Distractible - Failed Resolutions

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Mark’s bizarre sleeping schedule, Bob drinking an entire handle of vodka, Wade… jogging? Today the guys discuss self-improvement and whether New Year’s is overrated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yes, it's time for Failed Resolutions. Please hide thy own lists and enjoy the show. Hello, gentle listeners, and welcome to Distractible. Thank you for joining us for what is the last episode of 2021. Our inaugural year of Distractible is being closed off in the only way that it should, with the best judge, me, the the winner the best winner of last week's episode yes me did win last week's episode but i don't know that really means anything ah but uh who started it wait did i who did did i start hosting who hosted the first one i think it was you i thought i hosted the very first episode maybe you did hair wasn't it we got it first try oh yeah it

was hair definitely first try on this yeah we didn't record a bunch of other stuff first yeah no sitting out there at some point in the future we are gonna try to package up all that stuff in some way because there's some good bits that we had in there dude the russian bathhouse story i was so proud of yeah it was a good story people got to hear that shit at some point but in this episode we are bringing this year to a close and looking forward to 2022 with big open doe eyes and uh loins full of yearning grumbly stomachs we're gonna something yeah grumbly stomachs loins full of urine no i heard you you said yearning okay yeah okay all right so you're just choosing to be dumb usually all right so this year's coming to a close which means that a lot of people are gearing

up for their new year's resolutions the things that we promise ourselves at the beginning of the year that the vast majority of us never actually accomplish i'm actually going to look up a statistic right now how many people actually complete new year's resolutions actually maybe on the subreddit people can get a poll going of just like how many of you have actually accomplished your new year's resolution according to this statistic less than eight percent of people actually stick to their resolutions each year and according to this statistic 73.6 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot okay yes well i didn't make this up on the spot but

they might have how many people make resolutions what's the percentage on that that's an interesting question i don't know this is of the people that actually oh well you know that's a good thing okay so separate poll on distractible whoever gets it first gets it how many of you have actually made a new year's resolution not me have you guys made new year's resolutions um why make something else i'm gonna fail i really don't you've never made a new year's resolution way i've made them before i'm but not in a while that's the question i oh i wasn't listening i know you weren't i know you weren't man bob what was your most recent new year's resolution oh boy um i mean to get healthy is pretty much the only new year's resolution i've ever made. And like, yeah, I didn't make any last year cause I didn't see any hope or joy in the

world. I was pretty sure it was all gone and I don't know if my mind has changed, but I'm trying not to bring the mood down. So I might make some this year. All right. I did find a statistic that says that about one in four Americans actually make new year's resolutions. Okay.

Okay. All right. One in four Americans actually make New Year's resolutions. Okay. Okay. All right. One in four actually make them. Wade, what was your most recent, if you can recall back in your life, what was the most recent one? It had to have been diet or exercise related. I feel like that's probably the most recent one. That's probably the most common. But for this discussion today, I actually want to expand it beyond just New Year's resolutions because we're all trying to make it, but it can be a depressing subject. I want to hear about anything that you guys have ever done for self-improvement in terms of like promises that you make to yourself, failing those promises and like never really living up to what they were meant to be.

I will start it off because Bob, I think you know this more than anything. I have gone through an incredible number of things that I have done to myself to experiment on self-improvement. I kind of habitually do this and habitually fail. But one that actually did work kind of for me was to see if I could kind of like not so much Pavlovian, but train myself in a reward system to exercise, right? It's like looking back on it, it's kind of the stupidest thing I could have done because I would do like 10 pushups

and then I would get to eat a piece of candy. So I must've done this back in like 2010 or something. I was back living in my mom's house and I remember I would put on the TV an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? Just to have something to watch. And then I would do 10 push-ups, eat like a sweet tart. And then I would do five squats, eat another sweet tart.

And then I would do like 10 sit-ups, eat another sweet tart. I went through like 10 boxes of sweet tarts and my muscles were incredibly sore. But, you know, it turns out i didn't lose any weight i actually gained quite a bit of weight because i tried this for several weeks the idea is that you are training your body to expect a sugary treat when you did exercise so you were training like the inverse of what you wanted what you wanted to do was like maybe a non-food reward was the answer but basically every time you did a push-up your body was like all right sweet tarts give it to me pretty much yeah and like i've got so many others but i'll save it for the rest of

the episode but i'm gonna give you guys some time to think about what you've done to try to self-improve new year's resolutions or anything of the like conjure up those stories and bring them to the forefront and i will hear them and i will judge them accordingly so i have one that's from around the time we were just getting to know each other mark oh interesting so when you and i met i'm sure people who know our history is youtube and stuff well you and I met because we were assigned roommates freshman year of college. And when my freshman year of college, I was a music education major and I played tuba. Basically what that means is I played tuba in a couple ensembles.

I had weekly lessons. There was a professor of tuba at the school. I would go every week and we would work on technique and he would give me critiques and things to work on. And I'm learning how to play an instrument. Theoretically, I'm learning how to master my instrument. And the music education part is not part of this. I took classes about how to teach kids. It was pretty fun, but pretty hard. But at some point during my freshman year, I basically realized I was still ass at tuba. At some point after the first quarter, I thought I would just show up at college and start to get better and just do. And like, I was not good and I was not getting better. And I realized that it had to do with my what my ideas were about practicing.

