesting. Because to me, if everything's a challenge, then you never feel you never feel like you can't gauge it. I don't think everything is. You never feel like you understand the challenge. You need some soft wins.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Yeah. I don't think everything needs to be a challenge, right? I would like, I would like to my my TV and how to figure out what I need to watch not to be a challenge, right? I would like where I get my lattes not to be a challenge, right? I would like, I would like, I would like my gym and where I do my exercises not to be a challenge and how I get there. But the actual workout, I need to challenge myself if I want to get something out of it.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

But one of the things that I heard over and over again my whole life is you need to challenge yourself. You need to challenge yourself. You need to change it was always Trent, you're not challenging yourself enough. You need to challenge yourself. That was a recurring Trent, you can do anything. You need to challenge yourself. And I was always like, you know what I hear a lot? How great challenge is. Yeah. You know what I don't hear? It's okay to fail. Yeah. So it is it the challenge that you want me to do, or do you want me to win? Because it feels like what you want is for me to win. You want me to to you know, constantly level up. Right. Which okay, but if that going back to your point, if that's the journey, always reaching for the next thing. Oh no, yeah. And that's not what I'm saying. I'm not in that. To me, that was always terrifying. Yeah. And it's why I went from an appointment at Annapolis to to join the Naval Academy to be a nuclear engineer to failing a physical and ending up completely aimless. And that's my life story in a nutshell. I was a National Honor Society kid. Uh the minute that I stepped onto my first college campus, I was a second semester sophomore just from classes that I'd already gotten credit for. Yeah. From testing out, from advanced placement courses. I'd never had to do a single English class and I would have clipped out. Okay. Just sign me out. I didn't have to do a math class. Right. I was super highly intelligent. I was a badass athlete. Uh I just did a lot of things well.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

I was going to be a nuclear engineer. And when I failed to be able to do that because I've got a wonky kidney, uh I lost all direction.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

Yeah, it was that that hyper focus of thinking that the reach, reach, reach, and then the one thing and uh keep in mind, you can't just go to UC Irvine and major in nuclear engineering. Right. Or you couldn't in 1993. Right. There were two programs that you could do this. And one was the Naval Academy and the other was in France.

SPEAKER_00 56:25

Oh yeah. I mean, and that happens a lot, maybe not to that degree all the time, right? But it happens to a lot of people because there's this idea in their head of what they're we're told, this is what you can be. Well, I wanted to work on nuclear fusion.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Yeah. Was was my dream. I wanted to not to theoretically do it, to actually be one of those people working on it at in Bern, Switzerland and and working on the super colliders and and trying to figure out how to solve the energy problem that still exists to this day.

SPEAKER_00 56:57

And the question is, like, had you if you were there today doing that, would you be successful? Here comes the sliding doors moment. Right. Would you be happy? And the question is, not who knows. The question is, who cares?

SPEAKER_01 57:13

Right. You can't you can't live in a in an alternate reality. You have to live in this one. Yeah. You have to live in this one. Wherever you woke up, that's where you live. Yeah. Well, I don't know. It depends on how much you party. I've I have woken up in places that I did not live in.

SPEAKER_00 57:29

But you you don't live in uh Romania. You live in Ontario, you know.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Exactly. And that's why my bank doesn't get me. Uh we are where we are. Yeah. And your perspective and the way you measure your own success, that's personal. But my challenge to my kid, and challenge is overrated, but my challenge to my kid was you set the definitions.

SPEAKER_02 57:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

Don't let someone else do it. Even me. Yeah. If you really, really want to be a billionaire, don't let me tell you you shouldn't try.

SPEAKER_00 58:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 58:10

I'm just, I'm gonna be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

That's a tall frickin' tree to climb. But also, like, what's your purpose? Like, why? Why is that a thing? Yeah. You know, and a kid, a kid will give you an answer. It's like, oh, because I want to have everything I want, right? I want to be able to buy whatever thing I want.

SPEAKER_01 58:26

I want to live five nights at Freddy's, and I'm like, that's weird. That's just weird. We have different kids, but we have way different kids. And and she has unique problems too. Yeah. And I tell you, you know, like bullying is still a thing. And the other part, we had bullying back when I was a kid. It was just as prevalent as it is now. Maybe more so. But we didn't define everything as bullying. You know, like if you teased a kid, you teased a kid. Now they see it as bullying. And I'm like, what my question was, why do you care? You know, so she she she was upset she got teased over something. And I said, Why do you care? Are you ashamed of that thing that you got teased over? And she's like, No. I said, then you shouldn't be afraid, be ashamed of that. You shouldn't you shouldn't feel bad that somebody teased you about that.

