#how the most meaningful conversation i've had in a decade

[princesssarcastia]

the problem with being a lonely shut-in who wants to write about relationships is that it actually requires as much research as like, wanting to write about a guy who can have casual conversations about mechanical engineering.

and maybe that's just enough so you can SOUND like you know a bit about mechanical engineering. maybe it's not that much research at all. but it's still more research on relationships than i feel like a lot of other people doing the same thing have to do, which is none at all

[disinherited-dornishman]

Personal thoughts on Team Black, Rhaenyra, and Misogyny.

This is going to be a messy one as regard structure but also topic. Stay with me, people.

I've been seeing a lot of accusations of misogyny against anti-team black, anti-rhaenyras, and anti-hotd posters for criticisms uttered, and I can't help but be a little dumbfounded. Like are we really doing this? Pointing out that Rhaenyra was reckless for having 3 bastards is not misogyny. I'm sorry, as much as you guys might love your make-believe character, I'm just not humoring it. Not if you're going to make the conversation about feminism and sexual liberation.

Okay, let me just say. Rhaenyra having Jace I can understand. An experiment that was stupid but also respectable in a way, because Laenor was definitely traumatized and not fit for keeping up their agreement, so I can support that mistake wholeheartedly for the empathy behind it. But Luke and Joffrey? After finding out that her genes get overriden by Harwin's?

Plain stupid. I'm sorry, that's just playing with fire, especially since she should know how precarious her position would be after the precedent of the Great Council that robbed Rhaenys of her birthright on the basis of her gender.

And like, I'd be fine with it if the show didn't portray it as this girlboss, don't-give-a-fuck win, because all it does is highlight how ignorant the showrunners are about the world in which their show is set! I liked selfish and decadent Rhaenyra in the books, she didn't need to be treated as a hero for it.

And the fact that the rest of the world and everyone in it is portrayed as being at fault for not going along with what's basically that society's equivalent of a political clown show is absurd. Pointing this out doesn't mean I'm condoning it either, I'm criticizing the show's lack of self-awareness. It's so obvious the showrunners are disconnected from the their world.

GRRM writes all his characters as believable people grown up in a medieval society, but critiques it through his own modern moral lense in a way that's seemless, yet in this show they use characters as mouthpieces to spout modern feminist and egalitarian ideals from characters who are ruling class. Who the fuck are they kidding? If you want to make a feminist show, don't use bourgeoisie feminism!!! Idgaf about some Princess' sexual liberation while she's allowed to hold feasts that rips the food from the tables of peasants! There's nothing inspiring about that!

Rhaenyra, one of the single most bourgeois figure in the show, is supposed to be praised for her "sexual liberation" when it literally threatens the stability of the entire realm, and directly caused a war in which countless sexual atrocities were committed and will still be committed? Forgive me if I can't find it in me to be inspired.

If you want the show to be feminist, display the themes through the people at the bottom, the normal workers, the whores, the thieves, the daytalers and smiths and carpenters and undertakers and farmers, etc etc. Don't ask people to cheer for a reckless white woman from a colonizer background with a biological WMD at her disposal for breaking the social contract of a ruling class SHE'S A PART OF and risking destabilizing her entire country, it's fucking insulting! And don't get me started on the gender essentialism of the whole "women good, men bad" horseradish horseshit.

I'd love to discuss and analyze these concepts if we're talking about Rhaenyra's character arc, her as a person, and the themes of patriarchy that one can glean through her. But if we're talking actual, meaningful, proletariat feminism that means something to the medieval society they live in?

You wanna praise this brave monarch for sexually liberating herself, go ahead and praise the female Romans in Spartacus while you're at it. Praise their sexual liberation when they avail themselves of sex slaves taken from Thrace and Gaul and wherever else the Roman Empire had reach and rape them for fun. Understand I'm not comparing Rhaenyra's actions with having her kids with Harwin to rape, I'm pointing out power dynamics. And at least that show had the decency to show that the patrician romans were cruel and vile alongside their humanity, unlike HotD which seems to insist its ruling family of dragonriding depraved incestuous monarchs are actually virtuous while literally having Meleys burst through the floorboards and massacre a crowd.

P.S.: for any Anti-Rhaenyras, please don't start shit about her unless you wanna discuss how the writers fucked up her beloved character. I actually liked her in the books and she should've gotten a bigger part than Daemon, so don't slander her all willy nilly. It's unconstructive and I feel no desire to engage.

[alcrego]

Hi, I've been following you for a while now and just want to say I'm sad to see so many people speaking before they know what they are talking about and unjustly attacking you and the validity of your art (as if their opinion even matters to what you will choose to do?). I also don't like the purely internet-trained AI generated art I see more and more of, but I just ignore it. I have never used the technologies firsthand but I think it should be pretty obvious what you are doing is not in the same category or even context to that stuff at all. I think the best analogy I saw you make was saying "should I also not use a camera [or other technological tools]? It reminded me of how the electric guitar and digital music of any form was looked down on for not being "true art" either. Canvas stretched on a frame, paints and brushes etc are all technological tools and were all new at some point in history as well. I enjoy your art and how you use the computer itself to take your art to new levels. Some of the best modern musicians (imho) understand that the medium and the machines they use to record to that medium are like another member of the band itself and they embrace this and cognitively, purposefully utilize it to further their creativity. I think you are doing a very similar thing with visual art (and music) and just wanted to say I have been enjoying your stuff on here for months now. Don't listen to the haters. :)

Deep gratitude for those who can see and understand further than the noise... Truly! 🙏🥹

And the same here, I neither like the internet-trained AI generated images (I wouldn't even call it art), but in the same way I don't like the 'artists' that steal and copy styles of other artists (as it's happening to me since more than a decade ago), but this is ok, no?🥹👍

People should start to understand that for some (most) AIs are a way to obtain an image, but for few others is a tool to create our own resources/ingredients that later we mix/cook/modify to achieve our own ideas, in the same way we ALWAYS used images from the web, magazines, ads, street, etc... to achieve our ideas.

Thanks a lot for these words, and don't worry, it's funny for me to 'listen haters' bc they NEVER had idea about what they talk about. Those who know what is this about can have a respectful, deep and meaningful conversation, and despite sometimes I don't agree, I totally can speak with them.

Big thanks!!

[emilykaldwen]

*pinches the bridge of my nose*

Okay kids, sit down. I think things in the fandom space needs a little clarification.

Fan Artists and Fan Fiction writers are frustrated and upset about how the reblog rate has plummeted over the years as the rest of the internet moved to a 'hit the heart to help the algorithm'. Tumblr doesn't work that way. Likes don't do anything for a post, it just locks it in your personal scrapbook.

You Do Not Have to Reblog things YOU do not want to

When people say 'reblog the post' they mean reblog instead of ONLY hitting the like button. Tumblr relies on reblogs to put things on your dash. If you're liking something, then it hits your interests, and you should be reblogging it.

HOWEVER YOU ARE NEVER OBLIGATED TO REBLOG ALL THE THINGS.

Most people, including myself, will reblog from friends because we're friends! I support your foray into a fandom space I have no understanding of, but odds are if you are into it, then some of my other mutuals may be into it so I'll reblog. But I'm not out here reblogging every post I see from people I don't know in fandom spaces I'm not familiar with. It's my blog. I curate what I'd like. Some people have a dozen sideblogs for every fandom niche interest. Some of us just have the one blog and you strap in for whatever fandom chaos we go on. If you tag me in something, I occasionally miss it because I get the notification on my phone but don't have the free moment to do it and forget. Or maybe I add it into my queue.

When you are creating something you need to be mindful of your audience.

I'm in my mid 30s. I do not play in the Disney space (I know Disney Descendents is popular? That came out waaaaay after my time I don't know what it is), I don't know what that girl with the ghost band thing is that was going around a few years ago. I have fellow adult friends who do not engage with fan creation that involves minors. Additionally, I've seen people create OCs for shows like Criminal Minds. Hey! more power to you, I've never watched the show, and I know there's fic out there (I had someone tell me about a what I think was a Harry Potter/Criminal Minds crossover??? wow), but it's not going to get the same kind of traction as say, a Teen Wolf fan work.

I'm not saying don't create for your niche interests! CREATE! BE FREE AND MERRY! but understand that those creations just won't get the same kind of traction because it's a niche interest.

We create for ourselves, we share to find other people who enjoy our hobbies.

Which brings me to my second point:

NO ONE IS KNOCKING ON YOUR BEDROOM DOOR TO MAKE FRIENDS

Making friends is hard! I totally get it. But a sure fire way to turn people off way fast is to start a conversation with me but make it abundantly clear you care about nothing that I say/offer and are just waiting for your turn to talk so you can tell me about YOUR things and expect ME to ask questions. Conversation is a two way street. It's a back and forth. It is not me sitting there like a parent patiently listening to my child tell me about the cool toy adventure they're doing. I'm not your parent. I'm not your captive audience. I'm another person, and if you want friends - MEANINGFUL friends - then you need to make an effort to engage with people.

And it's hard. It's hard because so many people out there are very navel-gazey, and people get so caught up in the excitement of their own creations that they forget to ask other people about theirs. And... you're gonna have to be okay with that. You're gonna have to be okay with it feeling like pulling teeth, and know that hey! you're never gonna be buddy buddies with everyone. You just keep being you, you just keep showing the kind of person you are, and eventually it'll happen.

It's taken me over a decade to form meaningful mature friendships online. I've had friends over the years, ofc, but it's only now, when I can approach something with clear expectations and not thinking everyone is off having fun without me in some little clique, that I've been able to connect with people more honestly. And taking a five year break from tumblr helped a lot with that. I bought a house, I got a new job, I did other meaningful things with my life that wasn't on the internet.

The internet isn't actually a popularity place. You do not have to be popular to exist. I have been on tumblr since the inception pretty much. I have 200 followers and I only interact with 10 of them, maybe 15. And I'll tell you that outta those 200, 90% of them are blogs that haven't updated in years. A follower count does not promise reblogs, does not promise friends. It's literally impossible to be best buddies with 2000 people, to have a meaningful connection with every. single. one.

anyway I'm tired. I'm too old for this shit. Go touch some grass, go get off tumblr and play a new video game, join a book club, read more books, do things that aren't perpetually refreshing your dash and thinking everyone is off having fun without you because I promise you it's not fucking true. You need to have a life offline. You need a hobby that doesn't involve the computer. Seriously. Go touch grass.

[kazisgirlfriend]

Like Aunt, Like Nephew

I happened across @raayllum's meta here about Callum and Amaya, and certainly raises a few really interesting points about them that I wanted to touch on. Most notably, it demonstrates how their overall differences really stem from a simple difference in overall experience - at the end of the day, Amaya has potentially years if not decades of experience on a teenager Callum. So, when there are similarities between Callum and Amaya, they are as frequently about who Amaya WAS as much as who Amaya IS.

However, differences in experience do not negate parallels between characters. Just as Runaan is far more experienced than Rayla, that fact alone does not diminish the very clear parallels she has with her father figure. Similarly, the differences between Callum and Amaya do ultimately come down to a level of experience.

Prejudice

Callum and Amya's contrast in prejudice actually demonstrate how their level of experience influence their differences. Amaya had spent years at the breach, which solidified distrust and even hatred that she had towards elves ("I've slain monsters before").

Callum's prejudice, while relatively muted, is still there. Not only does he assume Rayla drinks blood, he initially refers to as a "creature" in the novelization, and later amends to thinking she's "one of the good ones."

As a sidenote, it's important not to dismiss Callum's prejudices as mere "misconceptions" simply because they are less intense. TDP is ultimately a story about overcoming prejudice, which is something that Callum does quicker than Amaya does. But this is ultimately the result of his prejudices being borne out of a lack of exposure rather than years of war like Amaya. Amaya has had years to let her prejudices fester, while Callum's simple ignorance gets dispelled rather quickly. But both Callum and Amaya demonstrate admirable open-mindedness in overcoming personal biases, even if at different paces.