If you want to master an instrument, if you want to study an instrument at a conservatory with the goal of becoming a professional. What I did in high school was like, if we got a new piece of music music I would take it home and I would look over the notes maybe and I would play it a couple times until I sort of knew how it went and I'd be like cool I know that I can play that and like that was enough for me to get into music school but in music school you've got to practice as much as you physically can like there's a limit depending on your instrument to how much you can practice because when tuba your face goes out it's your lips are vibrating that you can't just do that for hours and hours on end but like it's hours a day it's dedication yeah if you want to get better and i realized this and as sort of a new year's resolution i was like you know what i really am going to practice one of the mistakes i've been

making is you got to practice simply you practice like long tones to work on having big round beautiful tone work on your breathing and your air. It's all very subtle and nuanced, right? I was like, I'm going to practice. I'm going to dedicate. And I did, man. I would practice through the night, partially because it's hard to get a practice room during the day. Cause there's like 150 practice rooms for like 3000 people all trying to practice. But also like, I would just, I would practice as much as I could all night. I would record myself. I made this resolution and I really dedicated myself to this and I was like, I think i'm getting better Like i'm really working. I feel like i'm getting better and I did that for a lot of the rest of that school year

I really buckled down and I felt like I was making progress because I was putting a lot of effort into this And time and dedication and um at the end of my freshman year, I had to play a recital, which is basically you select a few pieces, you perform them. Usually it's like a solo type thing where it's like you and a piano or just you. And I had this recital and it was just like, so they could assess, my professor could assess how I was doing. And I didn't get any better. I put in all this time and effort.

It was not that I didn't follow through on doing it. I think I didn't get any better. I put in all this time and effort. It was not that I didn't follow through on doing it. Yeah. I think I didn't listen enough. Part of the problem is I approached it incorrectly, but I didn't know how else to approach it. After, you know, half a year of this, the end of my freshman year, I do the recital. The whole thing happens in the end of recital.

And my professor's like, well, you're not kicked out, but I think we need to have a talk. And I was like, was like no months of work practicing into the wee hours like hours at night until three or four in the morning all this time how is this possible and uh the next day i was scheduled to have a lesson with him i've told this story i think on the podcast before we scheduled to have a lesson and i got to my lesson you know that whole time i'm like oh god like he gave you the bad news of the recital i'm so boned what is what am i gonna do i got to the lesson and he was like let's get some lunch like let's not worry about tuba let's hang out and that

is when my professor took me to lunch and i ordered a big bowl of soup at a chinese restaurant and he told me that maybe music wasn't for me i mean that is a failure but that's not maybe the stereotypical new year's resolution where it's like you do it for two weeks and you're like oh i can't yeah yeah i really really tried no you just failed because you weren't good enough i just suck at tuba yeah man well that's the thing is like you don't necessarily suck at tuba you sucked compared to masters of tuba sure and it but even so it's one of the kind of unseen aspects of setting a goal is like just because you set the goal doesn't mean you'll get there even with hard work uh it's kind of a reality that a lot of people have to live with and it's kind of sad man are you okay yeah well i mean so i've led a charmed life and this is not some sympathy thing, but that is one of the few times in my life where I had a monumental failure happen after I felt

like I really worked and tried. Like if I had screwed around the whole time and I mean, you were there. It's not like we didn't have fun freshman year, played video games. We did all kinds of stuff, but I really did buckle down and try and change my approach to music to become better. And it just didn't work. I just didn't have it. But also like after that, after I made the decision to switch out of music and get another degree, I went on to play tuba for my entire college career, played in this great band, played some great music, like had a great time. There's an album with me on it playing tuba where Bootsy

Collins is also on the album for the title track. Like I did lots of fun, great stuff with music. I didn't have to be a master of tuba who could, who could play in a symphony orchestra. I was serviceably good and I had some fun time. So it's not like I've torn up about it, but that was pretty rough after all the hours and hours and hours and feeling like, all right, I'm learning, I'm learning how to become a real musician. And then he was just like, are you sure, man? Are you sure you want to do this? I don't know if you got it in you.

Yeah, man. Damn, dude. And what's the name of that band you were in? The Cincy Brass. They still got a website. They still play, man. I left Cincinnati in 2013. They found another guy who plays tuba.

They've been gigging. They play at Fretboard Brewery a been gigging they play at fretboard brewery a lot and they play uh Reds games they played at Oktoberfest this year they still play like within busy season they play a couple gigs a weekend sometimes so it's a great band they do a lot of covers and fun funk stuff and all kinds of stuff but yeah I should go try to watch them sometimes I'm still in Cincy yeah they're fun and also as much as that sucks I feel like it's nice that you had at least someone that was willing to step in and try to help guide you a little bit rather than just like that's his problem he'll find it figured out or he won't like it was nice today at least step then was like this really what you want like because that led

you on a different path ultimately right and it seems like you were a lot happier playing tuba for fun in that band rather than pushing for the orchestra route so i guess from my perspective it seems good does it seem good to you in hindsight i really appreciate that at the time it was it felt very defeating and for like the rest of my college career i felt like oh god i hope i make it out like i already failed yeah he sort of colored my whole experience the rest of the time with you know feeling like i already suck so whatever i'll do whatever i guess but now like yeah he could have just let me keep going i mean you have to do a couple recitals basically to graduate with a music degree you do poorly enough they will actually just kick you out they'll just be like oh terrible not good enough get out you're

done would be way worse yeah but like i respect and i appreciate that he was like maybe they were gonna kick me out and he was like let me do this in a much more respectful way so we don't destroy this poor guy who's you know been working hard and crush his whole dream i appreciate it didn't feel good at the time but yeah sometimes you need someone who can see what you're struggling with to just sit you down and be like i can see that you're really struggling how's it going how are you feeling about this you still you still think there's a right thing for you yeah because i don't think it was i don't think i would be happy if i had got a music education degree i think that's a very cool job and that's that's what mandy's parents and a lot of her family does is their music teachers it's a hard job you gotta fucking love it if you want to do that because yeah if you don't love what you're

doing kids are hard being a teacher you get underpaid you are underappreciated people are stealing your resources being an arts teacher especially no one cares because you're not a STEM teacher. It's really rough out there. Yeah. And I have a lot of friends who are in that right now fighting to get funding, fighting to give their kids, you know, fun music experience. But then kids are terrible sometimes. Yeah, it's rough.

