Today, I'm gonna tell you a story, okay?
Today, I'm gonna tell you a story about something that happened to me a few weeks ago that I didn't bring up sooner because I completely forgot that it happened, okay?
Up until today, while I was eating my lunch, I completely forgot that this happened.
Completely forgot. And that's something I don't do often.
When something significant happens, I don't often erase it from my memory, especially if it's a story that I could tell on my podcast.
Okay, I'm in the business of telling stories.
I don't forget about a story, but somehow this one was so traumatic for me that I completely blocked it out up until today at around 12 .05 PM when I was eating my yogurt bowl.
At 12 .05 PM when I was eating my yogurt bowl, the memories came flooding back.
And the second that they did, I knew what I had to do.
So I finished my yogurt bowl, put it in the sink, put a little bit of water in it so that the yogurt didn't get crusty, walked over to my desk, turned on my camera, turned on my recording equipment, and sat down to tell you this story.
And now here I am to tell you the story.
And can I be honest?
You are going to judge me.
Yep, you're going to judge me because this story is embarrassing.
It's mortifying. It's traumatizing to me, but it's not traumatizing in a way that you're going to sympathize with.
It's traumatizing in a way that you are going to judge.
You are going to judge me for being traumatized by what happened.
But I'm going to tell you the story anyway.
Because the silver lining of unfortunate events in my life is that I get to talk about them on my podcast.
And beyond that, this story might be embarrassing and mortifying, but it's human.
And that's why I have to share it with you.
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Now let's get back to the episode.
So let me set the scene for you.
For New Year's this year, I got invited to go on a little trip with some friends, okay?
A group of like 10 friends, some friends that I'm super close with, some friends that I'm maybe a bit less close with, but a big group, 10 people to a mountain town, okay?
Like a ski town. Snow, ski lifts, ski mountains, cute little shops, cute little restaurants.
You know the vibe. A little ski town.
I absolutely love a ski town.
So I was so excited for this trip.
I've always loved a ski town.
There's something about it that's so peaceful and charming in the most dystopian way.
But it's dystopian and like a theme Park sort of way and like a Disneyland sort of way.
And I've just always loved it.
However, I've never skied.
I've never snowboarded.
Every time I've ever gone to a little ski town, I've just been there to hang out.
Except for one time when I tried to snowboard for like an hour and like never even stood up.
So I like, I guess you could say, you know, I tried it once, but I don't even count it, really.
All of my experiences at ski mountains involve drinking a hot beverage by a fire in the lodge, okay?
I'm not going down the mountain.
And that's because I didn't grow up doing it.
Like, I grew up with some kids who had really rich dads that had vacation houses in Lake Tahoe, which is sort of a ski town during the winter.
And so there were a lot of kids I knew that were incredible at skiing and snowboarding because, you know, every holiday weekend they were going up to ski and snowboard.
But I didn't have that.
My dad does not have a Lake Tahoe house.
And I didn't get invited to Lake Tahoe houses very often.
So I just never tried it.
And they do say that learning skiing and snowboarding gets harder the older that you get.
So I was never really inclined to try it.
But I've always been really jealous.
Like I've always wanted to be good at it.
I always thought it was such a cool thing.
Like the kids that could ski and snowboard.
I was like, fuck, it's so cool that you can go to a little ski town and actually do something.
I go to a little ski town and I have to hang out at the gift shop and drink hot chocolate.
Like that's fun. But it would be so fun to do that after skiing or after snowboarding.
And I love this environment.
I love the ski town so much that I just wish I could participate.
But Alas, I never could.
And so back to this New Year's trip, it was a trip to a ski town.
And immediately when this plan came up, I said to myself, almost subconsciously, like, hopefully there's other people who don't want to ski or snowboard.
And when I arrived and we all sort of discussed, you know, our experience with skiing and snowboarding, I was comforted to see that a bunch of people didn't want to ski or snowboard.
And I was like, this is incredible.
I'm just going to hang out with this part of the friend group and everybody else will go and ski and snowboard and it'll be great.
But then there were a few people who didn't know how to ski or snowboard who wanted to try skiing.
Then I'm faced with a dilemma.
Do I do what's comfortable, do what's safe and stay back with the people who have no interest in touching the snow at all?
Or do I challenge myself and end 2024 off, start 2025 off doing something challenging.
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So I contemplated about it for a while.
And I sort of talked to the group and, you know, part of the group was like, no, like, stay with us.
We're going to hang out.