The Test of Light

The other comparison is between how Amaya handles her test of light in 3x02 vs. how Callum handles his "test" in 5x08. This, I admit, was a peculiar test since whatever situation Callum was faced with in s5, it had nothing to do with purity. It was not a test of light.

Instead, Callum faced his test of light in s3, when he rode the Twin-Tailed Inferno-Tooth Tiger.

A creature that can sense the purity of one's heart (much like Pharos' staff), and a creature that Callum rode.

Instead the test that Callum faced in 5x08 was a test of darkness. Facing down his own dark side, and ultimately emerging triumphant, signified by the narrative rewarding Callum with the Ocean Arcanum.

Framing Callum's test as a defeat stems from a simplistic view of light and darkness as mutually exclusive. In truth, light and darkness exist in all of us, even heroes. Callum's realization that he contains complexities beyond his understanding is integral to his arc, not a failure. Everyone has a dark side, and it is this realization, that Callum has a part of himself he can neither fully understand nor control, that leads Callum to reach a breakthrough with the Ocean Arcanum. His eventual triumph would not be framed as such if he did not face this shadow side.

But as this lesson is one that is wholly irrelevant to s3, it raises the question as to why should we compare these two moments across two seasons at all. And the reason is that, if we were to compare the actual parallels this season, find that Callum and Amaya--as they both charge in to save their loved ones--are not so different at all.

In the end, their nuanced journeys demonstrate how light and darkness can coexist within us all. Comparing dissimilar tests obscures this meaningful complexity that makes both characters human. The distinction lies in understanding, not judgment.

Stronger Together

While Amaya's lesson to Rayla about being stronger together vs. alone is important, the reason this conversation never comes up between Amaya and Callum is because Callum already knows this. It is yet another similarity that he has with his aunt.

Even after the tribulations of 5x08, Callum is still the one to insist that the trio does everything together. Akiyu gave the group only one amulet, meaning that only Callum can theoretically go underwater after the pearl. In spite of this, Callum takes it upon himself to reverse-engineer the amulet to create magical gills for all of them. Far from insisting he should be strong alone, Callum acknowledges--much like Amaya did--that they are stronger together.

The writers convey Callum already comprehending Amaya's lesson through his own actions, rather than needing the moral spelled out for him. It's a great example of showing rather than telling. This creative choice highlights the strong unspoken bond and understanding between aunt and nephew.

The Canon of It All

Challenging the notion that Callum and Amaya are especially similar is a peculiar undertaking, given that the show spends a large amount of time highlighting their similarities.

I could show all the similarities between Callum and Amaya throughout the series, but rather than dragging out the meta any further, all I and anyone else have to do is merely point to the fact that their similarities are called out by the show itself. If the narrative is indicating its significance, then it's significant. Rather than denying the undeniable, it is more constructive to examine why this relationship is highlighted and what significance it may hold for future story developments.

After all, the writers make a concerted effort to draw connections between Callum and Amaya across multiple scenes and story arcs. Questioning why such focused narrative choices exist will likely offer more meaningful insights into their characters and bond. Challenging textual evidence risks missing the forest for the trees. If the show itself calls attention to a theme, then clearly it carries weight. The deeper question is what purpose these parallels serve in the broader storytelling. Their interconnected journeys likely foreshadow an integral joint role to come.

Conclusion - What does this all mean?

It's very rare for one to write a meta around the argument that the story beats and similarities audiences are noticing are actually not important, especially when the show itself expressly calls out these similarities and story beats in such a prolific way. So that really raises the question - what is this all about? What is the motivation behind the argument that fans are wrong for noticing the things the show explicitly draws attention to?

At the end of the day, what motivates disagreements about whether Callum is like Amaya isn't about objective scoreboard-tallying. After all, Callum's s5 parallels with Viren are only held together by one single utterance of "I'd do anything for X" from each of them in very different contexts and that hasn't deterred many folks.

Instead, it is an issue of bias. As I mentioned before, there is a certain stereotype about characters with nerdy interests, and Callum has been no exception. He's a human mage, and so it's frequently assumed that the only "proper" comparisons he can have are with other human mages like Claudia and Viren (which also leads to his depictions as morally dubious, since the only other human mages we've seen are morally dubious ones).

He also starts out the series as "bad at everything" and a bit clumsy. Rather than realizing he's simply insecure and inexperienced, the argument goes that actually his ineptitude is innate to his character. He's scrawny, weak, a pushover, someone who belongs on the sidelines and with his nose in his sketchbook. Unlike the strong, brave, tough, capable warriors like Sarai, Amaya, Soren, Rayla, and so on.

But when seasons 4 and 5 rolled out, when it was revealed that Callum was far from a pushover--that he is strong, talented, confident, tough, and brave--along with the explicit comparisons between him and Amaya, most fans I think realized and recognized who Callum really is now. But a few instead doubled-down, and saw the parallels between Callum and Amaya (which, again--cannot stress this enough--are called out by the show directly) as a threat to this initial takeaway back in s1.

Assumptions about "proper" character archetypes or stereotypes around nerdy, awkward characters can cause some to overlook Callum's growth. But his strengths as a mage do not preclude similarities to a warrior like Amaya. Wells-rounded characters defy singular boxes.

But that's neither here nor there. The most pertinent question here is not whether, but why the show so explicitly calls out Callum's similarities with Amaya. My guess is that it has something to do with seasons 6 and 7, about the kind of person Callum will become. That it has something to do with why Callum, despite Aaravos' insistence, is not destined to play right into his hands.

But that is a story for another time ;)

Postscript - Viren and Amaya

As a sidenote, there was some stuff about the ways Viren and Amaya were similar that I found interesting. Haven't forgotten about that, and wanted to address it, but I'll do that separately as I don't want to drag out this meta beyond what's reasonable.

[heathersdesk]

Just got back from church. Am absolutely screaming inside.

So months ago, I was talking to God knows who (tell me if it was you) that high council Sunday is the worst because it guarantees the most speaking time per year in every ward to the same man. We hear from the high councilmen in total more than we hear from anyone else in the Church, including the prophet.

This bothers me. It was something I was praying about. From what I've seen in this stake, it's the first time they seem to rotate everyone on the council each month. That alone is a good change, but I'm so tired of having incredible female leadership I never see or get to interact with.

Our stake is now sending a woman leader from the stake to speak on every third Sunday with the high councilman. They're creating a standing reservation for women to speak in sacrament meeting every month.

This was my first time seeing and meeting my stake Relief Society president. She gave a phenomenal talk about the sacrament. And the high councilman who was with us this week opened his talk by expressing his confidence in her. They've both lived in this area for many decades, so they've served together in the Church for many years. It was lovely and it was the nicest fulfillment of what I was imagining in my head when I previously criticized the formula for "Dry Council Sunday" in saying it needed improvement.

I went up to the stand afterwards to thank her and introduce myself, and to let her know that her presence was the answer to a prayer for me. We had a wonderful conversation and I confided in her what this means to me personally, my history of feeling frustration with gender dynamics in the Church. She listened so well and embraced me, thanked me for sharing, and said she would let the rest of the leadership of the stake know that this is a meaningful and well-received change.

All this to say: when there is something about the way the Church functions that is painful and unfair, don't keep it to yourself. Tell God in prayer. Pour out your soul about what you think and feel. Leave that hurt on the altar where it belongs, especially if it never should've been yours to carry. Trust your Heavenly Family to know how to help and rescue you.

It may not happen immediately, but change will come. I've seen this so many times in my church experience. God hears us and cares when we suffer. That suffering is held and known completely in the body of Christ, where it can also be healed. And in time, change will come.

[xiaq]

what was alex's mom's reaction to him coming out since it's assumed that she didn't know and is religious

Alex's mom (and her whole family 2.0) more or less pretend that Alex doesn't exist since that's most convenient for them (less because he's gay and more because she'd prefer that she never had a wild youth and was the perfect housewife from day 1 with her perfect husband and kids who look just like him).

However, I do have a head-canon that Alex's baby half-sister Katie ("call me Kat or I will shank you") comes out as bisexual in high school and her parents had 0 prep and handle it badly, not in a "she's in danger sort of way" but in a "we're well-meaning but our response is deeply hurtful" way. And being a strong independent teenager, she's like well fuck that, I'm out.

So one day Eli opens the door and there's a furious teenage girl who's like, "whattup, I'm Alex's half-sister Kat, I've run away from home and I'm not going back and you can't make me; you have to harbor my fugitive ass because I'm queer and also sort of related to you. Do you have anything to eat?" And Eli is like, "how did you know where we live? how did you even get here?" and she says, with a degree of distain only a teenager can muster, "mom has your address so she can send her stupid Christmas card every year. And I got here on a plane, duh." And he's like, "well, you better come inside because the baby is going to wake up any second and also my southern upbringing dictates that I feed anyone who expresses the slightest indication of hunger."

It turns out she's crazy for itty bitty sleepy infants and he conveniently has one of those. So he gets her a healthy snack and leaves her cooing over their fresh spawn and franticly calls Alex from the other room (it's playoffs and he's on the road, naturally). Alex ends up having to call his mom for the first time in a decade. Long story short, Kat stays with them for a few weeks since summer vacation has just started and she's, you know, full of riteous fury. But after a couple weeks things simmer down and apologies are made. Because Alex's mom and her husband realize this isn't a phase they can talk their kid out of and they're going to lose her if they don't act right. So they actually start having productive, meaningful conversations with Alex and Eli and over the next several years their relationship drastically improves. Kat visits often and actually lives with them through college (she goes to the same fictional university Eli did in Houston) to save money on housing and help out with her nieces and they stay super close. So that relationship never fully heals, but it gets better. And it gives them Kat.

I also head-canon that during Kat’s junior year of college, when she's still living with them, Alex and Eli let a new rookie stay with them for a bit. Naturally, Kat and Rookie end up falling for each other which gives Alex a very fatherly existential crisis and nearly gives Rookie a heart attack when Alex catches Kat sneaking out of Rookie's bedroom one night.

Uh. Anyway. That was probably more than you were expecting.

[loquaciousquark]

Medical/optometry-related discussion under the cut.

I can't sleep tonight thinking about a patient. They came to see me recently for poor vision in one eye, thinking they just needed glasses, and it turned out they have severe glaucoma that's made one eye effectively blind and has put the other eye very, very close. They hadn't had an eye exam since at least 2015 and likely earlier than that, because they'd seen well all their life except for needing reading glasses and didn't have any ocular discomfort, and they assumed that meant their eyes were healthy.

Now, all of a sudden, we're facing a real possibility of irreversible total blindness. The eyedrop I put this person on didn't have nearly the effectiveness I'd hoped, and when we got the results of the visual field test at this week's follow-up it was much worse than I'd expected. Instead of having a few months to play with medications and treatment options and taking our time finding the right regimen best-suited for this patient's schedule and insurance and preferences, we're looking down the barrel of needing major surgery ASAP to get the pressure back into a safe range, and even still, given how long they've likely been sitting on this high pressure, they may still lose some of their little remaining vision. It's a horrible situation for this relatively young person (less than 70 years old) and I can't stop thinking about how completely avoidable this whole situation was.

I hate these apps that keep popping up advertising how they can give you a prescription at home. I hate them. Good vision has nothing to do with healthy eyes (in fact, people with good natural vision are often some of my worst patients because they don't need to get glasses and they forget about me), and this is a perfect case of a person who saw great right up until the moment they went blind from a condition we could have stopped in its tracks two, three, five, eight years ago. I don't know this person's life story; I don't know what major life events or struggles they were going through over the last decade that kept them from coming in. I'm sure there were reasons that seemed good at the time. I just know that by the time they came to me for help it was too late for me to do anything meaningful at all, and I get a knot in the pit of my stomach every time I think about the test results. It's crushing for the patient and for me, absolutely crushing.