Yeah. But yeah, I appreciate that he did that, I guess. Yeah, that's good. That's interesting. It's a failure in a sense but you still stuck to your goal and that's admirable because people fail before they even start because they choose to quit you know and that's the failure in and of itself you don't even know because you never even tried so like i encourage a lot of people out there just to try first and

then see if you failed horribly at the task that you were trying to do you might you might it happens you might fall on your face you just move on and you get back up turns out it's okay i guess for me i don't have a story quite like that but the closest i can relate is back in end of 2011 my ex who i was engaged to at the time and i split up and i was on a path to go into law school i thought i was gonna become an attorney i wanted to be like a judge i wanted to be my ultimate goal was to be a supreme court justice one day either state level or u.s supreme court i wanted to be a just lofty yeah i set small goals but i guess i didn't really know i was questioning that but i was questioning that because i was kind of dragging my feet on actually applying to law school i'd gone ahead and i'd taken the lsat i'd done okay on that i got a pretty good

score i had my like philosophy degree and stuff all wrapped up and philosophy with a moral ethics focus i think philosophy majors statistically did better on the LSAT than like any other major. So I was like, I'm in good shape for this. I'm ready. Took the LSAT, did okay. Then I just never started applying to law schools. The relationship came to a really kind of rough ending. And I remember moving back into my mom's basement and I'd graduated in 2011. So like end of the year, early 2012, I'm back in my mom's basement with no idea what i wanted for a career uh my ex and i had a house we had two dogs uh we had like this life plan we were six months out from a wedding we had actually a wedding plan we were six months away from the

wedding whenever we broke up i didn't know that god dang yep there was a wedding dress uh she'd already picked out her wedding dress and everything but i found myself back at home with house gone dogs gone my fiance gone no career aspirations and I was like this is this is rock bottom because growing up I was always one of the better students and I was always like the good kid like I had no rules I had to follow my mom told me nothing I had to do because I always just made the right choices growing up I didn't go and do drugs I didn't go like stay all out all night and do bad things or whatever I always made the right choice so I was like the the great hope of the family I was supposed to be successful and

this and that there was so much pressure unintentionally I think but there's so much pressure for me to like just succeed and here I was failing at literally everything all at once and um I remember new year's that year after college I'd quit being like during college I was not very active no uh basketball or anything like that so I remember I decided I was like okay well I'm gonna have to either give up or pick myself up and start somewhere and right now my self-image is so low I've got to do something to improve it and this is actually the last year I ever really did a new year's resolution and I remember I said I was gonna start exercising I actually followed through with it I got I had a CD player at the time and see yeah I think that there were other options out by then but i remember

i was using a cd player in 2012 yeah yes there were there were mp3 players at that point okay i'm not a big music guy in all honesty i don't listen to a lot of music i had um like a three disc cd player with like speakers set up whenever i was growing up and i had a cd player oh shit three disc cd player a changer whoa thirst and howl over here never used it dude the one that you carry in your no no no on your hip i guess it wouldn't fit in a pocket no this was a system that sat by the tv like a stereo bro oh i thought this was like a portable one you just like whip it out of your deep jean pocket no my cd player was a real basic just like it was a yellow black and silver cd player you pop it open put a disc in close it had like four buttons on it play

fast forward rewind whatever i remember um i had this like custom cd i'd burned of music that i'd probably definitely gotten all legally from one of those download sites back in like the early 2000s i remember i just popped in headphones i dropped that in my pockets and i just started running i just went out and started jogging and the first time i went out there i didn't make it very far i was just like okay let's just see how far i can go without stopping like not sprinting but just jogging i remember made it like a couple streets and i had to like stop like oh man okay then i got back home and the next day i grabbed like a couple of weights and i remember turning on like espn or something grabbed the weights i started just like there was no like specific exercise I was doing.

I was just like holding the weights out to my side, like twisting my abs. I started doing sit-ups and push-ups. I was just doing random shit. Just imagine full head of hair weighed with weights, just like randomly moving them around. Like, I lifted up. Oh yeah. This is a part of the thing. Cause when he said jogging, everybody, we were talking about before, it was like the concept of you jogging.