SPEAKER_00 59:22

And the thing is that take their power away from by laughing at them over it. I also don't think that people can like when someone tells me something, I don't sit there and like dwell on the thing that they said about me. I sit there and dwell on the thing that they even said something to begin with. It's like, I didn't do anything to you. Like, what is your problem? You know? And it takes a minute to filter and be like, that's got nothing to do with me.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

It probably doesn't. It's it might, it might. It might be jealousy, it might be some sort of envy.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

Well, yeah, but like I, whatever I did or said, just reminded them of something else and it triggered something. Sure. And and especially as kids, you just you imitate and you regurgitate. So the minute there's a opportunity presented, you think, oh, I'm gonna say this thing and maybe I'll get some laughs. They're not thinking about this might hurt someone. They're not thinking about, well, I'm gonna get under their skin. They're not thinking, right? Some people are, but the the bullies, the the manipulative bullies. But those are the kids whose parents are really wrecking them. Because we always talk about like, oh, I was bullied as a kid. I'm like, stop and think about how many times did you quote unquote tease or bully someone? And you probably didn't even notice. I did it all the time. And I tell you, there was never a malicious bone in my body. I was never out to get someone to make them feel bad. I wanted the attention. I wanted to make I wanted to get my friends to laugh. I wanted to, you know, do the cool thing, right? That for most of the time for kids, that's usually what it's about. And so you don't realize that the joke at somebody else's expense is is actually hurtful. Right. But I wish there was more adults around who can take those moments and not just let them slide. Turn them into a teaching moment, right? And just be like, hey, you come over here. Why did ask the questions? Let them derive at the conclusion, like, oh yeah, I was just seeking attention. Okay, cool. Now that you understand that, look at this person, they're not part of your attention, they didn't benefit from it. You wouldn't like it if they did it to you, right? So just think about that next time. And then the other kid is like, hey, like they were just trying to get attention from their friends. Yeah, it wasn't cool and it makes you feel like crap, which I get, and you're valid in your feelings, but don't go the next 10 minutes and dwell on it, right? Like, and so those teachable moments have to be there for both parties. Instead, what you get is like, oh, those are just kids. Oh, you can just get over it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Or it's blown out of proportion as some sort of like crazy moment that kids get suspended from school and it's like Because it probably gets to the point where no one's done anything about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:58

Yeah. And so some kid goes home crying and the parent is like, What's wrong with my kid? How did they get to this point?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:03

Yeah, there are definitely some some of the bullying that goes on is scary, dangerous, physical. All of those things have to be addressed in with severity.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

Yeah. And the schools do have like definitions of like what is actually considered quote unquote bullying versus just everyday teasing, you know?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:23

And I think that kids are starting to like expand their their definition of bullying into parts that it's like that's not. Someone says something I didn't like, you know. It's not really bullying.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:36

It's more like it's more like just being an idiot. This is happening in the workplace too, right? Like people can't say anything, you know? And it's literally about how someone feels.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:48

Well, it's yeah, well, it's the old uh if you can't express yourself without using vulgarities, then you need to work on your vocabulary. It's you know if we can't if we can't communicate without saying something out of bounds, well, we really need to work on our communication skills. Yeah. But we also shouldn't take everything.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

But if someone's just expressing themselves in the moment and just being themselves.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:14

This is the Bill Marism of it all. Yeah. That guy keeps coming up in my life, and I don't like it. I don't I don't care for that at all. He had John Fetterman on last week, and I was just like, ugh, that's a conversation that I would pay a lot of money to not have to listen to.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:27

Yeah, he makes himself more relevant than he needs to be, but that's that's his whole shit.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:31

Well, it's it his shtick is, you know, well, we're all too we're too woke. And I'm like, bro, you got you made your name shitting on religion. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:44

Right. Are you are you serious? Yeah. Calling out all the the stuff that's bad with it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:52

Yeah, I mean He polices all the time. You you can't you can't have it both ways.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