Glaucoma is so treatable these days, and so easy to catch with the right testing, but it requires people to get that testing in an office with the equipment to test it. It has basically no symptoms until the very end stages of the disease--no pain, no sense of pressure, no visual changes, no redness, no blurry vision, no anything until the last possible moment. The only way to pick it up is to take an external measurement of the pressure inside the eye. But it's slow! It's a slow disease that takes years--sometimes decades!--to do real damage, and if patients are getting regular eye care during this time we can catch it and stop it! Apps will never be able to do this. Never, and this casual acceptance of at-home vision checks replacing actual health care, this uninformed conflation of thinking good vision means good eye health, of letting the desire for convenient online glasses shopping overrule the importance of getting dilated, terrifies me.

This patient didn't use apps, didn't get glasses online. But they made the same mistake that people who do use these apps make, which is that they assume seeing well means that nothing is wrong with their eyes. It breaks my heart that I'm going to be having these conversations more and more with patients who get these slow, preventable diseases because an app got them seeing well out of their glasses, and they used that instead of a dilated eye exam to decide they were in good shape.

I don't really know where I'm going with all this. I've just been thinking about it constantly since the patient's most recent visit, and I'm worrying about kids growing up with everything so accessible online that they forget some things--important things--still require in-person human touch. It's just--stuff like this doesn't have to happen. So many diseases like glaucoma take so long to show up, and there are so many ways to intervene and stop progression before the patient loses an iota of vision, and I just--I want to be having those conversations instead, where I'm telling people that it's great we caught something early and now with treatment they should be in good shape for the rest of their lives. I want to do that instead of what I had to do this week, which was tell this patient that this vision was never coming back, and then have nothing, nothing, nothing I could do to help besides sit with them in their pain and watch them go through all the horrible stages of new grief and say I'm so sorry, hopefully the surgery will preserve everything you have left, hopefully, I'm so sorry.

I don't know how to make that happen, though, that shift. Advocation and education, I guess, which is what they're always harping on at continuing education courses, but those are big things, sweeping things, and I work best in the one-on-one, in the personal. I don't know. It's just a hard thing. A hard day, I guess.

[goodluckclove]

I've never really written anything serious at length at all. All I have this one story I want to get into and write every page, because I am so attached to the characters and world I've designed. Yet, I can't find myself doing so because of that attachment. I feel as don't have anywhere near enough experience to ensure I do the world that I'm so invested in justice.

I've thought doing other writing projects to learn and gain that experience, but I just can't bring myself to care about the practice beyond "if I throw random words on this page, maybe my future words for will be as cool as I want them to be"

I've got one thing I want to make and only thing only, but how do I get to the point of making that thing if meaningful practice seems so difficult?

Okay so I hope you're prepared because we definitely need to have a conversation about this as I cannot properly get into the whole deal without you being able to respond and tell me your thoughts right goddamned now. Still, I have a few pages I need to write so I can give you some insight now to consider before I try and force you to talk to me.

Different people create in different ways. Some people, I think, can direct a story from start to finish in their heads, turn it into a step-by-step outline, and use that as a guide to complete a book exactly as they planned and enjoy it. I've heard this happens so I have to assume it does, but I have never and will never be that type of person.

I love Songbird Elegies. I am absorbed in the world I created and the people that inhabit it. My Spotify algorithm is fucked because I pretty much only listen to the massive playlist I made for songs I associate with the series. At the same time, I know my own creative process enough to understand that if I get too attached to the specifics of the story it'll only harm my ability to write it productively.

There was a point where Edgar's abusive mother was supposed to find him in New Orleans and arrange to meet at Cafe du Monde. The main two get there, unsure what they'd find, and it's revealed that Scott has secretly contacted all the other Birthrights Edgar met in Bluerose to meet there too and offer emotional support. I loved the thought of Edgar, someone who has felt alone for the entirety of his life, suddenly being in the middle of a massive web of unconditional support at his most terrified.

Yeah that scene will never happen. It's on a completely different path now.

I don't want to be one of those people to sort of waggle their fingers and say how your characters have a life of their own, but also I do have a history of psychosis so like fuck it I think I'm allowed to say that. I think a lot of writers have similar experiences, and maybe some of them to the intensity that I do. I don't hear Edgar's voice in my head without my wanting to, of course, but by the time I started book two I had enough of a sense of his character to be able to listen when he said I do not want to be a few hours from where I was abused for decades anymore. It's my story, but I've done this long enough to know when to pass the reigns for a while.

If you create an entire world in your head and you get too exact, there's no room to explore. And exploring is the best part of writing, in my opinion. When I needed to practice I didn't do it by throwing unrelated words at the wall, I did it by trying to write the idea I had and adjusting it until it either worked or I lost interest for the time being. Legitimately, 13 novels in, this is what I had before I started Blind Trust:

"What if magic was like...a disability? But it was supposed to help the already disabled. But it gets appropriated by primarily neurotypical wizard-types - somehow. And some guys...fall in love...yes."

Less than a year later and that is roughly fifteen percent of the current plot. And it kicks ass.

Anyway that's how I roll and it works for me. I love my characters desperately and usually get a sense of my protagonists that boarder on the delusional. Those are my qualifications to say that the best thing someone with a mind like me could do is focus less on every detail and more on the potential that comes with the people and the premise.

And write your thing, man. Give it a shot. Experiment and don't panic too hard if your plan doesn't work. It won't be perfect at first which is good because then it could become even better.

Get ready man, we're definitely talking about this more one-on-one.

[rapha-reads]

A few months after watching Before Sunrise, I've finally watched Before Sunset...

Oh, that was different from Sunrise. Sunrise was about a potential for something more, the beginning of something beautiful, a moment suspended in time. Most of the emotion I remember feeling when I watched it were hope, a sense of wonder, discovery.

Sunset is maturity, it's about looking back and all the "what-ifs" and the missed moments, reconnecting and remembering a part of yourself you thought had gone, had even never existed. It's bittersweet, and as I am sitting here with the echoes of Nina Simone's voice in my ears, I am feeling heartbroken.

Because they love each other!! And they thought the love wasn't real, that love wasn't for them!! And they stopped looking at the beauty and the wonder in life and agreed to stop living in the dream and step up in "real life" expectations, even though it hurts!! But when they see each other again, it could have been nine years, 9 months or 9 decades, the love is still here, the love is even bigger and deeper, because they have seen life on their own and they feel like what they have together in this one night, this one hour, is clearer, purer, grander than what they've had for people during months, years...

At some points, Céline talks about destiny, and that some things are set in stones and cannot be changed. I feel like... Like they have been two stones carried away by the stream of a violent river, but now the river has calmed, it's smooth and peaceful, and the quiet stream is bringing the stones back together, where they first started, but more polished, a bit roughed up by the currents but made all the more beautiful by the roughness.

A part of me wants to watch Before Midnight now, but the bigger part wants to wait another four months, to be someone else when I sit down in front of Midnight like the me that watched Sunset tonight is a different person from the me that watched Sunrise. I feel like that's the only right way to watch these films, with a certain period of time in between, because that's what the story is about in the end, the passage of time and how it cannot erase "true" love, love that's meant to be and meant to be fought for and cared for.

Aaah, these films are making me crazy. That was one hour and twenty minutes of two characters talking while walking in the streets of Paris, just that, talking and walking, and isn't that wonderful? Talking and walking, laughing and joking, deep meaningful conversations and silly nonsensical banter. Isn't that what all life should be about?

[wordsareeverthingweneed]

Ascent.

All I've ever wanted.

Pervasive power thrill, ever-growing, sought after.

Becoming.

My actual being and my idealized persona progressively melted in a web of multiplying threads.

Other levels. Searching. Daring. Different sceneries, bizarre experiences. Fighting for a daily adrenaline and dopamine infusion.

Since I remember being, the same need. Figments of unreality, turning common days into adventures. A life unlike any other one I knew. Needing what others did not.

Hunting obsessively for all facets of my strangeness. Chasing all its aspects and manifestations avidly. Not a staged or fake hunt. Indeed a magnetic pull. Attracting outliers and feeling inexorably drawn to them. Raw and true, authentic.

The infamous and magnificent staircase. Exquisite.

Ascent.

Movements align with feelings, thoughts, scenery and currents.

Unique moments pursued during an entire lifetime.

To have a collection of them is to be wealthy.

Some people live eight decades and do not experience a tiny fraction of LIFE encased in just an hour of that intensity.

Existence as a turning wheel, slowly mutating.

The first part of life (it doesn't need to be half) is focused on achieving, experimenting, trying, meeting, going, collecting (memories, experiences, moments).

The second can (should?) be slower. I may still collect and chase. But without the urgency and speed of other days. Without a list of achievements.

Could it be done if I wasn't happy with how much I had already achieved? Probably not. But here I am, increasingly ready to slow down.

Is there really a moment in life when we think we have reached everything we wanted, and all that comes from now on is a plus?

A moment when we sit back, observe the past and say, with absolute certainty, "I am content with all that was; if I die now, I have no reason to complain".

I've felt it. And I'm thinking about it now, more than ever.

I haven't reached anything resembling our current life expectancy, but I'm sure I've lived more in my life so far than most people in their entire long lives.

At the same time, wouldn't this realization mean we're ready to die? It should, in the most optimistic of ways. When we believe we got all we expected (and more) from life, we should make peace with the idea of dying. Not that I had made this peace. But I hope to.

On the other hand, this notion doesn't inevitably imply giving up on life's interests. When we say "all that comes from now on is a plus ", we certainly value that plus. Every day can be compelling. It's a quite welcomed "plus".

If we go back a century or a little more, people's life expectancy was between 40-50. Besides, most people had no access to most pleasures that make our current lives meaningful. It should make us rethink everything.

Suppose we reach 40 today, with a past of some travel, multiple enjoyments, access to art, music, literature, good food, medical care, and with the bonus of expecting it to last some more years to come. Are we not in a better position than 90% (being conservative) of all people who lived on the planet before us?

So, still enjoying what each day brings but letting go of lofty expectations, I feel privileged.

It's like having a vast collection of cherished works of art and leisurely looking for more, but with no pressure. Suppose I see one and manage to acquire it for my collection - perfect. If I do not, what I already possess is complete enough as it is and pleases me all the same.

In truth, no precious collection has an end, no matter how vast or valuable. The same happens with collecting life's art pieces.

This is how I see moments now. Trips, places, conversations, meetings, even books and movies. If one good enough happens to be achievable (with the proportionate effort that its value returns), I feel lucky. If not, nothing is lacking, and no sense of frustration exists.

This freedom is relatively new to me, a known collector of moments and (former) ambitious achiever.

[the-dream-beyond]

Episode 21: Redefining Wealth: An Experientially Rich Life With Joe Huff

Nik Tarascio 

I was actually curious in the study. Was there anything that surprised you? Was there anything in there? They were like, I did not see that coming.

Joe Huff 

Yeah, the biggest one was how many people listed as their most important experience of their life, a negative experience.

Nik Tarascio 

Imagine this next breath that you're taking is your last breath. I think back to everything you've done in your life, think of all the things you wished you did. All the things you were really happy you did. And ask the question, why didn't you do more of the stuff that you wished you had? What were all the reasons that got in the way? I think this next speaker really touches on that as it's not too late. How do we cultivate that sense of urgency, and then go and make that life of our dreams. That's pretty much what the show is about. So I really hope you enjoy this next conversation. That may be the kick in the ass you need to just make make your life exactly what you want it to be. Add more of those incredible experiences that make it perfectly rich for you. Hope you enjoy.