Wait, I can't physically picture that in my mind. I have aphantasia about that possibility. I mean, I played basketball for 13 years. I was in good shape for a while. I believe that. I believe that. I still can't picture you. But now with the weights, like that clicks, that gels, that image,

I can see you flailing with those. I remember there's got to be something good. I held them out to the side and i just watched whatever and i sat there twisting like my waist like as far into the red as i could as far to the left as i could for like 30 or 40 minutes i have no idea if it ever did anything but i did it oh my god you have shoulders for days i did sit-ups push-ups all that but mostly it was the running i started losing weight and stuff which was nice i never got back to like abs or anything but i definitely shred like 15 pounds which i need to do again now that's pretty good and i don't remember what month it was but i mean this is shortly before i was hanging out with uh our friend jesse because everyone else was kind of

out of town and you and i went to that party where we talked about youtube that was a few months after that was like during my weird exercise time uh when you launched your youtube channel and all that and then like things started to turn around i wouldn't say it was because of my new year's resolution but i think that part of the reason i even like was going out and see groups of people and stuff like that i was getting more comfortable with my body image i guess because i was shedding a little bit of that weight i just it started there it was like i was at rock bottom had nothing it's like okay well what can i control i can control trying to eat a little bit healthier and that's another weird thing is i never am a person who cares about what i eat when i was exercising regularly i found myself caring more about what

i ate because it's like i didn't want to undo the work i was putting in so it kind of went hand in hand exercise came first for me and then i started caring about my diet after speaking of jesse can you tell about what jesse said like the day after you got dumped yeah my ex is like yeah we're i want to take a break and i was like a break we're getting married like what do you mean and like you know she obviously was not having a very fun time trying to say how she felt but um it was devastating i had to go to work and i was like crying and sad and miserable tyler was working there and he like covered my shift basically for me because i was just useless and then um i went over to uh jesse's house and i was like dude i'm not doing well.

Can we just hang out, whatever, watch something? He's like, yeah, yeah, come on over. And he puts on The Office, the show The Office. And there's an episode, right? I don't remember the character's name. Andy, I think maybe? Andy Bernard. Andy Bernard.

Oh, Andy. Ed Helms plays him. Yeah, so there's an episode where he's like, I don't remember much about it. It's been forever since I've seen it. But he has like an engagement ring. And I think he gets handed the ring back and he's like well guess i'll try again or something and jesse looks at the tv looks at me like makes this face like oh it looks at the tv looks at me and he goes too soon

yeah i laughed but he's an asshole yeah no he does not wait for that kind of shit no it was like the day of the breakup it was horrible but it was hilarious too great story oh yeah yeah that's the only time i think i've ever followed through with a new year's resolution was after that i actually did exercise and stuff that's cool though like you actually did it see my my resolutions are my experiments as they usually are are never so like aspirational besides the one where i was like getting into youtube after my surgery that's the only one but i'm not gonna talk about that one i want to tell you guys about the time i tried polyphasic sleeping um because i will what you never heard

of polyphasic sleeping i remember this no this is a weird period i don't know why i come to you with all my weird things that i do i remember polyphasic sleeping was where you break your sleep up into several chunks polyphasic meaning like many phases. So there's like these different theories all the way from just like, oh, you take a nap in the middle of the day. You sleep six hours a night, 90 minute nap in the afternoon. You're good. Like in Spain, they have a siesta. That's pretty much it.

I was looking into the more extreme versions where you can try to optimize your sleep schedule. You life hack it. where you can try to optimize your sleep schedule, you life hack it. And it goes all the way from like kind of crazy to what's called the Uberman, which is like, I think it's six 20 minute naps a day, a total of two hours of sleep. It's like no one's ever achieved this.

And if they say they have, they haven't really. But I was trying this kind of three sleep cycle thing where I sleep three and a half hours at night, a 20 minute nap, and then a 90 minute nap. And let me tell you, I tried this for weeks and I consistently did it for about four weeks. I think I really tried it because they said it takes like two weeks to get into it. And I would sleep three and a half hours at night. I would get up, I would take a 20 minute nap at like 930 because then by 10, I would be and then at two o'clock i took a 90 minute nap and

by week three i was hallucinating legitimately try something like this like somewhat in the last few years this was yeah this is what i'm talking about yeah this was that that was this this was recently okay i do these things all the time like you guys gotta live i'm i'm here living my life to the fullest anyway don't do this you will not live your life to the fullest because by week three i was hallucinating not joking i stopped being able to tell when i fell asleep and when i woke up during these nap cycles in the middle of the night i had more waking nightmares where i would see shadow people and be like paralyzed in my sleep than i ever had i was relatively aware during the day though. The thing is like,

I did have more time, but my time was incredibly unenjoyable. I felt miserable. Like most of the time I would get up from the middle of the night and my body would like, it would be awake because that's kind of the thing. You train yourself to get through one sleep cycle. A sleep cycle is about three and a half to four hours and you wake up naturally. And that is true. You will do that. And it's something that humans have done in the past, but what they've done in the past is they sleep two of those chunks in the middle of the night. I was trying to hack it. So I didn't have to do that. So total sleep I was getting was about five hours and 20 minutes a night for four weeks. And by the end of it, I set the goals like, if this works, it'll be great. I hated

Existing like it was just miserable sleep was not enjoyable I didn't dream and so like sleeping just became this kind of thing that I did to get through Existing and so it just didn't work out too well for me. Lots of shadow people I like how this was prefaced with yeah, you guys need to try more stuff like this live your life to the fullest Don't try this it made my life miserable don't try this one but try more things you do do things here and there you know weird experiments i'm not messing with my sleep man i'm sleeping as much as i can each night i know i know you love sleep you love the sleep oh god i'm an insomniac so like there'll be a day where i'm tired i get up i'm tired all day and then like 10 p.m hits and i am just wired awake and then like 3 4 a.m i'm like laying in bed scrolling through

articles like trying to find something to just be boring and calm like kind of like chill out during and like it's crazy how long i can stay awake and be fine and then i'll pass out then the next day i'm miserable tired all day yeah and then i wake up in the middle of the night again just wide awake i hate it sounds like you need i don't try it though yeah well i mean it sounds like you might need to try polyphasic sleeping man yeah you should try it's really fun polyphasic sleep is really good for you yeah you need to try polyphasic sleeping my body would let me sleep 10 hours a night if i let it it does not want me to get up after an hour and a half go fuck around for four hours and take a 20 minute nap oh that's the thing bruh you know what i found is when you get up after the longer like three and a half or the hour and a half if you have a little kombucha like some warm

kombucha and some bone broth maybe and just chew on a ginger root uh really gets your body going again helps you come out of that wow but the one, what you want to do is a kombucha, apple cider vinegar, half and half shot right before the short nap. It really keeps you buzzed through the nap. Then you wake up invigorated on the other side of it. No, you're not joking. There's actually a thing that I tried, which is called the coffee nap, where you drink a cup of coffee and you take a 20 minute nap.

