The origin of this podcast came from me needing to get my notes put together for a podcast. I thought it would be cute to carry the theme through the rest of the podcast. That means that I am talking about projects and initiatives that I have in the pipeline. You might be surprised at my conclusion or my take on it at least.
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July 3, 2025 – Boundaries, Chapters 3-4
Last week I wrote about what it means to not have boundaries. I think that we can all imagine such things. As promised, this week I am getting more technical with the types of personalities define boundary issues. And then in chapter 4, it talks about how boundaries are defined and recognize as us individuals.
At some point, we all have boundary issues. Maybe you are not the aggressor but the one aggressed upon. Only one of those situations do we have any sort of control which is why we all have boundary issues. Depending on your personality type is how you default to boundary situations.
Chapter Three is titled “What are boundaries”. There are essentially four different types of boundary definitions. Here they are.
- Compliant – Feels guilty and/or controlled by others. Can’t set boundaries.
- Avoidants – Sets boundaries against getting help from others.
- Controllers – Aggressively or manipulatively violates boundaries against others.
- Non Responsive – Sets boundaries against the responsibility to love.
In the book, these types are placed in a table. The Compliants can’t say no and the Non-Responsives can’t say yes. The Avoidants can’t hear no while the Controllers cannot hear yes. When you look at the four types, do you see yourself? I sure do, Much like the Myers-Briggs tests and other such personality tests, I don’t necessarily find myself squarely one category all of the time.
Ironically, I can see myself with all of them from time to time. In my marriage, I am almost completely Compliant. In my non-working time outside of my marriage, I am almost completely Avoidant. While I am at work I am a combination of Controller and Non-Responsive. I can think of times that I have knowingly ignored subordinates requests to try and grow at the expense of trying. But, that has been rare and far and few between.
I don’t think that I am an alien or something not human. I am not sure that it is normal to have all four traits but I also don’t think it is abnormal to have different responses in different situations. It probably is a good indication of why I am always striving to be fiercely independent and self-reliant. It probably explains why I have issues ‘fitting in’.
That being said, my dichotomy speaks to the two types of boundaries, functional versus relational. Functional boundaries are things related to task completion whereas relational has to do with people. I won’t lie, I do think that my functional boundaries are stronger than my relational. I don’t have as much of an issue standing up for myself in a work situation because I feel like I have less to lose.
Chapter four is titled “How boundaries are developed”. This is an very interesting chapter in that it describes the necessary states to not only grow up but also to develop healthy boundaries. When boundary problems develop, it is often a trauma or stunting at a particular stage. Examples of those causes from the book are things like withdrawal from boundaries, hostility against boundaries, overcontrol, lack of limits, inconsistent limits, trauma
There are five developmental stages that have purpose. They are:
- Bonding (birth) – mother and child bond
- Separation (6 mos – toddler) – recognizing that independence is necessary
- Hatching (child) – developing independent personality
- Reproachment (child) – establishing boundaries with safe limits
- Practicing (pre-teen to teen) – Acting within boundaries with ever increasing control
I look at this list and I can see exactly where my development diminished. Since it is biological, bonding and separation happen. I think that my development slowed in Hatching and severely stunted in Reproachment. This seems to be an extremely common occurrence with strict parenting. When a child is not allowed to safely say no then they do not develop the skills to set personal boundaries.
Clearly, not everything remains static. My sister (youngest) had much less in the terms strict boundaries than I did. My brother rebelled and had much more friction. His personality was stronger in determination to become independent whereas my sister really did not have to try that hard.
End Your Programming Routine: I am not complaining, it is just the way it is. And it certainly is not an excuse to not address the problem. This book has already changed my perspective on boundaries. I now realize that I have issues as well rather than strictly thinking I am the victim.
July 2, 2025 – Summer Projects
For the last couple of weeks, stuff has been piling up in our foyer. The reality is that a lot of these projects are not really necessary but as my wife is fond of saying, ‘happy wife, happy life’. It doesn’t say that much for me, but the optional things are relatively easy. It is the necessary ones that are going to be a lot more work.