Welcome to the dream beyond. I'm your host, Nik Tarascio. I'm a CEO, musician and overall seeker of Truth, inspiration, and simply put, how to live the most fulfilling life possible. Growing up surrounded by extremely wealthy and successful people gave me unique and unfiltered perspectives of those who have seemingly made it through on the dream beyond, we're letting you in on what it really takes to achieve your dreams. What happens when it turns out your destination isn't the promised land you are expecting and how to process the lessons from your past while mapping of course to true fulfillment. Let's get started.

Hey, guys, how's it going? I'm here with an old friend, who's an entrepreneur for more than three decades brings a wealth of experience as a founder and owner he's led multiple eight figure businesses and achieve successful exits. He's also the co author of the upcoming book experiential billionaire, build a life rich and experiences and die with no regrets. And in that book, he delves into the world of experiential living, which I'm really curious to learn more about. I've not touched her book yet. I figured I get it right from the source. And his quest for experiential richness has taken him across 50 plus countries, all 50 states and diverse cultures. And he gets to share this wisdom as a keynote speaker at major events worldwide. Please welcome Joe Huff, everybody. Thanks for being here, Joe.

Joe Huff 

Thanks for having me, Nik. And great to reconnect.

Nik Tarascio 

Yeah, man, I think where did we first connect? Was it WAS IT Summit? It was also in Sedona? Yeah, I

Joe Huff 

think it might have been Sedona first. I'm not actually sure which one happened first, but Sedona was definitely where the the deeper connection happened, for sure. So that's

Nik Tarascio 

right. That's right. Shout out to Andrea lake for that for bringing some really great people together. And it's super cool. It's like, you know, people come into your life, and then you don't know what happened for a bit. And then something awesome happens, and you just collide back into there. So thank you for allowing this collision today.

Joe Huff 

Yeah, you know, it's funny, we actually talked about that in the book about those types of, you know, the importance of those relationships, because it's really experiences create deep, meaningful relationships. And then those deep meaningful relationships, create more opportunities for experiences by you know, those people that you forge those bonds with, because like, even if it's a decade later, when you if you whether you bump into them or you see their name pop up on your phone, or they come up in conversation, you just get this feeling because you remember, like this moment that you shared together some really cool experience that like bonded you forever. That's really cool. Yeah. Yeah, no, on the other side to like, the whole, like, don't

Nik Tarascio 

be an asshole policy, it proves really true. And you're like, you never know, when you're gonna run into someone later in your life. You never know when they know someone and it just feels really good. Like you said, you just see something you're like, I don't even know what we spoke about 10 years ago, exactly. But I know that I feel really good around you. And I'm lit up when I see you. So really love that. And I'd love to start at a place that is kind of my favorite opening question is when you were little What did you dream you'd be when, when you grew up? What was the thing that that you were really excited about?

Joe Huff 

Oh, definitely. By, like, the adolescent years, definitely rock star. It was definitely music was a big part of my life. And I definitely thought, you know, wow, what an incredible opportunity to to be able to be like a worldwide global type of rock star. They seem to have a pretty good life. Of course, like the the lifespan wasn't so great for a lot of investors. It seemed like a pretty fun ride while I was there. So you know, it's funny, we talk about this stuff in again, like that's, that's something that I think people should spend more time thinking about. I love that question that you asked that right now. Because as we get older, we suppress all that stuff, right? We just decide that, you know, those were dreams when we were kids. And we put it aside and we said maybe someday and even like I see all like big guitars on the wall behind you.

They're people that were musicians and like, oh, I want to play in the band. And I'll do that someday. And then that someday just goes into the someday. Outlander This is a great abyss, you know, we call it someday syndrome, and then it just doesn't happen. But there's really not a great reason for it not happening. You don't have to become like the rock star, right. But you can follow that dream and get quite a lot of joy out of just, you know whether you get up on stage in front of your friends, or whether it's at a cafe or something. So. So I think that the big part of what we preach is that finding your dreams is part of it, but also rediscovering the dreams you had that you forgot about is a really huge part of it.

Nik Tarascio 

Yeah, and I do think I remember that probably 10 years ago, we connected on that, because that was my dream, too. I was like, I want to be a rock star. It's interesting, I still desire much of that aspect of the dream. But not the same reason why underneath I think, like when I first wanted it as a teenager, I wanted to be worthy of love. And I was like, if a million people love me, maybe then I'll know that I'm worthy of it. I just want to have that, you know, that kind of experience. But now it's more like How cool would it be to impact a million people with your words? Right, which you get to do on stage as well. I imagine that in many ways, the things you do now, are still related to some aspects of that dream. And I'd love to hear that. Like how, how has that informed your journey? How has that ended up with even where you are now?

Joe Huff 

Oh, man, that's that's the whole thing. That's really, and it's, again, really insightful way to put it. You know, when you're when you're young, you know, you're thinking about impressing other people, because you want to make friends you want to find your significant other, there's a lot of reasons that you feel like that. But as you get older, and you start to realize that the real truth is you get so much joy out of making the world better and making people's lives better connecting with with people in a way that's meaningful to them. And it's the, you know, like the idea, music, right? That's a great example, again, because so many people get a feeling from it, you know, it's such a, it's a great positive feeling.

I think I think it's a Rick Rubin quote that says something like, the goal isn't to create, you know, perfect art, the goal is to basically create something that people knew existed but couldn't touch or couldn't feel or didn't know how to attend to connect with that. And then you just show them that. And that's really what I feel like we're doing where, you know, when you tell people that your experiences are the greatest thing in your lives, and the most important thing and the most valuable thing in your lives. Everybody knows it. It's like, if you asked everybody that, especially as they get older, they will Oh, yeah. But at the same time, that's a harder one act. It's like we have this glitch, you know, in our in our system, but it's those connections, those proof points where you actually do something and you affect somebody, and it starts to, you know, come back to you oh, wait a minute, you know, that's just they're still awake, that all that stuff for me, even now, it's funny with the journey of writing the book, which is like a really crazy, crazy, difficult journey. Little tiny things along the way. Were so impactful.

Like, for instance, like having a proofreader read, like the first draft, and then come back and say, you know, yeah, I made some edits. And here's some things I think that, you know, doesn't make sense grammatically. Also, by the way, this inspired me to move to California, like I always said I was going to do and I wound up living in Michigan for 10 years instead, because I got sidetracked. And your book just completely reminded me that I just suppressed my goals and forgot what I really wanted to do. And Baba, I've, we've heard this story like 100 times now just in the process, book writing process with the handful of folks that have like, read it. So that's been really cool. And then on the broader stage, like when you actually get out in front of a bunch of people. The overwhelming response is just wow, yeah, you know, everybody's like, it's this kind of like, tapping back into something that we all know deeply that we just suppress, because we get really busy with life. And it's very normal. So

Nik Tarascio 

you know, what, and what is that feeling from the stage for you, is like to be up there. Like when you're up there, when you're up there speaking to a bunch of people and sharing from your heart sharing your story. I'm wondering what that feels like for you and your body.

Joe Huff 

Yeah, you know, that's interesting that you say that. Also, it's a great question, because I used to actually have a lot of stage fright. I used to be, you know, afraid of public speaking like most people, it's called claustrophobia. It's like effects like it's like, considered to be I think the number one fear in modern societies, public speaking. And I reframed that because I really felt like this message was something I had to get out.

And as I started reframing that in my head of like, this is so important, and this is something I need to share. And I started really turning that kind of fear into this isn't your this is I'm excited to tell this story. It became way more personal and when I'm on stage, and I'm talking when I'm delivering this message. I definitely feel like I'm in my at a bar full of close friends, and I'm trying to just kind of share something that is really deeply meaningful to me. And that connects really well and makes me feel like I'm yeah, it just feels really good to know that I'm able to connect like that, because I do feel like, you know, the delivery system has the chance to, you know, we've all been preached at, we've all been told things, this position of like authority, and nobody wants that, you know, I definitely don't want to give people that. I try to actually, in general, when I'm on like a one on one kind of conversation, ask way more questions than tell that people kind of come to the answers on their own. But, but yeah, I feel like, I just feel like I'm in, I'm in a place that I'm meant to be in, and it just feels really, really good.

Nik Tarascio 

So kind of, I'm gonna stay with the music theme for a second, because I think we've kind of touched on something that has showed up in a lot of parts of my life. And probably for a lot of people that don't see themselves as creatives or artists, but realize their work. Their work is their art, right, whatever that thing is, it isn't just the medium of being a rock star. I think of your book, in many ways, like writing a perfect song, right?

Everyone's after, like, I just want to write the perfect song, I want to write the song that takes off on its own. It has a life of its own, it actually goes beyond me. I think Rick Rubin talks about that, too, of like, there's a certain point where you realize you were just the conduit, and it's the song belongs to everybody else. And what was the moment? What was the moment where you were like, wow, this is my song. Like, this is the song that I need to go put out there. I need to produce it, I need to get it all done and put it out into the world. And how did you know?

Joe Huff 

I mean, that's what's been the culmination of of a lot, I had been telling a lot of my close, close friends and my wife and people that I feel like right now. I am, everything I've gone through in my life has prepared me and, and guided me to this moment, I really feel like, that's where I'm at. And so I think I'm actually just coming to that moment you're talking about, I feel like this is my song. This is what it's meant to be. And I can kind of give you the backstory in a somewhat short version, and like to probably make a little more sense for the audience. But yeah, this whole life journey for me started, when I was really young, my parents met on an assembly line making brake pads in the Midwest.

So you know, my closest experience to a trust fund was trusting that my parents would fund the occasional trip to an ice cream truck. I was trying to figure out, you know, the whole rock star and Blackstone sounded pretty good, but it was pretty far fetched lifestyle for me. And I had a rough childhood in a lot of ways. I overcame some some things that were self inflicted, etc. And I made it somehow through high school and right as I was graduating high school, I came downstairs rip for my 18th birthday and, and my dad called my dad slumped over the kitchen table. And he was pails, you know, just white as a sheet and drenched in sweat. And, and we rushed into the hospital, he was 48 years old. And he had worked his whole life and had I'm sure this great grand plan for retirement. And it turned out that wasn't just a heart attack, we got to the hospital, and they said that his heart was failing, he had cardiomyopathy. And it was a really advanced stage. And it was standing right that not in the future at some distant point.

And they added him to the top of the transplant list and told us he Eberly low at survival. And, you know, we were like pacing this hospital, I'll show you and walk into another halls looking in these other rooms, seeing these other people in these situations. And it just, it just felt so wrong to feel like this is how people live, you know, they're postponing their goals in their life now for this future that just might not exist. And, you know, I kept thinking about other things my dad wanted to do so but had it and, and the more I just kept turning that over, I was just like, this is this is bullshit. This is all wrong, something's wrong with this plan.

But um, you know, that moment gave me this really great gift. It gave me this gift of urgency. And I basically my dad, by the way, it was very lucky. He was one of the lucky ones he got a transplant and wasted we got a second chance at life, which was also extremely, extremely impactful on my life watching that happen. But it made me aware that I might not have time for my dreams and my goals. So that sent me off on this just crazy urgent journey in life where I was determined to try to do stuff that you know, come hell or high water, I was gonna figure out ways to do things. I didn't have much money or, you know, resources. But I was like, I'm just gonna figure out what I could do.

And that led me on this. You know, I had a bunch of terrible jobs. They did a bunch of different things, but I met a lot of people got a lot of new experiences and it just kept building from those little steps again, actually led me to one of my friends started a small T Shirt Company that then somehow accidentally turned into a warehousing business that we somehow accidentally built into a pretty big warehousing business over a decade. And, you know, that was that was like, none of that would have happened had I not just been gifted this gift of like urgency, I would have probably just been sitting where I grew up in the same town doing the same thing. But because of that, I made all those changes.