And then by the time you'll wake up naturally from the caffeine hitting your system and feel so refreshed. It's a natural process. I just made a bad joke and that's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's part of it. That's how terrible.

It is terrible. You wake up, your heart's racing. You go, ah, ah, ah, ah, the caffeine. Dude, dude, the caffeine sleep is fucking weird. So I like energy drinks. I don't enjoy coffee or tea. I don't enjoy the flavor, but I like caffeine and I get it through energy drinks mostly. And I have been in the place where it's like, I need to be awake, but I'm so tired because

my, it's been a long day. I didn't sleep well, whatever. And it's like the evening and I'm chugging energy drinks. Maybe i'm doing it's like a charity stream or something where i need to be awake and have energy and then the moment it ends it's like okay that's done i mean i finished the thing i can sleep now but i just had like two energy drinks in the last four hours so i'm absolutely wired out of my mind yeah and that like vibrational caffeine sleep is just terrible you like because it's like i'm so tired i lay down and my body's like oh god yes sleep let's do it and then i sleep for like 10 minutes and i wake up and it's that feeling like you wake up and you're like ah god what's happening

why am i on drugs oh wow i just had a memory crop up. Bob, do you remember the time, freshman year of college? I feel like there's infinite stories because they keep coming up. Where I chugged six blue monster energy drinks. Yeah. And two five-hour energies. Yeah. Weren't you trying to pull an all-nighter or something for some hard class or something? I was trying to pull an all-nighter for something.

I didn't make it. That's the weird thing. It's like I fell asleep. But I fell asleep but i fell asleep and then i woke up at 2 a.m with my intestines on fire i thought literally like i was about to shit out my lungs and i rushed to the bathroom and i just sit on the toilet and nothing's happening but i feel like i'm dying and now in retrospect i think i might have been having a heart attack or something of the like i legitimately thought i was dying and I was going to just die on that toilet.

And there they were going to find out. That'll happen, man. That'll happen. Yeah, no, don't. What could possibly go wrong with putting that many nutrients into your body at once? Yes, nutrients. That's what's an energy drink. They're nutritious to something.

Somebody out there. Let me read this can that I'm drinking from right now. Oh, no, it's too dark in from right now i don't know it's too dark in my office i can't read it hey the first ingredient's water that's pretty good i remember reading the ingredients of the five hour energies and i remember it's like 1400 percent of your daily recommended amount of something i don't remember vitamin b oh yeah i had the b vitamins it's a nutrient yeah oh yeah i don't think it's called medicinally a nutrient at that point. How much caffeine is in a Can be in five-hour energy. Okay, so there's a hundred milligrams of caffeine per five-hour energy. I had two of those

It's 200. There's a hundred and forty in each blue monster times six. That's eight hundred and forty I had one thousand forty milligrams of caffeine No, not do that anybody don't do that and so much b vitamin so many b vitamins like my piss must have been radioactively yellow like it glowed in the dark probably i don't think we'll ever get five hour to sponsor us dude i can't believe you survived freshman year of college i don't know either do you remember i don't remember how many it was do you remember when you shredded your own mouth to actual like visceral blood with sweet tarts that one time? We did that as a stupid video, you a-hole.

You'd already done it. No, no, no. That was with warheads and really sour stuff. Sweet tarts are not that sour, but you must have eaten six movie theater boxes of those bitches. I did, yes. I had an addiction to sweet tarts because that is what I used for the exercise.

But I've discovered that chalky candy is terrible for me, not just because I've shredded my mouth. And I've done that multiple times throughout my life. A lot. I've gotten to the point where I finally kicked sour candies as recently as like a year and a half ago because they're bad for my teeth. And I was starting

to get like enamel damage from the amount of sour that i was doing oh god i have not been able to enjoy sour candy since the sour challenge i really have not i don't blame me for that that video is on youtube for anyone that wants to see i'm still so sorry that i just felt suddenly ill right filming that guys yeah i just really felt sick i wanted to pull that same stunt but then you did it so i felt obligated to stick around that sudden illness that came about and that went away right during the filming i was like oh yeah i can hold a camera and do some stuff yeah yeah i'm fine yeah i saw you doubled over what looked like laughing but i'm sure it was dry heaving you know from your illness at our misery yeah i know super sick fun fact dear listeners storing sour stuff in your cheeks to

keep your tongue from getting burned will in fact not protect your cheeks so gross it just melts your cheeks oh what about that just melts the skin off the inside of your mouth the next day i thought i had a wrapper in my mouth and it was just the lining of my cheeks falling off so man i don't know why i was such a fucking idiot in college because when i first got to the dorm i don't know if you ever like were there when i was doing it but i was exercising in the dorm room not the incredibly high quality gym that university of cincinnati had i just decided stanky stuffy dorm room yeah and so i was making fun of weight of you moving the weights, but I was doing something similarly dumb. I only did one thing and that was like crouch down as low as I can, jump up and try to touch the ceiling. And that was my exercise. And I did it for an hour. And like, I did that for several days in