We have lived in this house over 20 years. That entire time, we have had a heat pump downstairs but no air conditioning upstairs. We had our bedroom upstairs for at least 13 of those years and the truth be told, I only found a handful of days a year to be too hot. Nevertheless, we are having house guests in a couple of weeks. My wife wanted to ensure they were comfortable.
I suppose where it finally cracked, my son’s room is south facing. I won’t lie that it does get hot. But, over the years he has declined the offer for air conditioning. Our exchange student was staying in my son’s room and he spent several nights sleeping downstairs in May when we were in the 90s. Now that he is gone, we are cleaning up the remnants and my son is moving back into his room. It is the perfect time to get the new AC unit installed. I have a second one to install in the upstairs family room.
Speaking of my son’s room, he is also getting a new ceiling fan. My wife says that it needs to be replaced because it is old. What? Remember ‘happy wife, happy life’. The truth is the pull string has been broken pretty short. The reason is the kids would jump off the bed and pull on it breaking it. I know because I have caught them doing it.
This could be repaired for a couple of dollars; I have also done that before. But, it is best not to fight it. I have to say it does look new and more contemporary. The new fan is significantly inferior to the old one. This one has two lightbulbs where the other one had four. Also, the access to remove the globe requires you to reach your fingers up and over the metal fixture, inside of a channel.
The worst part is that I had to completely take the whole fan apart twice. Once because the blade was rubbing on the switch. After that was fixed, I found out that one of the supply wires was rubbing on the fan motor. That is done now.
Now that we have had the dry rot repaired and the new windows are installed, that has spawned two projects. The first is all of the replacement work has to be painted on the exterior. The second project is that I need to do drywall finishing on the inside.
I guess that because those are separate trades, then that is why they do them. It does seem like for two days of work and $5000 in labor that I would have a week’s worth of effort to finish. They did do the initial mud and tape job and it was pretty sloppy, so they did me a favor by stopping and not charging me more.
But wait, there is more. For my wife’s birthday (and anniversary) she want’s a new vanity and light fixtures in the bathroom, bedroom and dining room. This definitely makes my shopping easier but I already had a plan for what I wanted to buy. Now, I am going to have quite a bit of work to get all of this work done. Keep using the phrase ‘happy wife, happy life’.
I think that is enough to do this summer. As I have already stated in my podcast there is still plenty going on in life the summer as well. I am assuming that I can complete all that in the summer time frame. You can expect that there will be periodic updates on all of the work. The fan and AC are done now, at least my foyer is clear of boxes at this point for now.
End Your Programming Routine: We are currently in a holding pattern for cancer treatment. There have been some mixed results on the testing and so the doctors want to wait and retest in a few months. My wife really wanted to wait until the fall to get started anyway, looks like there will be no choice now. Hopefully, I can get the projects finished before my life is turned upside down again.
July 1, 2025 – To Be a Kid Again
When I was a kid, I loved Legos. Between my brother and I, we didn’t have a ton of them but certainly enough to be creative. There wasn’t the plethora of different lines that they have today but I was partial to the ‘Space’ series. A couple of those kinds of sets along with a good foundation of basic blocks gave us enough to build lots of things.
The pinnacle of what we built was a clipper, sailing ship complete with cloth sails and rigging. My only regret is that we didn’t have enough of the same colors to make the ship really look proper. I was pretty proud of that back then and if they had allowed Legos in the state fair then, I think we could have won. I have a picture of it somewhere, maybe I will try to find it some day.
The Legos of today seem to have tons of specialty parts. I feel like that takes some of the creativity out of the process. For one thing, after I built the model and threw away the instructions, that was the one and only time the actual structure was built as intended. Everything else was improvised.
I know that when I built my Ford GT500, all I did was follow the instructions. Everything was in unit bags and all you had to do was open the unit bag and follow the instructions sequentially. It certainly took several hours but honestly it was easy. I see no reason why the most advanced kits are labelled for ages 18+. Honestly, a determined 12 year old should be able to follow directions and complete the model without breaking a sweat.
