Greetings fellow
humans!
I've decided to
take this presentation to talk about a kind of identity crisis I went
through a few years back.
Just for a bit of background information, I
lived in a small town in New-Brunswick at the time with a populace of around 8,000 people. I didn't fit
in, not even in the slightest. Everybody was really into cars,
motorcycles, fishing and hunting. I was more of the video game kind
of guy. And even with the difference of hobbies, I just wasn't an
interesting person at all. I wasn't funny, popular, creative or
interesting in any way, really. On top of all that, I was an
extremely shy person who didn't like to take risks. That was just
basically who I was for the first, oh I don’t know, 11-12 years of
my life? I had always accepted this as who I was, because, well, it
was who I was. But I was never satisfied. I felt like I could be more
than just “that guy”, I guess. About half way through the year I
thought of an excellent idea. That I would stop being just… that
guy. Or, at least attempt to. Not immediately, but the upcoming
summer. So for about 4 months I couldn't stop thinking about things
I would do that summer. It was this magical idea, and being a
procrastinator, I was actually thinking in the back of my mind that I
wasn't going to go through with it. But when school ended, for the
first time in a very long time I felt motivated to do this thing I
had the idea of doing. Thus spawned the most productive summer of my
life.
(On whiteboard, write Yo-Yo, juggling, Rubik's cube and Tae Kwan Do)
I had plans, and
I set those plans up right away. The first plan of action was to
learn the basics of magic. I had a deck of cards, and I just taught
myself magic with online videos, but mostly just books. [Quick
demonstration of simple magic trick]. I actually still have, at my dad’s house in
New-Brunswick, a deck with hundreds of signatures of people I
performed tricks for. On top of that, I learned the Rubik’s cube,
because when I was a kid people who could do that were like the
greatest ever. I could complete it in 1min20secs. What goes well with
magic and the Rubik’s cube? Why juggling and the Yo-Yo, of course.
Juggling was much easier to learn than I thought it would be and the
opposite for the Yo-Yo. I learned to do a bunch of high level tricks
and even taught myself two tricks that involved 2 at once. That
summer, on top of all that, I was able to convince my dad to put me
in a Tae Kwan Do class.
So what, right? Now, instead of a boring guy with not much going for
him, I was a boring guy with not much going for him who knew a few
party tricks. I may not have known it at the time, but it wasn't
the actual thing that I was learning that was important, it was the
process of learning it and applying it to the real world. To be
honest, the best thing for me that summer, by far, was magic. Before
that summer I was the shyest person ever. I was terrified of being
the center of a crowd. And to this day, every sign of confidence you
see from me is essentially a stage act. But performing magic in
front of random people every time made me learn to have, or try to
have, a vibrant personality and to learn social queues. And from
that, a sense of humor, of which I had no idea existed, emerged.
Everything about that summer was just fantastic, except for the fact
that it flew by like nobody’s business.
(Write control
for yoyo- balance for juggling – self-reliance for tae kwan do –
analysis for Rubik’s cube)
All of that
shpeal to basically say this:
I was young and
decided to have one productive summer. Two months of not being lazy.
And through that, I taught myself so many great lessons. Control.
Balance. Self-reliance. Analyzing situations. And mostly, I gained a
personality. (hold cards in fan) But life has a lot less tricks and mirrors than magic (turn cards towards audience, so they see each card).
The options are clear, no illusions. It’s up to you to make the
first step. So, I ask again, pick a card, any card.
Sincerely and wholeheartedly,
K,
TL; DR: One summer is all it takes to change person's life. Get on it.
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