The Summer of Skateboarding

hello it's me thought slime if you follow me on Twitter or if you've had the misfortune of being trapped in a conversation with me in real life you'll know that this summer I've been learning how to skateboard my girlfriend bought me this penny nickel board for my birthday and I've been kind of obsessed with it ever since I've been skating for multiple hours a day five to six days a week now I'm at a point where I can roll around on it comfortably I can use it as transportation but I can't do any tricks I never really wanted to learn tricks in the first place but it might be fun eventually really wasn't what I was looking for besides it's a lot harder to learn to ollie on a penny board and that means it's gonna limit what tricks I can reasonably learn to do and it's a very strange decision to learn something like this in your mid-thirties in some ways it feels a lot like a midlife crisis a desperate attempt to feel young and vital again as my aged body turns to dust my dusty old bones full of green dust dusty old bones full of green dust I'm an obsessive person when I get interested in something it's all I can think about it's all I can relate to it's the only thing I want to do with my entire day that has its benefits and drawbacks it means that I often neglect important aspects of my life because I'm focusing too hard on some shiny new obsession but at the same time it keeps my life interesting I'm always learning always doing something new always growing and expanding my horizons this past few years have been full of these little obsessions this YouTube channel started as one of those little obsessions until it ballooned into my full-time job which don't get me wrong owns bones but it means I need a new obsession because you can't goof off from work if the thing you do to goof off from work is your work and I believe strongly in the power of goofing off and I've been wanting to skateboard for a very long time particularly penny boards and I know that they're very trendy and they're only sort of skateboards and they have a lot of downfalls but you don't choose what you get obsessed with in this life I think the coolest hell and I love mine but there was always a problem that kept me from actually trying my hand at it it's it's real it's real it's scary to ride a skateboard at least at first I don't know how many of you have actually tried to ride one but it's a completely new way to move and you're almost guaranteed to fall down many many times before you get the hang of it I sure did and still do probably always will but this has been the year of doing things that scare me I left the only decent job I've ever had to go to computer school earlier this year had to take out a line of credit to do it if I'd watched out I would have been dunzo and after that I decided to completely disregard everything I've learned and take the plunge into doing my dream job Here I am doing that I'm also scared to double my workload but I'm going to be doing that come October when they launch my second channel scaredy-cats you can go subscribe to that in the description wink wink each of these things has frightened me but I've gradually come to learn that I am often frightened for no good reason I can handle a lot more than I think I can handle so I learned to skateboard it took a lot of falling it took a lot of fear and a lot of perseverance and now aside from my friends loved ones and partner it's probably the biggest source of joy in my life I look forward to it every day I hate stopping every day if I go more than two days without doing it my mood drops off precipitously and I don't want to get all preachy about it but a lot of the things I've learned from it have made me an all-around a better and happier person I'm in better shape calmer and more radical in both senses of the word than I was before with that in mind I'd like to share some of the things I've learned from skateboarding with you the people watching this video the audience who presumably are not on skateboards right now if you are please pause the video and resume it when you have come to a complete stop the amount of tumbles you take from the skateboard is very humbling not only does it hurt but it's embarrassing you fall down and look like a doofus and everyone can see and they might not judge you but you feel like they do you get tons of scrapes aches and pains in places you've never felt before when you want to pick up a skateboard the quickest way is to step down on the tail and let it flip up to you you do this thousands of times and eventually it becomes second nature but when you're learning to do it and you have testicles as I do sometimes the board will hit you in said testicles Archimedes once famously said give me a lever in a place to stand and I shall move the earth the experience of launching something into your own testicles with the power of leverage is unique and after falling down and hurting yourself going all the way back up to your apartment bandaging yourself up coming back down and skating again only to hurt yourself again it's easy to say well frig this forever frig this whole scene but if you did that you'd be making a mistake the joy of succeeding where I had once failed is greater than the pain of failure the satisfaction I get from doing something I know for a fact I couldn't do a week ago no matter how hard I tried easily outweighs any pain I get along the way pain is temporary glory is forever this is a lesson I've had to teach myself over and over throughout my life failure is just the first step towards success do you really want to get hurt on a skateboard do you know the easiest way to do that I mean just hit yourself in the in the face with it or like bash your throat in there you want to know the most likely way you'll get hurt on a skateboard going slow you fall off a skateboard moving slowly and you fall straight down the entire force of gravity hits you if you fall off a skateboard going fast you fall diagonally the impact is far less you get scratched up really bad but you're less likely to break a bone all of this is general advice you can break a bone either way but just it's gonna be harder to do it if you're going fast it's a general rule of thumb not to mention a skateboard passes over small cracks and bumps a lot more easily when it's going fast it's a lot easier to keep your balance when you're going fast and yet all of my friends do the same exact thing when they around with my skateboard they hop on and try to stand perfectly