My wife bought me this set for Father’s Day. It is from the ‘Botanical’ line. I am taking my time building one type of flower a day. This is just to extend the enjoyment that I am getting from doing this. I don’t think it will ever get disassembled and my wife wants to display them where we currently have a Lego cityscape.
There are certain pastimes that I did as a youth that I honestly believe were highly influential as an adult. Those things would be reading, Legos, G.I. Joes, Dungeons and Dragons and drawing. Some of things I have written or spoken about before and some I have not. I am pretty sure this is the first time I have written about Legos at least.
We had this old, brown fleece covered bean bag. That thing became army base, moon scape, race track etc. I remember times when it would be all setup and then it was time to put stuff away for the night. I instructed everyone in the family not to touch the bean bag because it would then ruin the scenario that was setup for future play. You know what? It worked more often than it did not.
Not having a build plan, not having a bunch of specialty parts, not having access to mind numbing TV is what made this so beneficial. I had to look for pieces, I had to estimate scale from a picture, I had to figure out how a bunch of squared off blocks could make a curve of a hull. I think that another thing I learned was that if I didn’t have the exact part, it was going to be OK.
We like puzzles in this house. I think puzzles and Legos share some common elements. But more so than that, I believe that puzzles are good for the brain. This is especially true for analytical skills. There is pattern searching and recognition as well as visualization involved.
One other thing I notice with puzzles as well is that the efficacy diminishes over time. I attribute that to brain fatigue. I think that awareness with puzzles can help you become cognizant of when you are starting to see brain fatigue.
End Your Programming Routine: We often do a puzzle during a break time like Thanksgiving or Christmas. That has become a mixture of Legos or a puzzle over the last ten years. As I stated above, I think that they provide similar kinds of benefits albeit puzzles are significantly more difficult and cheaper. The next time you are wanting to go back in time a little bit, try building a Lego set.
June 30, 2025 – Brought To You Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue
If you liked the Toby Keith song and message, then you may not like what I have to say today. The topics covered pretty much stick to the topic such as Trump, Iran, justification for bombing and what that means for his legacy. I also talk about what I am doing instead of fretting about things outside of my circle of influence.
June 27, 2025 – Boundaries, Chapters 1-2
I have been a fan of the Dave Ramsey book list for many years and this book has been on my to read list for all of them. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is also recommended by me as well. Other titles like Who Moved My Cheese have a message but I find to be a bit situational.
I kind of, sort of had fantasies of reading this and having an epiphany when my wife’s parents were alive. Boundaries were a huge issue in our relationship. I left them more to my wife to deal with because I felt like I didn’t want to get in the middle of their relationship. That was probably the wrong thing to do because we each as individuals have boundaries. I am just as entitled to have my boundaries as well. What a complicated mess.
I wanted to buy copies for both of us. I thought by reading it, we would self-reflect on the lessons and things would get better. I realize now that was probably not going to happen. Part of why I held off was I was uncertain about whether the idea was insulting. I also realize that boundaries have two parties with the aggressor and the egressed.
A number one problem with people violating boundaries is not knowing (my problem) or not caring (their problem). Hence the need to study boundaries. I kind of just accepted that this was the way things were going to be without stating my wants in the situation. This is a little bit unfair to them and it certainly did not make me any happier.
This of course caused friction within the marriage as well. My wife was unhappy at the constant conflict over boundaries who then brought them to me. I would then in turn defer to her and nothing would get resolved. My stance was, if you wanted a relationship then this was the price that was to be paid. I should mention that she was very good and up front about boundaries which is why I expressed my attitude a above.
Chapter one is an anecdotal story about a woman who struggles in happiness because of being buffered about in a life without boundaries. I have kind of violated my principles by reading way ahead and so I am kind of biased about this book already. Let me warn you up front that this book is highly based on Christian principles. While I think that there is some value for everyone, it feels like throughout the book it is the ‘meek Christian’ that cannot dare to set boundaries.
