TGIF: Combat Juggling and Self Sabotage (Patreon)

Hello and happy Friday, patrons!! How are you doing this Friday? Are we festive? Are we observing any holidays? How is that going so far? I'm currently writing this from a hotel in Philadelphia as Elliott and I prepare for our annual week long navigation of holiday celebrations in the Florida of the Northeast (New Jersey) and the New Jersey of the Southeast (Florida)! It's currently a breezy 18 degrees Fahrenheit ... which is a word I never realized until just now is spelled CRAZY. I just googled how to spell it and spent 30 seconds wondering if Google is pranking me. 

Anyway, we're staying at a hotel that is some sort of hybrid hotel/airbnb. Our room looks like a really cool hotel room, but there's no staff on site and they give you a number to text if you need anything. No communication via phones calls and no actual people around? It's like this placed was designed specifically for me!

Let's see what's going on... As always, I have no real organized idea of what I'm writing here so let's just flow with it. Oh! This week I learned that COMBAT JUGGLING exists. Yeah. It's two teams of jugglers that each juggle three pins while simultaneously trying to swat the pins away from each other. THIS IS A SPORT I COULD GET INTO. I can only imagine this game was conceived by stoned children. It's got everything. It's playful, it's savage, it looks really dumb, and it scratches the itch-urge I feel every time I see someone juggling or walking with a big cake...I just want to swat it out of their hands. Well, now there's a legitimate legal athletic activity for that! And apparently the World Juggling Federation JUST had their convention in Vegas THIS past week that included team combat pick up games. DAMN. Til next year I guess!

I also learned this week that in 1945 a chicken named Mike lived without his head for 18 months. I guess now the phrase "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" means that you're bravely daring to defy the odds and challenge the perceived limitations of science and reality! Whoa Mike, way to challenge your own limiting beliefs! 

Speaking of...in my post-school-self-help-book-binge-fest I've been reading a lot about limiting beliefs. It seems to be the trendy new pop psychology term for overall self betterment. It's the (false) narrative we (un)consciously tell ourselves about ourself, our relationships, our world, our place in the world, etc that can hold us back from living whole lives and discovering our authentic selves. *cue ethereal wind chimes* Maybe it's cliche but I'll hop on the challenge your limiting beliefs wagon. I just stared reading "The Mountain Is You" by Brianna Wiest and IT'S GREAT. Have any of you read it? The tag line says "transforming self-sabotage into self-mastery". Oh la la! I'm only about a third into the book but I can't wait to keep eating it with my brain. Brianna writes so beautifully on the ways in which we consciously and unconsciously undermine ourselves and offers a framework steeped in curiosity to help the reader get to the core of their entangled self-sabotaging ways. 

In the introduction she writes

"Your mountain is the block between you and the life you want to live. Facing it is also the only path to your freedom and becoming. You are here because a trigger showed you to your wound, and your wound will show you to your path, and your path will show you to your destiny."

Oh nom nom nom goes my sucker-for-sweet-self-help-shit soul. The way she explores the various psychological/spiritual angles in which we work against ourselves really connects with me. The topic itself could be completely cliche but she has such a clear and poetic fresh take on it. The same way regular juggling can get repetitive so why don't we add SWATTING?! There's a huge visual metaphor of the jugglers being you and the pins being your limiting beliefs. Slap em outta the rotation! I def recommend the book if you're looking to do something nice for your inner saboteur! Especially as we all face the threshold of a new years fresh start without self fuck-up-ery. And added bonus, the physical quality of her books are so nice to the touch! They look gorgeous in your hands, in your bag, or just sitting on a table. Aesthetically and spiritually pleasing all around. Excellent work, Brianna! 

Speaking of books! Mamrie and I were throwing around the idea on our last live stream with the pervs (shout out, pervs!) about tag teaming BAR Flies next year! The idea would be that we'd trade off month to month and I'd focus on non-fiction books while she took fiction. What do you guys think? If you're game maybe we start in January with a non-fiction book? I haven't run this part by the mametown yet but I think she'd be down! Let me know your thoughts...maybe we'd even start with this Brianna Wiest book? Hmmmm. Or feel free to give me some other suggestions if you got any burning recs! 

Well, the temperature continues to slowly drop which means I gotta go and begin the new ritual of pumping myself up to go out in the cold and meet my brother for dinner. What are you guys getting up to this weekend? Let me know! And I should be good to post again next friday which will be the last of 2022! Damn! Until then, happy holidays/regular upcoming days if you don't celebrate anything! Thanks for being here!

❤️G