And then something else happened with my dad, which was he actually got cancer, which happens from the type of drugs that you do you do from a immunotherapy. And I brought him home for hospice care. And I was able to watch the second end of life for him kind of, and that gave me this really great clarity of just like, what's going to matter? What are we thinking about for the end of our lives, and they began to get that gift at a young age, relatively speaking, that that just sent me off again, like another the urgency I had had kind of like, plateaued, and that just kicked it back into gear again.

And I, I had always thought, you know, I, I'd love to be a philanthropist and do something, you know, in a positive way to impact the world. But I'm not rich, I'm not Bill Gates, I don't have any money, your time. And then I thought that's all an excuse for a reason. And these are all the kinds of things we talk about in the book a lot is like, you know, how do we just overcome those, those excuses and those reasons? And yeah, so So what happened this I, I left the company and started doing a bunch of other stuff. And that, that led me to my business partner, Bridgette, who saw me doing charity work with other companies.

And we started, listen, and we started giving hearing aids to people around the world. And that turned into us traveling around the world for a decade and giving over 50,000 people hearing aids, which was like the most remarkable life changing experience ever. And then along that route along that road, people kept coming up to us. And this this actually ties right back to the actual concept of the book and how I found my saw, people kept coming up to us and going wow, you guys must be rich, you guys must be killing it. You know, you're traveling all over the world, we saw beats sold the app $3 billion, you guys are about to buy your own private jet or something. We're like, I'm actually we're pretty broke. We're what's on paper is not the same as what's in the bank account.

But we're having all these incredible experiences. So we like to consider ourselves experiential billionaires. So we would tell people that as a way to kind of laugh off the fact that we were giving all of our money to charity, and doing all this stuff. And, and then this was still a really great lifestyle for us, because we were, the fulfillment level was like, you know, we were at the brim. And then 2020 happens, you know, everything shuts down, we can't do the missions, we started the company to actually give hearing aids and came up with the speakers and headphones as a as a tool. So suddenly, we were just selling speakers and headphones, because there were no more mass, you know, we couldn't get together and give people hearing it.

And we we really actually just did a deep dive and asked our friends and our mentors and our network and said, What's the value that you see us giving to the world? And what could we do that would be the most impactful or positive thing. And everybody kept coming back into saying, your stories about how you've done all these things like that's, that's the message now you guys should really share that because it's really inspiring, because, you know, we, we came from like, unassuming beginnings, you know, a humble beginning to like turn somehow into like giving millions and millions of dollars away and traveling the world and checking off all these things in our lives, where we help other people check things up on their list kind of thing. And yeah, that was like, how it all kind of just coalesced into writing the book.

And And one last note on it, we started writing the book about just this, you know, the science and research behind how important it is to invest in, in experiences, because, you know, all the data shows that that is the number one regret people have. And then so we actually ran our own survey of over 20,000 people to see, you know, what are the number one regrets you have in your life? What are the things you most want to do? Still, why haven't you done them yet? You know, we started collecting all this data. And as we started writing the book, though, it turned more and more into our life stories with all of these, you know, messages in them and exercises and the research data points and all that. And it just became this like, really, you know, this is the most personal thing I've ever done by far. And it's like, you know, really, like, I guess that's when it became like, this is my song. This is what I'm, I'm standing firm on this is like this is this is what I believe and I hope I really truly believe this can transform people's lives that they if they follow this kind of path. So yeah,

Nik Tarascio 

well, congrats and thank you Let's, you answered a bunch of my questions, which was really going to be touching on, you know, the relationship to regret. And going into the study. I was actually curious in the study. Was there anything that surprised you? Was there anything that you were like, I did not see that coming?

Joe Huff 

Yeah, the biggest one was how many people listed as their most important experience of their life, a negative experience. So many people actually said, you know, this, this thing happened, you know, where, whether it was like a divorce or a loss. And even like, in my case, you know, that's an example where, you know, losing someone made somebody aware of something or they changed, or, you know, they got fired from a job, and then they actually wound up going into the thing they had wanted to do. And that was really interesting to see that it took some outside negative force.

And this is part of that, you know, the hero's journey, stuff that we all we all know, where it's like that everyday, ordinary person, some crazy obstacle happens, and they overcome it and become this better, bigger thing. And, you know, that was really, really powerful. The other thing I would say that was really surprising and alarming is, and this is something that I really think speaks to, you know, your audience. There's so many people that we just all fake, we have more time, right? So there's so many things on our list. And if we really hone down the list and like make that actual plan, you know, once we get the urgency, we got to visualize, there's so many things that are so achievable, that we just don't do, because we just assumed, like, so many people put things like, I regret never having taken my wife to go see where I grew up in the next state over, you know, and now she's gone, or I regret, you know, never taking learning Japanese because my parents spoke it.

And I always wanted to be able to learn more about our culture history, and I didn't, you know, things that were very, very achievable and doable in this day and age, especially with, you know, the access to some most of it wasn't expensive, there's a lot of things, obviously, people, some people put stuff like, I always wanted to go to, you know, Italy or something. But a lot of the stuff was very, very, very attainable. They just slipped by, because they just didn't get it on their calendar didn't make an effort to do it. So. So that's the kind of stuff that I think people can avoid, you know, with my daddy, I like to like, kind of phrase it like that. And with most people, we always hear the story right of somebody that has a near death experience, or loses someone close to them, and then they go out and run that marathon or climb that mountain or do that thing that they always wanted to do. The thing that's really crazy is like, you know, with my dad, for instance, like that the health situation wasn't avoidable, probably.

But the regret that he would have had had he passed that first time around was, you know, because he had just been putting off all those things. So we're trying to give people that urgency, without the near death experience.

Nik Tarascio 

Yeah, I appreciate that. I really appreciate the what you said, you know, people find that the negative experience is often the blessing, right? It's often the thing that's like, let me kick my ass into gear. That was the meaningful turning books I know. Especially like New York, the Western world, a lot of our life is avoiding the negative, right? It's like, I don't want to face the shadow. I don't want to deal with the darkness. I want to press buttons and everything show up. So I never have to feel any form of discomfort. And it's interesting to see it's on some point it almost as if maybe the gift of health is sometimes look if you're not going to listen to all the signs that are telling you you're not on the right course. We'll just take it off from you. And some of us are lucky enough to catch it right before right catch right before and say I didn't have to lose everything to really get my life in I appreciate that story.

Joe Huff 

Yeah, I It's funny. In my talk, I always like to start off with I tell a story about how even when I was 27, I actually I had to file for bankruptcy. And I it was really, really difficult time in my life. It was this really terrible situation. But at the time, I had also decided I was going to do stand up comedy for the last few years I've been trying it off and I was actually younger. And instead of like dwelling on it actually it turned out to be a really great joke in my stand up comedy because when I went to file for bankruptcy, they told me that it costs $2,500 to file for bankruptcy. So I had to go around telling people I'd like to be bankrupt, but I just can't afford it. This just became like a It's all framing things. You may turn it into a joke and be canceled. If you don't laugh, you'll cry kind of thing. So yeah.

Nik Tarascio 

Beautiful. I'd love to go a little bit deeper into as you were speaking and touching on the urgency. And again, I think this I've had a similar experience of watching my grandmother die when I was really young and she spent a lot of time in a hospital really struggled with health issues. And it was my urgency in many ways watching that happen was I also had a lot of health issues when I was a teenager and again, these were the blessings of like everyone else's like we've got infinite time I was 17. And I'm like, I could die tomorrow. So, you know, that wasn't true, necessarily, but that's what it felt like. I'm curious, how do people balance? Or how do they know if they're running from death? Versus running towards life? Right? Because I think that that is one of the things that can happen when we experience death at an early age or lose someone that we really care about, or watch just the suffering of that.

Joe Huff 

Yeah, you know, there's, to me, I think the Western world in particular, you know, we're really good at avoiding the conversation of death. So if there's one, you know, for sure thing that we all know that everybody's gonna die. I think that if you dwell on it, and you know, it could become obviously a morbid and be create, like a fear induced reaction, which isn't really what I think is healthy at all, I think that it's contemplating its, you know, thinking of like, this is going to happen, and you know, we use the momentum warrior, you know, that has what's right in the card deck, it's in the book. But in America, right now, it's 76 is the average lifespan. It's actually 74 for men and 78. For for women.

So it's just a box set, it's a chart of 76 boxes, and you can just fill out how many you've lived so far by year and see how much time you have left on average. And that again, that's not to create, like fear, it's to create reality. So you can look at the math and go, Okay, I got, hopefully, if I'm average, or above average, I've got, you know, 20 boxes left, I said, I want to go to all the states or I want to visit these 12 places or whatever, like if I'm going to do one of those a year, I gotta start planning, you know, just gives you like, as a template map of like, okay, this is how much time because if you don't do that, you won't, but if you start looking at it, you know, from Oh, my God, I've got to do everything like next week, you could probably start making some on healthy habits. You don't want to like chase things down as though like we say, like you want to. It's kind of like the Gandhi approach of you know, you want to live as if you'll die tomorrow learn is that you'll live forever.

So you want to have long term goals, still you want it you couldn't plan a family or you know, a long term career, any of those things, if you actually act as though you're going to live tomorrow, you're going to be pretty self destructive, because you're not going to think that the repercussions are going to last. So it's really more of a contemplating it. So you can form a plan, there's, there's a lot of really great ways to like use that math, like, you know, if you think you're going to, versus if your parents are like in their 70s already, you know, maybe you know, they're doing well, maybe they're not maybe the last 20 years, and we'll have five but if you just use the average and you go, okay, they've got like, on average, four or five boxes left, and I see them once a year, that means I'm only going to see my parents five more times, well, maybe I should make some changes to my travel schedule and my plan, my kids, you know, with me, I've got two small kids, you know, one and a half and three and a half. And this time is flying by so if I want to take them to the amusement park or the zoo or on a road trip or camping or you know, you got to plan those things, because it's going to just slip right by all the sudden it's like, oh, I didn't ever take that road trip or did that one thing? And then you're gonna have that that's the kind of regret that's avoidable. But yeah.

Nik Tarascio 

Yeah, that's a great perspective. Was that clear? Yeah, it doesn't, you know, I think the, the place that I go to with that is, starting with that reality seems like a really great way to see it. Right. It's like, I think that that Denial of Death would be someone that doesn't want to look at the fact that like, there is a chance that this as long as I'm gonna go on average, right? The or at least most of the people in my life, on average, that people my life, we're gonna probably go around that age. So I do really like that as an approach of start with the reality of what's there. And then the case that like, I'm sure you've spoken to so many people about this, I imagine. Have you spoken to people that couldn't face the reality that you've experienced them? Like, almost like, this is not something I want to think about?

Joe Huff 

Oh, gosh, I mean, I mean, and yeah, I would say the majority of people probably like they're very much like, I don't want to think about or talk about that. Because it's scary. You know, a lot of people look at it, like, it's scary. They don't they can't reframe it into, okay, you know, this is finite, but which is it's weird, right? Because it's, it's avoiding, it doesn't make it go away. Right. It's not like it's like sticking your head in the sand. Yeah, so, um, but there's definitely a lot of people that, that need that kind of push.

And that's why I think getting into again, the book I think does a really good job of like a building of showing people you know, how to start thinking like that, you know, we do a really cool exercise called the treasure map right in the beginning that you know, you actually you pretend that you got that call from your doctor that you only have 30 days left to live what are you gonna do? You know, then you're using that as kind of like, you know, there's a it's a longer exercise than that but using That kind of as a base, you know how many of those things are on your list now and why not, you know, and then we kind of build into that, like, here's all the things that other people said, you know, these things sound familiar.