I have met these people for sure and the audience is clearly intended for the faithful but to me it feels extremely stereotypical. Being paralyzed in the ‘turn the other cheek’ mentality to not be able to function in life is more rare than it would seem based on the book. There is nothing wrong with faith base counseling, in fact I think that it helps set the proper perspective and context for us faithful. But, I do think that it is wrong to come at this as a crisis of faith. That idea discounts a lot of people that probably need these words but will be turned off by the faith forward approach.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater yet. Chapter two is about all the different kinds of boundaries. Some of them are not personal based but culturally based. For instance, I noticed in China the personal zone was extremely different than what I was used to. In line for the subway, people would literally press right up against others. What we would consider a tight western line would have some air right in between two people. It was one of the things that I was quite ready to leave when I came back home because it felt very suffocating.
Reading all of the different types of boundary examples did make me understand that I also had boundary violations. It wasn’t just that others transgressing on me but that I failed to express where mine were. I always felt like people should know not to do this or that but then it completely makes sense that if I do not communicate as such that this kind of thing could happen.
End Your Programming Routine: Hopefully, things get better from here. I have started out a bit negative which I do feel is warranted. But, like I said let’s give it a chance. Next week we will get a little more scientific about the subject. I will talk more about the book instead of my own situation instead.
June 26, 2025 – Finding Something New
Touring out of town visitors can sometimes be a boon for local discoveries. We took a Portland day on our recent vacation to see some of the local sights. It is not that I didn’t know about the Portland Japanese Garden, it is just that we don’t go up that often. Probably the bigger thing is that at $22 per person, it is something that you want to commit to.
One of the things that we take for granted on the west coast is our proximity to Asia, relatively speaking. What seems relatively foreign in say the Midwest is everyday normal here. Of course, I am speaking primarily of things like food and culture and not so much ‘Made in …’. Even so, I think that goods like cars were much earlier accepted here than in other areas of the country.
What binds us and Japan is multi-pronged. One of which is a very similar maritime climate. It makes the vegetation and the landscape look very familiar in both. The wood-built society resonates strongly with both and the evergreen backdrop that is carpeted with moss is our world.
What I respect about Japanese culture is the attention to detail. It seems like many things are specifically deliberate. It could be things such as tea or calligraphy or food preparation or gardens. The idea of efficiency is to make sure that everything has a purpose versus our idea of efficiency is to get more with less. It is no wonder that they invented concepts like Lean Manufacturing and total quality management.
I am not necessarily in love with everything Japanese. For instance, they have a wood working culture that is every bit as deep and respectable as the western one but I find myself always leaning more European than Asian in tooling, methods and design. I know that my thoughts are biased from a lifetime of cheap, mass produced junk rather than the respect that a true artisan can muster. When I see great execution, then I acquire a newfound respect and seeking more inspiration in far eastern techniques.
The gardens are beautiful. They were created in the 1960s as homage to our connections that I talked about above. The thing that I will say about it is don’t expect to get the full experience as intended. I found that there were just too many people running around to get into a zen state. That probably says something about my westerness as well that I am unable to fully block out distractions.
When you enter the gardens, there is a short walk up the hill into a faux, simulated village. There is a gift shop, concessions, offices and conference rooms and a small art exhibition. The gift shop was closed due to a technical, card processing glitch. The art display was pretty minimal with dyed textiles and finely cut paper stencils. Leaving the village was a bonsai display which was very cool but the volunteer could literally answer no questions about the art. I was starting to feel pretty underwhelmed at that point.
Leaving the village takes you into the garden proper. There are five distinct rooms or gardens each with their own focus on landscape, plants and features. In some ways, I feel kind of bad because a lot of what is used is native or common but just pruned to look good and fit in with the vibe. It makes me feel like this type of environment could be affordably achieved if I just put in some effort.
One time, I purchased what was labelled as a Japanese Maple at a local plant sale for $0.50 and it just kept growing and growing. Talking with a local landscaper, he told me it was actually a sweet gum tree. Now it is too big for where it is placed. I am kind of in a dilemma of whacking it extremely and trying to keep it small or taking it out completely. So much for my tip of the hat to the Asian garden.