still and then they fall off because it's hard to balance without the momentum especially for beginners just balancing on a skateboard probably shouldn't be the first thing you try but it's everyone's first impulse because it seems like the safest thing even though going fast is a little bit safer your body really doesn't want you to your adrenaline is screaming at you to slow down you're gonna fall there's a bump coming up and you're gonna hit it and it's gonna toss you if you listen to that voice you will fall if you ignore it and commit to the motion you'll have a much better chance of being okay but probably you'll still fall you fall a lot skateboarding is my point you learn very quickly that you have to commit to your motions if you try and turn and then oh you're uncomfortable leaning this far back and you try to level out you'll get tossed you have to trust your body and do the thing that you were trying to do sometimes when you're learning that means you're gonna fall down and then you have to get up and do the same thing again but now with the Pavlovian response that doing it will make you fall down so how do you learn to commit even when you're scared fear is your minds trying to protect you trying to keep you out of danger sometimes you have to tell that fear thanks dude but I'm good now for those of you with the typical brains this might not strike you as much of a revelation but if you're someone with a debilitating anxiety disorder as I am getting to practice ignoring fear every day is a godsend it gradually lets me reprogram my brain to not just obey my fears uncritically it teaches me to live in the moment to feel afraid and no one feeling afraid and assess the situation logically falling never hurts as bad as you're afraid at well hell if you wear pads like I do it's actually pretty hard to get hurt from falling I've fallen so hard that I've done full 360 degree tumbles and laughed it off and besides even if it does hurt sometimes pain is just exciting like sometimes it's funny to get hurt like you just find it hilarious and satisfying it's weird it's like it's like riding a roller coaster it's a safe way to get your adrenalin flowing to simulate danger without actually putting yourself in danger skateboarding is a little bit different because it is actually dangerous but also you don't really get better at riding a rollercoaster you might get less afraid but eventually you get less afraid of riding a skateboard - and my god do we all need something like this there's so much out there to be afraid of and it feels like every day something new gets added to the list climate Armageddon far-right monster people winning all the elections the creeping inevitability of the grave now how in the heck are you gonna confront those things if you let your fear guide you how can you possibly stand up in the face of that so if you find a way to live with that fear to experience it safely and learn to overcome it you're way more dangerous to capital the state and any other dingdong that wants to make the world a shittier place when they threatened to hurt you it's easier to shrug off when you hurt yourself all the time for fun that cold sensation of dread that washes over you every time you stumble or wobble on your board you learn to ignore it you're gonna be okay you're not going to get hurt just kidding you're gonna get hurt a lot wash out the wound with soap and water apply isopropyl alcohol or polysporin and keep the afflicted area elevated apply fresh bandages every few hours learn to sleep on whichever side of your body hurts less today just now I had to learn what cero sanguinis fluid is do not Google that trust me when I say you don't want to know what's underneath this bandage hey while we're on the subject here's a handy tip from me to you if you want to remove a band-aid from an area with a lot of body hair you're gonna want to heat it up first to weaken the glue just trust me on that one run it under some hot water or use a hairdryer you'll thank me I suppose I should bring this up now there's not going to be an eyeball zone this week I know that people really look forward to that segment but I feel like it's getting too powerful like sometimes at night I can hear the voice of the eyeball zone calling to me and I wore hello and welcome to the eyeball zone the eyeball zone is too powerful to be contained by thought slime the eyeball zone cannot be stopped and the eyeballs must feed video game the very word strikes terror into your heart wouldn't it be great if a video game could build solidarity wouldn't it be great if a video game was explicitly anti-capitalist anti-fascist and pro-union fool you've fallen into my rhetorical trap wobbly dev is making video games that are all of those things behold footage from their game anti-fur about a Anti Fog guy jumping on prison wardens look how cute it is look at these cute little guys you can download it for free and see previews of wobbly devs other projects at wobbly dev comm in this video where I talk about injuries a great deal it seems appropriate that I mentioned that an injury to one is an injury to all and I'm sorry that I've injured you all dozens of times this summer hey do you have any explicitly left this project that needs a hot load of eyeballs dumped all over it getting into all the nooks and crannies shoot me an email over it thought slime editor at gmail.com and maybe you'll find yourself trapped here in the eyeball zone please put the word eyeball somewhere in the subject line and also it would be helpful if you told me your pronouns in the email you may now proceed regular thought slime but do not try to silence me again and I'm not afraid of you eyeballs own thought slime you don't frighten me you have no power here I've always believed in the power of mindfulness but it's always been a struggle for me to practice I love to meditate don't get me wrong but there's always this sense I get from it that I could be doing something more important I can't just relax and take time just for me because there's so much else that I need to do and I'm always so aware of it there's so many distractions and I find myself just picking up my phone without even realizing it and letting my mind drift off the thing about being on a skateboard though is that you are forced to be mindful you can't zone out you can't let your mind wander you have to be paying attention to your surroundings at all times or you fall off and scrape up your buttcheeks you learn to be aware of your body in a way that I've