Yeah. I do get some of the arguments sometimes in that group of people who think that way, in terms of some things are just like, really? Like, that's all they say. Even like sometimes people will say things and I'm like, I don't agree with that. I don't like that they said it, but do we really need to like get ourselves so worked up about it and make a whole policy around it now if that no one in the so no one in the company can do anything remotely like come on that what's the old sticks and stones? Yeah, they're they're all well I never really followed that. But no, I look, there needs to be a balance, it can't just be all one thing all one way, you know, and I and I do see elements of it. And like, and people are gonna slip up, right? You know, like I I know people who have gotten in trouble because they you know, used profanity once. Right? And wrong place, wrong time, and it wasn't directed at anybody. Right? And I'm like, okay, like check in with them, figure out the context of the situation, and then realize, okay, I'm not gonna worry about it. Right now, this is happening more than once, and you're using it towards people, that's a different conversation. Right? Yeah, that's a different so context matters, and I think we often don't take context into perspective. Oh, for sure. And I think a lot of people who run things, they do it out of convenience. They just they don't want to deal with it. Take the take the easy path because it's just easier to deal with it that way. If I just tell everyone to shut up, then I don't have to figure out what's what the individual problems.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:38

Right. Everybody just shut the hell up.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:40

Right. Uh so and I think that's more the problem. Like if if I ever talk to Bill Maher, I'm like, don't you think it's the rulemakers that are more the problem than all these people who are just saying all these things that they have issues with? Because saying you have an issue with something isn't an issue.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

Right? It's the fact that there's people who will then try. Try to make rules around it that don't make any sense because they don't want to deal with certain things that we're going to do. Here's the other thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:06

Why can we not apologize and have it accepted? That too. If if the if we didn't factor in, you know, the the circumstances around something, uh, and then okay, well, it's if it's something that was said, you know, if it was a joke that was taken the wrong way or taken too far, or oh, I didn't realize how much that upset so many people, I do apologize. I didn't that wasn't my intention to offend a bunch of people. Now, if your intention was to offend people, congratulations. You have to pay the consequences for that. Right. You free speech is free, but it doesn't come without comp without repercussion. Right. You know? You can't you can't call people names to their faces and then expect to not get smacked. Right. Right. Hello? You're you're instigating. You're it's abusive.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:59

Well, yeah, I mean, one of my pet peeves, right, is when you have people like whether it's Bill Maher or what's that other jackass? Um Joe Rogan?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:07

No, the other jackass is a Piers Morgan. Okay. The other jackass is doing a lot of work there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

Well, it's the whole like, oh, you guys don't have any sense of humor. Right. And the whole like thing is like trying to chalk things up to a joke whenever you get caught. Right? And so I'm like, first of all, that wasn't a joke because A. Sometimes it's not. No one was laughing, and you can tell in your tone it wasn't a joke. Two, even if it is a joke, some jokes are offensive. Because you're dismissing things about people that are real and that are real painful. So when you make a joke about a gay person, right, you're saying, Oh, it's just a joke. You're dismissing the oppression of what they've experienced. That's right. Because no gay joke is going to be in the context of, well, you know, it's it's just for for laughs. Right? It's because we look down on them, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:08

It's because the person telling the joke. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:11

And now I've heard people say jokes that have to do with gay people where they're hilarious and they're not offensive. Uh-huh. And I think there are some people who just don't can't tell the difference. It's not easy. You know, and 'cause 'cause they they look the same in certain lights, you know what I mean? Right. But context. Context matters. And so I think for me, a lot of problems too that people engage in, whether it's problems in a relationship, problems with a coworker, problems with their work, problems with whoever, a lot of it is perspective. A lot of is you're looking at from one perspective, the other person's looking from another perspective. You both probably are not wrong. Or you're probably both wrong, right? And getting two people to understand a whole different perspective altogether is the challenge right there, you know. And I I've read experiments on this. People have done experiments on this, right? Where they where they show you a picture of something. Right. Let's say a mountain. It's like you live here, you see this mountain every day. What's the name of this mountain? Some people can't answer that. Scary. But people will say, Oh, that's Mount Baldi, right? Then they'll show them a picture of another mountain.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:27