About five years ago, I purchased a bonsai tree at a local nursery, it was some kind of elm variation. I placed it in a terrarium for my touch to our home décor as Asian in a Victorian go well together. It looked great for about a month and then it started to die. My theory was that the humidity level was whacked due to the enclosure. But, this trip has inspired me to try again. Amazon seed kits start at $25 and you get at least five different chances.
End Your Programming Routine: According to Trip Advisor, the Japanese Garden is the #9 attraction in Portland. It is beautiful and it is expensive. I would say that if you could get in relatively alone and take your time then it would be worth it. If you are in Portland for a week and looking for things to fill up the time, it is probably worth it. My bottom line is that if you cannot meet those criteria, then I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to squeeze it in. To that end, if you live relatively close to Portland and haven’t done it make time to see what it is all about because it is pretty inspirational.
June 25, 2025 – Who Doesn’t Like Orcas?
I have recently been taking a required leadership course. As these things do, a seemingly random collection of individuals are put into a small group. With these situations, it is common to have an icebreaker question that everybody would answer. In my last session, the question was ‘if you were a tour guide for visitors, what would you show them about your home territory’?
That is easy, I am already doing that. I would take them to the beach. They live 5 miles from the Mediterranean. The Oregon coast is nothing like that. While you are at the beach, besides getting wind whipped flying kites, beach combing or chartering a fishing boat, whale watching is a low barrier of entry for guests.
That was the Seattle area. We have our own whale watching culture in Oregon. We did also have a trip booked to see gray whales. If you have never seen whales or been to the ocean, I highly recommend doing it. I suppose it is our version of a safari.
I have done it a number of times. Don’t get me wrong, I was looking forward to the trip. But, I happen to know that it is not quite the serendipitous discovery to see whales. Operators report in to each other and keep track of what is out there. They pretty much know where they are before they leave the dock. I suppose that I would hate to go on a four hour boat ride and not see anything. But, it does make me feel like the boat operators kind of phone in the trip.
In today’s day and age, many of these trips are prepaid or purchased online. It is customary for a fishing guide or whale boat captain to ask for tips at the end. If you bought the trip online, many of them have a tip line included which is what we typically do. But that also leads to the malaise of the trip. I definitely do not mind tipping, but on this trip I heard the hand speak two times in the whole four hours. The point is, if you want to leave a tip, make sure to have cash on hand as you leave the boat.
If you are in Seattle, there are numerous outfits to do something like this. We of course chose to do things the hard way. We drove from south of Seattle to Anacortes. We took the ferry to Orcas Island where we met up with the tour. The whole point of that was to make sure we were providing an extensive tour of the Seattle area, including the ferry experience and the San Juan Islands. But it definitely took a toll. It was an eight hour round trip.
The last Orca trip we took was about six years ago. What I heard then was that the Orca population was in serious jeopardy following the decline in salmon population. I suppose that remains to be seen if salmon will be saved. On this trip, we were told that they were eating harbor seals. In the picture above, there was a harbor seal in the vicinity that probably didn’t make it. There was some serious circling of the five whales. I cannot confirm that they were successful, it just felt like the odds were on the whales.
It was a blue bird day in Seattle as you can see from the picture. Much of the year, this is an iffy proposition. Tours operate rain or shine. Pacific Northwesterners like to say that if you don’t do things in the rain, then you might not do them at all. I would highly recommend appropriate rain gear if you are going to go in those conditions. For all of our posturing, it is a miserable experience to be wet for hours in the rain. Likewise, it would be no fun to be in the cabin during the whole trip.
One other thing to watch for is sea sickness. If you get motion sickness in the car, you will more than likely get sea sickness. Unfortunately, my wife gets sick almost every time. It seems to disproportionately strike kids and females. She takes Dramamine with little success. If there is any silver lining, days of small craft warnings will keep the boats in the harbor. They are not going to go out in rough seas but almost anyone will get sick if it gets rough enough.