never felt you learn to notice the way that your legs just act independently of your conscious mind by the time it registers in my brain that I need to bail my feet have already done it by the time I realize I'm about to fall over my legs have already self corrected without any conscious input from me and kept me standing it gives me several hours a day where I'm unable to check Twitter do you know what kind of bad mood Twitter puts me in all the time you can't tweet on a skateboard you're busy you're doing something else you're completely cut off from the internet for a little while just out there living in the physical world and dealing with the physical things in front of you you stop worrying about all the things in the world that you can't control just for a little while it lets you put that stuff on hold you just need to keep yourself from falling over right now you can worry about the rainforest later I'm the type of person who is either working worrying that I'm not working or somehow paradoxically doing both mutually contradictory things at the same time but when i skateboard which is a hobby I get to goof off and be productive I'm not wasting time I'm getting better at skateboarding hell I can run errands while goofing off the other day I rode to the store to buy bandages and antiseptic cream for injuries sustained while skateboarding it would have taken me three times longer if I hadn't been skateboarding it makes going about your daily routine and adventure what are the sidewalks like on your walk to the grocery store have you ever really noticed I can promise you that I spend a lot more time paying attention to the sidewalks now you know when a video game has a really good movement mechanic and you spend a lot of time just running around in the game for the fun of it forget the missions forget the story I just want to climb around on a building I want to see how fast I can move for how high I can jump skateboarding is that but in real life everywhere you move presents a set of choices you know the mechanics of how to get from A to B but it's up to you to figure out how to apply those mechanics here's a tip from me to you that makes commuting on a skateboard a lot more fun you can just pick up your board you don't have to ride it over the worst terrain or on crazy inclines just carry it until it gets more manageable you'll be fine in this late capitalist tell escape you're supposed to be hustling every second of your day give everything you can to the Machine your leisure will cost the same resources as your survival so if you want to enjoy your life you need to work that much harder better hope whatever you buy to enjoy your life is better than whatever you did to pay for it is draining otherwise you're always running at a- always in a fun debt but you can find little ways to play little ways to clawback the world that was stolen from you you can still do things that bring you pleasure but don't line the pockets of some sure you have to buy a skateboard you might have to buy new shoes or replacement parts every now and then but it's all chump change compared to like a video game console and after that initial investment nobody makes money when you ride a skateboard nobody benefits but you you don't need to buy skins loot boxes or expansions you don't need to rent space buy time you don't need to find parking you just stand on a piece of wood or in my case plastic and roll around for a little while it's time in your day that you're not working you're not consuming and you're not being advertised to it's time in your day you're spending on you this hobby has done wonders for me it's made me a more well-rounded and emotionally well human being I don't know if I necessarily recommend it to you personally there are plenty of people for whom this is not going to be the best experience but as long as you're sort of able-bodied you can do it if you want you probably don't think you can but trust me I'm the world's least Ford innate a human being and I managed to learn if the way I spoke about it makes it seem worthwhile to you try it out you have nothing to lose except for some skin and blood but probably most of you have no interest in skateboarding it might strike you as needlessly dangerous and a waste of time you'd never get on one in a million years and that's fine too but I'd highly recommend you find something you can do just for yourself something that helps you clear your head and returned to our hell world a little bit more refreshed a little less frayed from the constant looming stresses bearing down upon us I don't know what that will be for you maybe it's painting maybe it's learning to code maybe it's woodworking maybe it's hiking there's so much to this world that you can have that's just there waiting for you to grab it and the world is going to remain shitty for the foreseeable future it's going to take more and more work to fix it's vital that you have something to escape with something that doesn't hurt you something that isn't controlled by a media conglomerate you need joy in your life on your own terms just for you you need it like you need water because when you find it you'll realize just how much you are missing it and just how much stronger it makes you to have it and we all need that strength you need that strength so go out there and goof off me that slime you just watched a video I made hope you liked it if you did you know you know what to do about that there's a little button you can press that signifies that press that button you'll feel great if you do you know you got a subscribe right I don't got to tell you that you know you know you got to subscribe to me here on youtube.com slash thought slime while you're at it why don't you subscribe to carrot scaredy-cats that's the other channel that I'm gonna be working on starting October 1st and you you can be there now looking at the empty Channel hey do you know about patreon.com slash thought slime that's a cool hip happening place where people go to pay me money to keep making videos if you pay $10 a month you'll see this little little cartoon of you starting next month if you go $15 a month there's a little thought slime and paper tole you can download and fold up and you'll have a fun time putting that together I live stream here on YouTube every Thursday at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time I'm thinking about moving it to twitch everybody seems to be doing that right now and I want to butter my horses just as everyone else butters there's you