a row because like, I'm going to get in the best shape. This is how it's done it's the most efficient way i'm using all of the muscles in my body i mean that's not a bad exercise it's not a bad one no not great for your knees it's basically just plyometric like jumping but it's like what i always do whenever i pursue something is i take one good idea and i only have that and i just run with it for the rest of forever you know what i mean that's basically how i got to be able to dunk a basketball was i would jump up like hit the backboard with my hand i would just do that over and over and over again trying to like be able to jump higher and higher and higher yeah if you want to jump higher you gotta jump i guess i was just gonna say it makes me feel like an a-hole i don't know why i didn't

say asshole it's not a thing on this podcast but uh i don't think new year is like a holiday that we should celebrate oh i don't i think new year's rockin eve the thing that's on tv and all of the spinoffs of that every tv channels new year's celebration has become it starts at like 10 in the morning on new year's eve this is ryan seacrest and no one is here yet but i'm on the streets of new york and then we're gonna have a concert from the bare naked ladies and then coming up in 10 minutes i've got one of their cassette tapes with a bunch of their old songs on i grew up listening to them with my dad but who enjoys that who ladies me i'm not saying celebrating the turning of the new year with your family and friends isn't worthwhile i guess i think everyone trying to make it into a big holiday thing is just

stupid and exhausting it's always boring i don't want to watch kathy lee gifford talk shit about other celebrities i don't want to watch a ninja try and get a crowd of people who are way too old to know what the hell he's doing to try and do the stupid floss dance like none of that is interesting it's always just like if we want to watch the ball drop for two seconds put the thing on the tv and i guess we'll just watch that and it's terrible yeah it's just boring crap it's terrible i hate it but you hate that particular celebration right yeah i hate like the american version of like how we celebrate as a country with i know neither of you have but who would want to go to like times square or downtown in whatever city you live in and wedge in for six straight hours for what you can't see anything you're on

the street in the middle of a city if you're in a position where you can see the ball it's probably even more miserable because everyone's shoving and what it just seems terrible. Just get together with your family and friends and have some champagne and eat some appetizers or something and go to bed at 10 o'clock. Tell each other Happy New Year. Wake up on the first like a normal person. I just think it's a garbage holiday and everyone always always like you got to go out. Is it got to do a party? You got no, no, you don't. No, I think it's bad. I think it's dumb. You gotta do a party. You got, no, no, you don't.

No, I think it's bad. I think it's dumb. My first New Year's with Molly, we were trying different like mixers and making like different alcoholic drinks. And we found one with Hawaiian punch and I forget what we put with the wine punch, but it tasted really good. And she downed like three or four glasses of it.

And by the time we got to the ball dropping, I swear to God, it was like a minute before the ball was supposed to drop. She ran to the bathroom and I went and followed. i was holding her hair as she vomited during the countdown god is she gonna be mad you filmed this story she's gonna hate that i'm telling it probably somebody's in trouble she was just like five four three it was so gross it was just like pure hawaiian punch coming out it was so nasty she's gonna be so pissed at you and then like she felt so bad she went down like went to sleep later

and uh my friend jared came into town he like knocked on the door and i had to go answer i was like hey you have to leave i can't say hi to you molly's sick downstairs oh wow that's oh that's so you know for some reason that brought up a memory of like uh not naming names my high school girlfriend uh you know wait you knew her yeah it was new year's one night and it was like i guess it must have been new year's of 2007 i guess and the ball's dropping and you know in my experience like or what i assumed was that you know oh when the ball drops you you kiss and i remember like okay all right this is gonna be great like this was my first relationship so don't judge me too hard on this but it was like that's that was the idea behind it and i remember five

four three and i look around and all the other couples are getting ready to kiss their significant other i'm like oh boy here we go and i turn and look and she's like running off with the phone on her ear because she's trying to call her friend like for new years and she just like takes off that way and it's like two one and then the ball jumps and i'm just like oh no i don't know why that reminded me of that that's so sad you know not that many names it could have been any molly that i was talking about too sure sure sure no that this is not related to those but this brought up a memory for me amandie's birthday is christmas eve her birthday is on the 24th we usually celebrate it on christmas eve but one year early on when we were together, I was like, we should celebrate your birthday on New Year's Eve. I think it was

her 21st. It was like the first year we could legally drink at a bar or whatever. We had a place where actually the Cincy Brass played a lot. It was like a nice bar in Cincinnati, Arnold's. It's like one of the oldest bars in Cincinnati. Super cool place. And I called and I was like, I want to make a reservation. I called way early. I was like, I want to make a reservation. I called way early. I was like, I want to make a reservation with you guys for New Year's Eve, right? We want to have dinner and drinks and do New Year's at your bar. And they were like, cool, cool, cool. New Year's Eve for dinner. Cool. And they put it down and I was like, yes, I can't believe you had tables available. And they're like, yep, thanks. Bye. And I didn't think about it again. And I was

like, cool, we're doing New Year's Eve at this awesome bar where they have this party. And like, maybe this will be fun. I usually don't enjoy New Year's, but it was just going to be a group of friends celebrating Mandy's birthday. Super fun. And we get there. Our reservation was pretty late.

It's for like nine o'clock or something like that. Like pretty late dinner. We get there and we're like, sweet, we're here. Let's party it up. And as we're sitting down, the person who was seating us was like, just so you know, you have to be out here by like 11 o'clock. And I was like, what? And they're like, yeah, you don't have a new year's reservation. You just have like a dinner reservation.