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:27

Right? And they're like, What's this mountain? It's like, I don't know, I've never seen that mountain before in my life. And they'll be like, Well, that's Mount Baldi. It's just from the other side. It's the other side of it, yeah. You know? Yeah. And if I had brought someone who lives on the other side of that mountain, they would have told you it's Mount Baldi. And you guys would have been both arguing with each other that no, my picture's Mount Baldy, not your picture. And this happens all the time. And and here is perspective coming back to Roost. Right, you know, but but we don't talk about it. We don't do exercises around it. How many trainings, leadership courses, uh perspective building courses, communication courses that I've sat in, and no one actually ever talks about context and perspective in that way. They very rarely do. And I'm like, you know how many issues we could resolve if we just practiced a little bit more of that? There's there's two things.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:20

It's under it's not only understanding that other people might have a different perspective, but respecting the perspective that someone else might have. Right. That's a big deal too. Yeah. I think there's a lot of, you know, like, well, that's not the way I see things, so I don't respect your your opinion on it. It's like, well, what the hell? Yeah. That's not fair either. Right. Unless the two things are supposed they could be diametrically opposed, in which case, well, you know, sometimes you can't compromise.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:45

No, yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:46

You know, sometimes the it's you know, the switch is either on or off. There's no dimmer on it. You can't there's this side of the of the thing or that side of the thing, whatever we're talking about. I I guess there's lots of different different positions you could take. Or positions of lots of different things we could talk about that are either this way or that way, never the twain shall meet, because there is no uh somebody was talking about. But that's when you have real conflict. So we was talking about this. The original ver purpose of the shadow docket for the Supreme Court was for the Supreme Court to step in in moments where irreparable harm would be done if you didn't immediately step in. And for the most part, for decades, the only thing that they used it for was for clemency in uh capital punishment.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:36

So last second stays of execution, because if they didn't step in and stop an execution when the person's dead, that's pretty much irreparable harm. Right. That was uh John Oliver this week. Mm-hmm. Talked about Shadow Dogging. Like that's a situation where it's either on or off. You can't there's no in between.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:56

Uh anyway, I just uh Well, I I think to wrap it up and bring it all around, right? Like I think perspective is an interesting thing because it's like how you perceive things can determine success. And so you can look at something or someone or yourself and think yourself successful or not successful depending on your perception. And you know, one person's perception is another person's reality or not. Or not.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:25

You know, it's and it comes down to you, you know, your perspective of success is what success is for you. Right. And other people may tell you that's not successful. You could just take their words and throw them in the in the shredder. Right. Trying to tie that into everything now. Uh because whatever they say about you doesn't matter. Don't let them define your success. Oh my god, I'm telling this, it's exactly what I told my kid. Yeah, don't let somebody else define your success. You've got to figure that out. And and again, that includes me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:05

But that also that also means like let it let that mean malleable. Don't set such a hard line and don't let it move. Like maybe you get to the midway point and you realize, I'm never gonna obtain that. That's ridiculous. You know, that's okay, right? Or hey, it's time to take a left turn here.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:23

And like I told her, I said it. You may think that you know what success is and you may be striving towards it and realize midway through that not what I want. Right. And I personally have done that. Right. So you can just change your and say, look, that thing, not as important as I thought it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:41

Right. This new thing, very important to me. Right. And that will happen, especially when you're young, right? How many times do we change our minds, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:48

Like oh, to be young. Instead, I'm old and trying to share wisdom and shred the past. Maybe maybe it lands, maybe it's not need to carry that stuff forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:01

No.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:03

You don't. And you're still shredding, aren't you? Yes, I am.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

Yes, I am. When you say shredder, I just think about teenage being ninja turtles.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:10

Yeah, I want to sing the theme song. Teenage being ninja turtles, teenage. Turtles is a nap show. Total power. All right. With that, you wanna you wanna hit the button and or I guess we should thank everyone. Thank you for listening. Yeah. You guys rock, and we'll be back when we're back.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:28

Yeah, well, we'll maybe we'll do one this week again.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:30

We'll make up so cool. I'm pretty much free. And once the summer starts, God only knows what our schedule's gonna be like.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:38

We might be having too much fun or no fun at all. Yeah, it's entirely possible. But until then, have a good one. Be good humans. Thank you. Be good humans. Be kind and kick ass.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:50

Be kind and kick ass, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:52

That's something a ninja turtle would say, probably, but uh for sure. Or at least the rat would say that, you know. The rat.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:01

Splinter.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:02

He's just the rat to me.