Channel: undefined

Views: 47,761

Rating: 4.9694324 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: WEbmtNzs338

Length: 19min 38sec (1178 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 20 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Whelp I guess we're going to see a bunch of 30 something leftists skating around now because Thought Slime really made it sound appealing.

[u/GibsonLexPaul]

This was such a joy to listen to/think about on my walk to class this morning. And also kinda made me wanna start skateboarding.

[u/Daymer666]

I also learned to skateboard this summer #pushtoheal 💖💖💖

[u/samtrano]

Most of this applies to all balance- and movement-focused sports. Parkour is even cheaper too

[u/Fly_Ass_Trainwreck]

well, now I have to get back on mine. been telling myself to get back into it for years now. I have no excuse.

[u/[deleted]]

Turning off the TV, video game, or internet box and just doing shit IRL is good praxis. Especially if you can do those things with other people.

A deck of cards, a harmonica, or even just a ping pong ball and a plastic cup can be more engaging than a whole season of TV or round of Fortnite. You can do any of those things, and more, for a one time purchase of under $10. In world where sharing is theft and dropping off the surveillance grid is tantamount to treason, the most radical thing you can do is unplug and entertain yourself and your friends rent free.

[u/thotslime]

If you wanna have an easier time pick up longboarding. You're less likely to hit a pebble and bust your ass, plus longboard dancing is so much cooler than kickflips.