And this is, if they probably do, and this is ways to start, like, removing those kind of regrets by doing those things, and putting those things on your calendar and taking steps to do them. And then, as you do that stuff, you start to see that fear of the specter of your mortality kind of go away, because suddenly your life feels full and purposeful. And I think the fear that people experience is the fear of getting to the end and not feeling like they had that life story. They want it you know, I'm gonna take that verse eulogy, where if you, if you picture your eulogy being said today, if something happened to you, today, would it be the eulogy that you want for your life? Would it be, you know, Nik, he did this and this and this and how he affected people.

And if it's not that now, you got to change it right? And you can, it's super easy to start taking the steps to just start working towards what you want that to be, I have a very, very powerful proof point of how, how well this works, unfortunately. So my wife and I, we met a decade ago, and my wife lives halfway around the world. And our relationship was founded in like us traveling to meet when we could and spending a lot of time all over. And we were really intentional about like, where we met and what we did. And her friends were all around the world and mine were around the world, we got married and Indonesia and Bali.

And you know, we we wound up doing all these really cool experiences together. And then we planned, we did the work, like I'm telling you in the book, you know, we figured out our treasure map what we want to do how we want to try to maximize our time here. And we finished the first draft of the book. And we literally read before the end of the second draft, my wife got diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. This is just a year ago. And she was It was literally like, the weekend of her 34th birthday. So it was a wild wild journey. And she did five months of chemotherapy and then a double mastectomy. And then she had radiation and a full year of immunotherapy.

And it works, the treatments worked. There was you know, obviously about eight months of of being unsure if that was going on what was happening was working or not, but but we're out we're just now on the other the other side of it, but the reason I share that story is first of all, my wife is just a badass, and she just handled this, like, you know, as a mother of two young kids, it's I can't even begin to explain how much respect I have and how it I think as a lot of guys probably think I'm tough like she she made the tough like into a thing I can't even imagine, you know, she's like a superhero. But the reason that I think it's so important to us that stories, at the end of it, as we found out that it worked in her pathology came back negative and the tumors were gone.

We didn't have a bunch of changes in our future. You know, like with my dad, he had to change his whole life. He literally moved to Mexico and started doing all these adventures and things he had never done. My wife and I our plans the same. And that was so powerful to me. Because when we sat down and started thinking about what we were going to do, there wasn't like, we got to make all these changes, we got to we've been going to living for other people, we've been doing the wrong thing.

We actually were like, we're on our path. And this was just a crazy, crazy obstacle that she just broke through. But the path was the same and that was really powerful. Because like obviously we would be in still, you know, the idea of something happening and losing her it'd be completely devastating. But the regret part, you know of how she's been living her life isn't there. She's been living her life on her terms the way she wanted and intentionally. So that's a powerful

Nik Tarascio 

what's an incredible it's an incredible story. And again, sorry you went through that and congratulations for coming on the other side of it with a positive outcome. I wonder for you is there is there a regret you look back on in your life as someone who's had to think about that so much. Is there something specifically like that is the number one regret I had?

Joe Huff 

Oh, you know what, man, I mean, and hotshot more regrets than I can imagine. But I don't have it's funny because I guess that's the difference when you start talking about this kind of a life right where it's most people's biggest regrets are the things they didn't do not the things they did that went wrong. So my regrets for things I did are things like that was you know, that was dumb. I could have done that better, et cetera on but the bigger regrets probably not starting I feel like even like, like this whole idea of what your song is that use that musical metaphor. I feel like if I had actually done the more personal work, I probably would have been doing this sooner I had a lot of fear, I was actually very afraid of, you know, basically telling people this message or this story or trying to, you know, influence people, I felt like maybe that would be maybe I'm a fraud, maybe I'm not worthy of sharing that etc.

And, and I feel like, took me a long time to get past that. And so I would say I probably just regret not starting sooner. And I think that's the overall message that most of the regrets in the 20,000 Plus person survey. It's all stuff like, I wish I started my business sooner. I wish I had traveled more sooner. I wish I did. It's all stuff that people wish they did, or started sooner than they did some.

Nik Tarascio 

Have you done the eulogy exercise for yourself?

Joe Huff 

Yeah, you know, we actually went deeper than that Bridget and I did a little fake funeral concert a few years back, the people do this in that and saw and it's, it's quite popular. And I think probably in other parts of the world. It's even been a comical release. But yeah, that it was an episode of Larry David. And we did it like, you know, joking. Way, definitely. But it's powerful. Still, I gotta say, you know, when you ask your friends, like, you know what they would say? I was surprised at how many people you know, talked about how I inspired them to start a business or, you know, do something that they hadn't thought they could do, because I did it.

And I think that that's something that in society we take for granted, we don't realize that our actions are really what speaks the loudest. So you know, like you having this podcast. And there's definitely folks that are listening and watching going, You know what, that that Nick can do it? I could do, you're giving people permission, right to like, live their dreams, and especially if it's like, well, you know, Nick didn't come from some family of broadcasters or history of entertainers, or blah, blah, blah, and it's like it, it connects people in a way they're like, that's that he's like me, I could do that, because he did it.

And that was really powerful. It was really, really powerful to hear how many little things I didn't realize that I had done that affected people without even knowing that I did that. So it's worth doing. I think people, I think people would enjoy that experience. And I think he got it takes a little bit of the that negative like you want to, let's make it a little less serious, the whole deaf topic and make it a little more lighthearted.

Nik Tarascio 

Ya know, I love my 43rd birthday is coming up in two weeks, and I was trying to figure out what to do, I think I'm actually going to do it as funeral. That's great. Because I have some of my closest friends coming over to back, let's have some fun. Let's hear what you guys have to say about it. And like touching on the you know, you talk about stand up comedy, which is something I also pursued for whatever reason you and I have a very, very similar path. And I very much appreciate that. We're also in like, the black T shirt club. But yeah, I think that there's something really beautiful about the idea of comedy is tragedy plus time, right? Like, if you've ever heard that equation, right? And it's like, for most people, it's like, oh, man, things are so heavy and dark. And it's like, just give it some time. Give it some time, we can find the levity in it. And we can laugh about it. Because if we can't laugh about it, then man, it's a hard ride if we can't see the humor in at all.

Joe Huff 

Yeah, we there's a whole chapter in the book, literally turning negatives into positives, because it is and so much of it is that you know, and even that's why the idea of, you know, going out and trying to have an experience, even the stuff that at the time, like, for instance, we all know like for me, I protect the kids. It's hard to travel with kids, but I do it. And in the moment, there's definitely times where I've got like, you know, two very uncomfortable kids or they're driving me a little bit crazy, or, you know, we're whatever you're trying to do whether you're setting up a campsite, or trying to get six hours to a hotel, or, you know, there's maybe projectile vomit or her she knows what with kids.

There's a lot of things happening afterwards. Like right now I'm laughing about it. Yeah, those are the things that you laugh about. Because it's so ridiculous. And that's why like, if you're in an experience with some friends and things like completely sideways, those are the best stories. Those are the ones that you want to tell nobody wants to hear the story about. Yeah, we went on this day trip and everything went absolutely perfectly. And it was very easy. No, no controversy happened. Nobody cares about that story.

Nik Tarascio 

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I recently was telling someone that my other like, what, what does life mean to you. And I said, life to me is just, you have a certain number of containers of moments. And you try to fill them with with as much experience as you can. And then you have a bunch of connective tissue of like the other stuff that happens in life. And, man, this is I love the way you framed it again, it's like anything, it's like you could take a guitar and you could sing over it. But sometimes when people do it, it moves you in a way that other people can't. And I just love the way you've you've really framed it. Thanks.

Joe Huff 

You know, it's funny when when we started this, you know, writing this and sharing this content but it's not new. I definitely think that lots and lots of people, you know, throughout history have preached this message. And, but it's the time and the messenger. And we hope I hope that I can connect with people that just this hasn't struck, you know, this this concept. And yeah, the whole idea of moments, you know, that's the end to be clear, by the way, you know, this isn't about experiences versus money, I think that people confuse that and they think, well, great, have a bunch of experiences, I've got to work, I've got to pay my bills, absolutely, totally agree, it's about experiences being the most important thing to invest in.

So even if you, you know, have this huge, big idea of like, I want to go on a vacation to you know, travel Europe, and whatever, you put that on your calendar for a year from now. And in the meantime, do what you can do, you know, start filling up your days and stop losing the time that is getting stolen from you every day with stuff that doesn't add value to your life, because that's what you can control, there's a lot of little everyday moments that you fill in around all the bigger picture things. So besides doing the big picture stuff, you got to get those little moments in, because the moments as you put it, you know, those are, that's your experiential, you know, wealth. And the wealth equation that we've been taught forever is that your money equals happiness, and the more money you have, the more happiness and everybody that's successful, that worked their ass off to get successful, but sacrificed everything else in their life. A lot of them are, you know, eating a very on tasty sandwich, right? Because they're just like, this isn't what I thought, right?

I sacrificed my family live, I sacrificed my 20s or my 30s, or whatever, and I didn't do anything. And I didn't put those moments in what the real equation is our experiences times a lot equals happiness, you know, if you can get that whoever gets the most experience is that it's a contest, but those are the people that feel good. And again, back to like the bankruptcy story. You don't lose them, right? You know, what your experiences good or bad years forever, you invest in them. And they also make you more valuable, generally speaking, because everybody you know, you're, you're so specialized, you can be replaced in a job, you can be less interesting in the social environment, etc. But the person that's, you know, done more things has more to talk about as more give us more perspective has more value as a person, both in their personal life and their social life and, and in their, their work life. So it's a it's a mind shift, I think it's suddenly a mind shift that people just once they see it. Oh, yeah, I knew that. But I'm glad I got reminded.

Nik Tarascio 

Phenomenal. And interestingly, my last question is somewhat answered by one of your processes. So I always ask people, what's their dream beyond? And I really think that's the treasure map question. Yeah. So for you what is what is the dream beyond what's the treasure map, this book, it's

Joe Huff 

funny this week, crazy as that might sound, this feels like my wife's very last immunotherapy was like two weeks ago, the books coming out in two weeks. And this feels like the beginning of, for lack of a better word, the rest of my life. This feels like my legacy kind of work. So for me, the dream is to build experiential billionaire as a message and as a brand and as a movement. Just over the course of the rest of my life, where I show my kids that you can do the things you want in life, you can write a book, you can inspire other people, you can make a positive change. And it's something that I think I can do forever because as I did, you know, physically less active, which sadly, I'm relatively sure happens, she can alter those are things that I can still I can hopefully still speak to people and share this message and share my stories and, and create a positive change. That's, that's my, my big dream is to try to affect as many people as possible.

Nik Tarascio 

Beautiful and sounds like that's a dream that's gonna come true in a big way. And we've only been speaking for 43 minutes and I'm so inspired by everything he said. So thank you for doing it, man. Thank you for sharing that.

Joe Huff 

I'm very very thankful to be I have a question for you though. So what what's if you what's on your your list on your treasure map? What are you What are you trying to achieve?

Nik Tarascio 

Great. I love a good turnaround by the way, I always know when I have a good guest and they're like, Wait, we're not done here. So yeah, I got a man to

Joe Huff 

help you achieve whatever your experiences are. We can do one together.

Nik Tarascio 

Yeah, that would be a lovely man. Oh, man. There's a lot of things that have come to me lately. i It sounds really reductive, but I want to give myself permission to be fully expressed and any medium I want to play in. And I think what that's really driven me to is I want to help people cultivate creativity.