End Your Programming Routine: I highly recommend taking out of towners on a whale watching tour, especially if it is a beautiful day. We have taken exchange students from Spain, Taiwan and Japan. The sea life is different from Asia and the Mediterranean. Because the operators follow the whales all day everyday, it is almost a guarantee you will see something.
June 24, 2025 – Would You Believe That I Was In the ‘No Kings’ Protest?
I almost cannot believe it either. It is probably the last place that I ever wanted to be. I won’t lie that it was kind of interesting. Trust me, it was a necessary evil for what we were doing that day and at least everything turned out alright.
We drove up to Seattle to meet our Spanish family. They flew into Sea-Tac. As a result, we spent a couple of beautiful days in the surrounding area. Seattle is a great hidden treasure if you have not been there. It is a lot like Portland and San Francisco but kind of a better version of both (politics and nonsense aside).
We already had our tickets booked for the next day so this was the day that to go to the waterfront, Pikes Market, the Space Needle and all of the typical Seattle things to do. Unfortunately, it was also the day for the No Kings march. Doubly unfortunate was that some of that was happening right where we wanted to be.
Our first stop was what was called the Smith Tower. We had a reservation for 12pm. As we got out of the car and around the homeless passed out on the sidewalk, I also saw people carrying signs. As a result, I knew that we were going to be close. I would describe the individuals as old hippies. I am guessing that they drove in from the suburbs in their Prius, parked somewhere sensible and then walked to the assembly point.
As we were waiting for our time to go up in the tower, I observed two classes of people carrying signs. They old hippies and the yuppies. These were the rubes that this kind of event appealed to. It also told me that it was likely that this march was going to be relatively calm. I will talk about the after party later.
After the Smith tower, we walked down to the piers. That was fortunately in the opposite direction of where we saw the protestors going. My kids had 3pm tickets to the Space Needle. So after lunch, we started walking to Centennial Park. It turns out, so were the protesters. It appeared that the march ended at the park so I do not believe that it would have been possible to avoid in any capacity. We tried to skirt the march for many blocks. Ultimately, we all kind of looked at each other and I said ‘well, we are going to have to go through it or not go’. That is exactly what we did.
I didn’t want to call too much attention to myself and so I just snapped a quick picture. What you couldn’t see was that in the middle of the street but it was a young woman with a bull horn. She was yelling out chants that all the drones were repeating. She was clearly the plant in my section of the crowd because you could hear others up and down the line.
There were a lot of people on the sidewalks, probably in similar situations such as ours. Eating lunch and then a protest came by. People were on their balconies watching. It all seemed fairly benign minus the non-family friendly signs and shirts. We walked a couple of blocks until we could peel off for a straight shot to the park which was just packed with finished protesters.
The kids went off to the Space Needle and us adults went to the Chihuly Art Museum. We did our thing and nothing that I could see happened as a result of the march. As we were walking back to the pier we started running across people with shields, gas masks and full kit. Fortunately, 70,000 protesters where nothing happened.
The one thing that I cannot figure out is one of the chants started with “Down with Trump and Democrats too…” It was the only mention of political parties that I heard in the ten minutes we were in the march. I don’t know if it was actually a red herring or the fact that just like Oregon, Washington is overrun with Democrats. There cannot be any other party at fault.
End Your Programming Routine: When we drove home, there was some medical tests that needed to be done. The hardcore protesters were camped out in Portland still, days later. As luck would have it, the hospital area is ground zero for tear gas and rubber bullets because there is an ICE facility three blocks down. I guess this was something that I didn’t have to deal with last year and I sure hope that this is not a sign of things to come.
June 23, 2025 – Someone That Agrees
I listened to this the day after I recorded my podcast last week. Since I had already setup vacation I didn’t want to redo anything to get this crammed in last week. Therefore, this buys me another day to get re-oriented. The caveat is that I have not checked any of these sources but I do do feel pretty confident that this is true.
Links to source materials: https://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/experts-3687
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