So you guys got to be out of this table by 11 so that the next reservation come in. And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? When I called and said, I want a new Year's reservation to celebrate New Year's at your bar. What did you think I meant? And so we didn't end up celebrating at that bar. It was actually a really fun night. We had fun. Mandy had fun. Some fun drinks. Her first drinks at a bar sort of deal.

And it turned out great. But like restaurants, man, what did they think? And also who eats dinner at nine o'clock? That's not a dinner time. That's a New Year's Eve time. I don't know. You go somewhere at 9 o'clock to get drunk at that place and hang out for a while. Hey, 9 o'clock East Coast is only 6 o'clock West Coast.

I rationalize that all the time. All right. It was East Coast. Why don't you just move over here, Wade? Why don't you just move here? I'd have to move to Hawaii for my time schedule to make sense. Why don't you just not do that anymore? Yeah.

Why don't you just live Hawaiian time where you are? I i do you don't follow the sun oh i do i very gladly live hawaiian time my logic was backwards on that i deduct three points from myself i apologize you're the host i did it anyway i get to say oh anyway yeah i've got some gripes about new year's yeah i can tell suffice it to say yeah well i, it's not really for everybody. I think a lot of people look too forward to the next year and not reflect on what they did wrong in the previous year. I know that Resolucents are like, okay, I'm going to break this bad habit,

but they don't break it down to like, okay, but all the things that I did wrong and all the whys, why I didn't. Like, if you don't fix those, you're never going to fix it when coming up. Like, it's only so much that willpower can keep you through and going forward in something. You got to like identify like why the root cause of it have a really strong golden mind to be able to push through that so it's not really for everybody

i think people look at the new year they're just like oh okay it's a new beginning we just put this year behind us we move on fresh start whereas realistically it's just the earth moving around and yesterday even though it was last year was still just yesterday nothing was technically just different on its own you have to make change happen it doesn't just happen on its own exactly wow yeah that's very wise that come from your degree you learned that in college yeah in philosophy we studied new year's resolutions a lot that's really impressive i'll give you a point for that morals and ethics of new year's resolution unless you're lying plato and aristotle had a lot to say about him who was your professor for talking down to

others about simple concepts oh uh dr fuck your face i think was his name oh i had i had regions yeah he was cool f-u-k-u-r-f-a-i-c-e ah well this has been an enlightening discussion but i feel like there's still untapped potential i feel like i'm the only one turning up the stupid things that they've done in terms of goal setting and i feel like you guys have some dumb ones some like maybe vain ones maybe uh slightly embarrassing goals or stuff like that yeah gotta be i can't be the only one i do have a new year's resolution this year that i've thought of during this episode that i'm going to try to follow okay all right so rewinding earlier in 2021 or late 2020 i can't remember uh i was biting into an airhead and i chipped my front tooth i went to the dentist had it fixed

uh whenever the car got hit in march i must have bit down funny and i rechipped the same tooth had to get it fixed about a month ago i had a hangnail and i was like man i've not bit my nails in a while but i miss it i could just get this hangnail, this one hangnail. What could possibly go wrong? I bite the hangnail and I rechip my fucking tooth. Oh, no. So to prevent myself from having to pay a fourth time to fix this stupid thing, I am not biting my nails next year, no matter what.

Wow. I thought you were just going to say you're not biting anything ever. I'm not biting anything ever again. I'm getting applesauce and thicket for me. I'm going Dexter's Laboratory style. I'm getting an iv of applesauce put directly into my veins cool cool cool i'm only drinking through straws nothing's touching my teeth in fact i'm just gonna remove them all but no i'm gonna seriously try to stop biting my nails can't chip them if they're safely in a cabinet yeah growing up my grandma had this like nasty clear like nail polish stuff because i've always been a nail biter and she would like paint my nails with this stuff

and you go to bite your nails and it tasted really really awful it didn't necessarily stop me but i regretted it every time i bit so maybe i didn't try something like that again just wade sitting in class in like middle school and like yeah it's so gross i hate this I hate this. Maybe I'll get like a little shot call and have Molly buzz me every time she sees me biting my nails or something. I don't know. That would be fun. Can we get a shot caller that people can control over the internet and then you stream

and then they shock you while you're streaming? Oh, hell yeah. That'd be great. Absolutely you can. And I know you can. Don't ask me how I know you can, but you can. Alright, well ask me how I know you can't but you can Alright, well, I know what I'm getting wait for Christmas I know a mark needs to clear his fucking internet search history. No, no, no No, when I die that's gonna get released to the public in a book horn hub calm shock collar over internet videos

Okay, there's another embarrassing thing that I in Bob do you have another That's the one. Okay, there's another embarrassing thing that I, and Bob, do you have another embarrassing one? I'm trying to think of like, I don't have embarrassing resolutions. I have embarrassing things that I've decided I really needed to do. I love that.

Let's go with that. This is not an ears resolution, but at some point in my college career, I drank a lot. Drinking was how we socialized and I never drank underage. I would never do that. But once i was 21

anything goes having fun pretty much always just stayed inside with friends and like played beer pong or card games or something but one night i just decided i was sitting there we had a brand new i had gotten a brand new fresh handle of uh cheap vodka and i was just like i bet i could drink this whole thing oh no and everyone And everyone was like, you absolutely cannot. You psychopath. A handle of vodka is a liter and a half of vodka. You cannot drink that. You would die.