Joe Huff 

That's awesome. I love it. And how would you see yourself doing that like creating tools or giving like actual direct standing,

Nik Tarascio 

I'm standing on that cliff right now of I don't know exactly what the media medium is. So I've been working with people on like, parts work and different modalities of healing. I do sound healing now in sound therapy. So I don't know what it is. But I know like in the next three months, I can feel that it's going to reveal itself as what the medium is I play in and I'm, I'm just putting that out there that if anyone has tools or practices for cultivating creativity within my dream has always been to write the perfect song and the perfect song is actually not me. It's it's without any distortion, allowing that source, that creativity, that muse to come through me. And knowing that it just, it happened in front of me, I want to be in a front row seat to letting that through. So that's been the dream is to spend the rest of my life moving. The ego, the distortions, the fear, what you just said, it's like, can you have the courage to actually speak what you know to be true without the fear of like, someone's gonna stab you and your most sensitive area when you're like, but this is what I believe. Don't say no, don't criticize don't troll me. Can I cultivate that confidence to be able to just to speak what feels true within me?

Joe Huff 

Oh, yeah, I think you can I think you're going to that's a really just thinking about it. That's the first step. You're already there. Right? So yeah, I mean, I know for a fact, people are going to come out and attack the book and the message and you know, there's going to be people, but I already know that people are going to it's going to resonate and change some lives. That's what matters, right? It matters, that you're doing that. So by just what you just shared, if you just start doing that. It only takes you know, the winds for you to forget about all the losses and maybe the song you'll come to realize the end is like the song has been all the songs that you've ever written all

Nik Tarascio 

that stuff. It's, it's my Bohemian Rhapsody, I gets that that's what it's like, the song is not chorus, you know, a chorus verse, chorus verse, it's more like it's just this crazy movement of all these different things that that is the dream. I don't think I ever wanted to have just the repeating pattern. So thank you for asking that. It's probably the first time I've verbalized it, and put it into words of like, yeah, that is what it is. It's about cultivating that source creativity and getting out of the way and seeing what comes through. Well, I

Joe Huff 

love it, man. It's beautiful. That's really cool. Thank

Nik Tarascio 

you. Thank you. This has been phenomenal. And I am excited to follow your journey. It is beautiful to reconnect. And thanks for sharing so much from your heart and doing what you do. And for anybody that is curious to stay on the journey with Joe as you could check out experiential billionaire.com or his personal website Joe huff.com. He's got some info on his keynotes and everything on there. And of course, go get the book experiential billionaire build a life rich and experiences and die with no regrets that's on his websites and Amazon as well. And if you want to get playful, which this may be a birthday gift to myself or the treasure maps Man that sounds super cool to car deck that can inspire you to do some really cool things with your life and, and just add more experiences to them. And you could get those again on Amazon or his website. So Joe, thank you so much for being here, man.

Joe Huff 

Thank you. It was really great to reconnect man. I'm looking forward to the next round.

Nik Tarascio 

Absolutely. Thank you for listening to the dream beyond. I hope that you receive whatever message or inspiration you were meant to get from today's episode. I had a great time recording it for you. If you love the show, please take 30 seconds to subscribe rate and review it that really helps get the word out. And if you want to connect with me, you can find me at

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[vaspider]

Hey Spider. I've been torn over the discourse because on one hand I totally get people feeling upset if someone like me (low support person with mental illness and ND) came along and barged into a conversation with people who have specifically mobile support needs. And I feel like most of them are definitely coming from a place where they've gotten a lot of ignorance and people being shitty.

But also everything you've been saying makes a lot of sense. And I do believe that movements need to be more open to actually band together for rights, plus everything you've said about disabled history is true. I wish everyone could unite through our pain instead of ripping people apart because of it. Thanks for being educational, because I was really on the fence about if I even had a space to speak, even as a disability advocate who's had my life majorly impacted by my disabilities.

Like ... here's the thing. If any disabled person plays Oppression Olympics, or barges into a conversation about specific needs, they're being a dick as an individual person. That's true whether it's an ND person or a person with mobility issues barging in.

But - and this is where I started - that isn't because of their disability, and generalizing from "this one person being an asshole" to "all people with this disability" makes generic-you the one being the dick.

It wasn't until I had seen days and days and days of many people generalizing about "able-bodied NDs" that I said something. And now we've got people running with these appeals to emotion about the intent of a dead person, trying to erase the historical concept of "cripple" and who it applied to, ignoring decades of crip theory and disability studies, and just... generally being exclusionary dicks. And that's not even mentioning the suicide threats, suicide baiting, and trying to reduce me to an "ally" instead of a disabled person and long-time cripplepunk.

If someone wants to create a term for "just movement-disabled people in community," great! Do that! But cripplepunk isn't it, even by the stuff that's being endlessly quoted at me without variation no matter how many times I answer it.

The main thing that I keep saying over and over again, which seems to be getting missed even by the people who are carefully not taking sides, is that the split between "mental" disabilities and "physical" disabilities is fake, is recent, and was something enforced on us by the medical establishment. There is no meaningful singular split there, and enforcing the mind/body split only hurts us as a community.

I'm not just saying "we shouldn't exclude people based on whether their disabilities are physical or mental," I'm saying "there is no meaningful split between 'physical' and 'mental' disabilities as large groups"! Like, yes, there will be differences in the needs of individuals with individual disabilities, but that is - as @nothorses pointed out with regards to his own life - the same even with people who have the same condition.

A more comprehensive and whole-body-including-brain understanding of disability is necessary for meaningful forward-looking organizing and community, especially as medical science starts to really examine all the links so that we can understand our bodyminds better and care for them better.

And that starts with not generalizing about entire groups of disabled people because one person was a dick.

🤷🏻‍♂️

[mbrainspaz]

Very long convo with gran today that was basically me just rehashing points I'd made before but all at once. I think I got her to see how her situation where she wrote and burned a letter to her deceased abusive mom is not the same as me not wanting to make small talk with my aggressively evangelical mother who doesn't respect my autonomy and reports on me to my abusive dad. I don't think gran's accepted that this isn't a problem she can 'fix.' She knows I've given my mom some assigned reading to try and get us to a point where we can actually have an informed conversation about gender and maybe politics. But the fact is that while she adheres to biblical fundamentalist beliefs my mom will never be able to respect me, and those beliefs mean more to her than I do. Nothing anybody can do to change that.

Gran still wants to ramble on about the 'grudges' and 'hate' I'm 'holding on to,' so that probably won't be the last I hear of that. She can't grasp that I don't have any anger toward them. Just a feeling of disappointment. She can't understand that all I did was recognize these people in my life who were acting in a way that was unhealthy toward me, ask them to stop, and when they didn't, I removed myself. Of course, gran doesn't respect me very much either, not enough to care about my name or pronouns or any of the things I'm really passionate about, so it's weird having these talks over and over again.

She tried several times to convince me that my relationship with my mom would be solved if we just agreed to never talk politics or religion again. I don't understand how anyone could think that would work in any kind of meaningful relationship. I asked her what the point of pretending to get along with my mom would be and she didn't really have an answer. I smiled and pretended to be civil in my dad's company for two years and what did that solve? Now I had to block his number and he's been sending me sinister vague emails. A relationship without mutual trust and respect is one you're better off without.

Most interesting part of the convo was when I asked her what the best case scenario looks like for her. I asked her what she thinks having a loving family means. All I could get out of her was 'I wish you could go to the lake with us again,' by which I'm gonna assume she means Quality Time. All she wants is to be surrounded by family and friends at the lake. That's probably doable, honestly. I'd still go to the lake and drink all my uncle's whisky while I write my book in the corner with my headphones on so that I don't have to listen to all the latest morally depraved conservative talking points. It's not like my dad will ever go to the lake because he's too homophobic to visit a house owned by my gay uncle (who is also a conservative yeah). The only barriers to me visiting are usually my latest peasant labor situation or my uncle's partner deciding he doesn't want dogs on the designer carpets. I've offered to camp in my car with the dogs. C'mon, that would be objectively funny on their fountain rotunda driveway. Me? I still want a family that cares enough to go to a protest or a rally with me. Hell, I'd settle for a family that clicked 'like' on my comic posts or showed up once a year to watch me ride a horse. I feel like that's not a huge ask but it would make me feel loved. They don't do those things because they haven't taken time to understand or care about me in a decade. There have been times when they showed up for me in the past. There were times when I felt loved. That was a long time ago. I don't think enough people ask themselves what a loving family looks like.

Then we went shopping at a decor store and I bought a pumpkin with a cute little snake on it. Gran gave me a hug goodbye and her perfume still smells like home. I love her for caring enough to meet up and talk to me even if we didn't 'fix' anything.

[bread-tab]

idk where to go with this yet but i'm having some thoughts on the overlap between prosopagnosia and racism.

this is a conversation i've had going on in the back of my head for a long time, because i'm naturally somewhat "colorblind," in the racial sense. not intentionally.

it's a combination of factors:

i was homeschooled as a kid, so i wasn't around a lot of people while i was growing up, and therefore wasn't exposed to much diversity in any form.

i also grew up in mostly rural or semi-rural areas of america, where a very large majority of the population was very white.

my family is mixed white and east asian, and myself and most of my siblings have racially ambiguous features. i don't know how much so by other people's standards, but enough that i have one sibling with blond hair and blue eyes, stereotypical american pie, and another who gets asked "where are you from" sometimes. my sense of "people who look like me" is skewed by that.

i'm autistic, so i instinctively don't look at people. something i've had to try to train out of myself for the past decade for the sake of developing as an artist, plus, you know, basic social skills and situational awareness.

finally, i have mild-to-moderate prosopagnosia. (not sure where to put myself on the scale as far as other prosopagnosiacs go, it's never been a huge priority next to my other asd and adhd issues.) meaning, i have a really hard time recognizing people by their faces.

faces just aren't that distinctive to me. it takes several months of meaningful interactions with something before i can reliably recognize them, and even then, i get confused very easily in unfamiliar contexts. "find a group of your friends in a large crowd" is a nightmare scenario. i can barely find myself in a group picture. i rely much more on cues like how people dress and style their hair, physical build, movement, mannerisms, and so on. someone's face is a really small part of them, if you think about it.

where this comes back to "colorblindness" is, i personally can't reliably tell what race someone is supposed to belong to. i just don't see people that way. i don't instinctively group people by the same sets of facial features that neurotypical people seem to. sure, if you put me in a room full of people who look either really white or really black or really asian and asked me to categorize them like that, i could. but if you took, like, a regular group of racially diverse people off a new york subway car and asked me to do the same thing? i'd have a nervous breakdown. even when you just go by amount of melanin alone, there are tanned white people who look darker than some black people. the difference between most shades of human brown is so frickin' subtle.

there's a post floating around somewhere on here that talks about a bunch of white british people having african facial features, i forgot the anthropology behind it, but my reaction to that was just ✨ vindication~ ✨ because i can't tell the difference between a "black nose" and a "white nose" and sometimes it turns out that's because there's no goddamn physical difference.

anyway. this is not a matter of ideology for me. it's just part of my basic physical perception of the world. i can tell humans apart exactly as well as i can tell cats apart. it has more downsides than upsides. i can't tell you how many times i've hurt someone's feelings by not recognizing them and had to immediately try and reassure them like, i'm so sorry i'm just bad with faces, i remember you!

as far as i'm aware, people in favor of "colorblindness" as an ideal seem to think it signifies a lack of racial or ethnic prejudice. yeah, that's bs. your ability to perceive someone's ethnicity from physical traits has very little bearing on your level of cultural competence. personally, i think it's made mine worse, if anything.

what i've been thinking on this morning is an observation of how people react to my faceblindness across racial lines. i treat everyone with an equal amount of "i can't tell you apart from people who look vaguely similar to you."

white people tend to take this as a personal slight. ie, "you're not important enough to bother recognizing."

poc tend to take it as a microaggression. ie, "you people all look the same to me."

in my life this has come up the most often when discussing celebrities. i have trouble keeping track of celebrities. when i was younger, i wasn't interested because i thought celebrity gossip was shallow. but more to the point, even though i care now, the fact that they're famous doesn't make them recognizable to me.

i can't tell if someone is pretty by whatever the current beauty standards are. pretty people are less recognizable, not more. most celebrities tend to be harder to tell apart because they conform to beauty standards that make them look similar. the exception for me is...there's a category of outliers where "pretty" seems to overlap with "you have a funky face," eg benedict cumberbatch. if your face doesn't look at least a little funky, i don't know you from adam.

a few years ago some of my younger siblings got really into bts and the whole music video storyline thing they were doing. i could not tell those boys apart. i think i jokingly said they all looked the same. this was met with some offense. to which i was like oh, crap, am i being racist?

so i learned to tell the members of bts apart. they made it hard for me by swapping hair colors constantly. but then again, that probably helped me remember to pay more attention to their actual faces. in terms of kpop bands, they're actually not the most similar-looking. the problem is, they're a boy band.

after i put some thought into it, i realized this group of people:

...are, in fact, easier for me to tell apart than this group of people:

(that's one direction, for my fellow faceblinds and people who didn't like boy bands while they were growing up. according to google images at least. don't sue me if this is the wrong boy band.)

...and the only difference was that i spent a few weeks learning who the members of bts actually were beyond what they look like, as well as staring at their faces and being made fun of by teenagers when i misidentified them.

(i have no idea who the members of one direction are. now that i've looked away from that photo for a minute, i can tell you that the one on the far left is the mcyt karl jacobs, and the second one from the right is justin bieber. yes, i am indeed only remembering their hair. but the fact that i remember that much tells you i did take a good long look at them.)

so, it wasn't a race thing. it was a faceblindness thing. but like, there's a reason i was worried that i was being racist. (i can tell whether someone is korean ten times more easily after my bts studies, and that should tell you something.) there's a reason that my faceblind mistakes are interpreted as microaggressions.

another instance of this, a couple years ago, happened when i sat next to a guy on a plane, who just happened to be black. we got to talking and had a really great conversation. but at one point, an actor came up, and i said "isn't he the one that played [blorbo from show]? or was that someone else?"

and my airplane buddy pointed out that sounded a bit racist. because yeah, it did!

the actor was a black guy. and i meant what i said in the sense of, "i don't know actors, i think i saw that guy in a show that i watched but i'm faceblind, i could be mixing him up with someone who doesn't even look like him." i was trying to remember what the guy looked like by his ears. (it's hard when people are bald, okay?)

but if you don't know all that, and you look at me as a white-passing person, it's absolutely reasonable to read what i said as "you people all look the same to me."

and i just gotta wonder, what the heck is going on with neurotypical white people, to make that such a reasonable assumption? what are they doing? or what aren't they doing that they should be?

this isn't limited to white people or neurotypical people, obviously. it's not even specific to race. women are treated the same way through a certain kind of misogyny. how many instances of the "interchangable blonde bimbo" media trope have we all seen? that's just the tip of that iceberg, and i'm not gonna unpack all that right now.

(side note, i gotta reiterate, i'm not saying i think i'm immune to being prejudiced in any way shape or form. i've been raised into it the same way anyone else has in my culture (the vaguely conservative white american protestant cisheteropatriarchy). i'm not completely out of touch with social norms, i pretend to be normal a lot, and some of those norms just suck. sometimes i fail to pick up on the norms that are anti-suckage, too.)

so anyways. it seems like there's this thing, in the psychology of prejudice, where people become faceblind toward the people they're bigoted against. and that's gotta be part of the physical mechanism of how dehumanization works.

i just find that really disturbing. (and interesting.) and it's bizarre for me to think about considering, you know, i see everyone like that. maybe my social anxiety would make more sense to people if i explained it like that. humans are alien to me. i'm a human-phobe. i've got, like, internalized speciesism.

but at the same time, i love humans! i realize my alienation is a me thing. i look past it. i'm really careful about how i treat people, because i know what's natural to me isn't always what's good for them.

maybe it's a normal human thing, for people to seem more like people as you get to know them, and i'm just experiencing a weird extreme version of that? i just don't understand why so many people are so prejudiced if they have this ability to recognize others as real/human/people in a way that to me seems, like... psychic. maybe it's just that i have an impaired sense of tribalism, too.

so like i said, i don't know where this train of thought is going. i just want to understand better. this has got to be something people have studied extensively and i want to read that research.

[magnificent-nerd]

Why Naqib in The Boys sucked

Image description: fictional character Naqib in Amazon Prime’s show The Boys.

(Is the fire in the background an excuse to use racist Yellow Filter to show how exotic he is? Hmm.)

I first posted this on my blog in Dec 2020, and since nothing in superhero media has changed for the better at this time (September 5th, 2021), I’m going to keep talking about it.

Because nobody else does. So, without further ado:

WHY NAQIB SUCKS.

I was a big fan of The Boys season 1; I love superheroes, I love deconstructing a genre. Sure, it has its problems, but overall I enjoyed season 1 and thought the show had potential.

(That’ll learn me for being hopeful!)

When season 1 ended with this big build up of mostly nameless brown and background characters as Muslim terrorists (deep sigh) we the audience are left thinking this one Muslim character (Naqib) whose superpower is to blow himself up repeatedly (insert another long deep sigh here) is going to be The Big Bad of season 2.

I had my misgivings about that direction. Firstly, as you can see from the image of Naqib, he is highly exoticised and is walking around bare chested with Arabic writing on his chest. He looks more like a generic western media depiction of a genie than he does a supervillain. 

And yet he's the first prominent Muslim character in superhero media I've seen in YEARS.

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(See my post about MENA and Muslim character good guys, including Joe played by Marwan Kenzari in The Old Guard, which is technically a comic book movie but it’s not what I’d call ‘caped and costumed’ superheroes so it’s more... superhero adjacent.)

I follow superhero content closely and as far as I'm aware the last time we saw any named Muslim characters in superhero movies WITH SPEAKING LINES was:

Instance 1) Iron Man 1 back in 2008 with The Ten Rings in Afghanistan, showing multiple Muslim characters as baddies/terrorists, but only two of them as a named character and with any meaningful lines to say. And despite one of them, Yinsen (actor Shaun Toub), being a good guy he still dies! Which is common in western media for Muslim and MENA characters.

Note: Fellow Iron Man 1 castmate, actor Sayed Badreya, makes an important point in this GQ article: "I die in Iron Man, I die in Executive Decision. I get shot by everyone. George Clooney kills me in Three Kings. Arnold blows me up in True Lies…" (x)

Instance 2) A more recent instalment in Batman V. Superman in 2016, with some unnamed 'General' character and mercenaries/terrorists in Nairomi, Africa, referred to only as "the desert" throughout the movie. All reference to the General's actual name are available in an extended/deleted scene only, so a very poor and vague depiction in the final cut.

Instance 3) The generic and badly written ‘bad guys’ in Wonder Woman 1984 (2020 movie), which was honestly such a racist depiction of Arabs and Muslims that many critics pointed out we hadn’t seen a depiction this terrible since 1994′s True Lies. (At least most critics were in agreement that WW84 movie was generally terrible, so there’s that.)

And that's it, those are the only major instances showing any Muslim actors or characters in a caped and costumed superhero movie. 

Some other fleeting glimpses of Muslims onscreen:

Glimpse 1) I spotted a girl wearing a hijab among the nameless and unspeaking background characters of Peter Parker's class in Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). A first for Marvel movies, apparently.

Glimpse 2) Disney Plus show Falcon and Winter Soldier (2021) had two nameless Muslim characters walk by in a scene that’s supposed to be Tunisia (using Yellow Filter), and ‘thank’ the present American Air Force (eye-roll).

Glimpse 3) Netflix show Jupiter’s Legacy (2021) had a nameless Muslim sailor conversing with one of the main characters in a scene, with meaningful dialogue about racism. (WOW. Really good.) Bonus: no yellow filter. It’s a pity he’s a nameless background character because this brief instance is the least problematic MENA rep I’ve seen in ages, but it is very brief.

I just wrote about Glimpses 2 and 3, and how the Netflix show outdid Disney when it comes to these nameless walk-on Muslim characters.

This is pretty pathetic overall, these small crumbs, especially compared to better rep and probably the only instance of legit MENA superheroes in a ‘costumes and capes’ style superhero show, the Tarazi siblings on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

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Anyway, now I’ve listed what crumbs are available across the live action superhero genre, back to The Boys.

I was intrigued about how season 2 would handle Naqib and any characters relating to him, and what storyline they'd use. 

Was I excited at the possibility of seeing Muslim supers onscreen? Damn straight I was. Did I mind that they were baddies? Well, yes and no. When you only ever get crumbs or no crumbs at all, you tend to get excited over one stale old crumb.

After the build up for season 2, I eagerly sat down to watch the first episode, only to have the first five minutes of episode 1 Trigon him.

Note: who's Trigon, you ask? Well if you didn't watch the DCEU's Titans show, Trigon was The Big Bad who was hyped up throughout season 1, introduced in the season 1 cliff-hanger episode as this big 'oh shit!' moment for the cast of heroes, only for him to fizzle out like a wet fart in the first episode of season 2 while the show pivots wildly in another direction. 

Exactly what happened to Naqib in the first five minutes of The Boys season 2.

Erm, so, Naqib. Farewell, I guess? As a character you briefly appeared in 2 episodes, portrayed by a different actor in each (Krishan Dutt, and Samer Salem). It seems the writers used you as a plot device when they needed a cheap cliff-hanger for a direction that ultimately went nowhere.

Am I disappointed? Yeah, I am. Overall I thought season 2 of The Boys was weaker than season 1, but I'm not here to talk about the whole season: I want to talk about Naqib and this missed opportunity.

The Boys and its showrunners sell the show as being a satire of recent and well known superhero content, of all the big movies and TV shows. There's been a lot of patting themselves on the back for calling out overused tropes in superhero media (and sometimes they've done this satire well: see the LGBT marketing scene with Queen Maeve in season 2), but my issue with the show on their Muslim rep, or should I say lack thereof, is if your show has even less Muslim character rep than the content you're trying to parody, how is this a win for satire?

Naqib and that whole angle came across as a lazy, half-assed swing from the writer's room. Sure, perhaps a lot of the non-Muslim and non-MENA audience won't even notice, as we've been ignored by western media or made into nameless, generic, vacuous baddies for decades now. Non-Muslims and non-MENA just accept that we're always the baddies for no particular reason at all (which feeds into Islamophobia, by the way) and The Boys' writers could say they are simply satirising the tropes already present in media...

But, and this is a big but, the media that The Boys is satirising has already made a step toward better inclusion and representation: Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Marvel comics' first Muslim superhero, is entering the MCU as a lead character in her own Disney Plus show, debuting in 2022. 

Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan is also cited to appear in upcoming Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels (2022), which will be a major movie.

The MCU has also cast a Muslim actor (Mahershala Ali) as the lead in a reboot of Blade. That's going to be big news when it starts filming.

So to the showrunners on The Boys, I say this: now you've done this small angle of 'all Muslim characters are terrorists, yuckity-yuck!' like we've seen in major superhero movies thus far, and you've brushed that aside in favor of focusing on other whiter villains, my question is will you come back to Muslim and MENA characters again? Or is that all you got?

Because if that was ALL, then the current score is Disney/MCU:02, Netflix:02, DCEU:02, and The Boys: a big ZERO as far as Muslim and MENA rep goes.

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Originally posted on my blog, magnificently nerdy.

If you, like me, are always on the lookout for onscreen Muslim and MENA characters in superhero media, and have spotted any characters in superhero TV shows I haven’t watched yet, let me know about them!

Here is my post on good guys, featuring Old Guard’s Joe, and Blindspot’s Rich Dotcom.

Here’s my post about the Tarazi siblings on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow TV show.

And, if Marvels’ Eternals gets released on schedule for 2021, we will have a MENA actor portraying a supporting character. I just hope Marvel gives him a name.