And of course they said that out loud to me. And I was like, all right, I'll do it. All right. You talk me into it. I'll do it. Yeah. And I wasn't even a big, I'm more of a whiskey drinker. I enjoy whiskey probably the most, but vodka is real easy to do shots of.

And I just started in no mixers. You got to save that stomach volume so you can hold a liter and a half of liquid in your system. No water either. That's for idiots. Yeah. You don't want anything watering it down. No way.

And I was about, I don't know, halfway into it and having a hell of a night. And it was honestly not that wild of a night. At some point I stopped trying to get up off the couch. So I was just on the couch and I set the bottle down on the table and someone walked up and poured a shot out of it while I wasn't looking. And I looked back as they were doing the shot and I was like, no, that was mine. What are you doing? And it was just like, you're not going to, I'm just helping you. You're not going to drink this whole thing. And God damn it. If that a-hole hadn't taken that one shot out of that handle of vodka i would have drunk the whole damn thing because i it took a long time like i started around maybe

dinner time and i think i drank until oh two or three in the morning or something i drank the whole night at that point you just got to start over right yeah like i don't know if it counts as all at once if it took that long because it was it was like anyway i could have drank the last shot so that counts all right i count that mentally why in the hell would i have decided that i needed to do that like ever i don't remember a lot of it it was fun i think probably and i had a hangover the next day because sure but like why would i do that i don't know about you but i know whenever i was like younger teens and early 20s and stuff i still had that like feeling of invincibility like i really hadn't been through enough where i was like yeah okay i can permanently injure myself or die or whatever.

Like that's never going to happen to me. Like, sure. I still know what happens, but it's not gonna happen to me. Yeah. I could drink this whole bottle. I know it could kill somebody, but I could handle it. Yeah. It was like that mentality.

It's the feeling of invincibility of being younger. I guess. I don't know. Yeah, I guess. There was a definite point where I used to tell that story when I was still in college, we would be drinking and someone would be like, bro, are you good? And I'd be like, man, I've drank a whole handle of vodka.

And everyone would be like, whoa, no, you did not. And I'd tell the story. There was a moment where that came up and I said out loud somewhere, I was like, yeah, I once drank a whole handle of vodka and everyone was like, wow, are you okay? And I was like, no, it's a long time ago. I was like, yeah, i wouldn't do that now suddenly this story is really embarrassing what happened

it was definitely a turning point i think it had to do with how old i was i don't know yeah not a good story anymore i used to be so proud of that in college that's cool that's cool man all right i have one last little embarrassing anecdote that I've never told any of you guys. Oh, shit. I don't think I've ever spoken this out loud. But there was a time in my life when I had a theory that even though everyone was making fun of it, that the shake weight was actually effective. And so for like two months, I had a daily shake weight exercise regimen. I love it where i would i would do a minute on

like 30 seconds off and a minute on 30 seconds off i'd do left hand only right hand only high low i had the whole thing and i did it for two months and let me tell you that shit did nothing and i promised myself i would never tell a soul because at one point in the middle of my exercise, I looked at myself in the mirror with the shake weight, just really cranking it up and down. And I just looked at myself. I'm like, what am I training for here? What's going on? What's going on here? So I am one of the few people that legitimately tried to do exercise on the shake weight.

And I tried for way longer than I ever should but i set a goal i had a hypothesis and i tested it and boy was i wrong but i tried it and therefore i'm brave and i'm strong oh you're so brave and strong did you keep it in your shame weight under your bed hidden away location you didn't like have it sitting out on a rack i assume you had like you'd go dig around somewhere secret to get your shake weight out or when no one's looking well you know you're not wrong you're not wrong well you know it's okay it's all right you know it's whatever i always like to imagine that shake weights caught on and like you go you go to like one of those gyms where there's just a bunch of huge dudes just ripping huge weights on everything yeah there's like

different size of shake weights and some just absolutely out of his mind muscular guy walks up to like the heaviest shake weights that looks like like 250 pound shake weights picks him up and gets him up over his head and it's just like and guys are behind him like get it bro five more come on and it like it's like a thing like super serious the entire gym is shaking from the vibrations of the oscillations of it they have a special isolating platform where you do the heavy shake weight so you don't fuck with everything else that's going on in the gym at a certain point all the shake weights in the gym converge to like a constructive oscillation and the whole thing crumbles.

There's one dude who's obsessed with finding the resonant frequency that all the shake weights share. He just goes up there and is like messing around. And at some point, everything just starts going crazy. Shake weights are falling off the racks. Mirrors come crashing. Protein powder is spilled everywhere. Oh, good stuff. Look, I didn't't do it so i'm not in the exact same boat as you but i did have that thought uh-huh like it's not that it wasn't funny every time i

see someone using a shake weight it's funny but i every time i saw it also the second thought i have is like i bet that's pretty hard because like that's a weird motion and you you could hold it in different places to work different muscles and you just go back and forth and like i bet that works that was my theory i never understood why dudes use the shake weight you can literally just masturbate a lot and you're doing the same thing just use your dick you can't masturbate at all angles you're right you can't your arm is permanently set in its relationship to where you masturbate on your body just Just bend your dick. Find another dick.

Someone else's dick in there. You get any angle. Yeah, there you go. Hoist him up. Any old dick you want. You and a friend can like help each other out. What do you think, gym bros or four? Jim Bonin.

And with that last pun, we're going to bring this episode to a close. Oh, that was a winner. Thank you, everybody. That was a winning pun. That was a winner. All right, let's That was a winning pun. That was a winner. All right, let's see if it was enough to get you the win. All right. It added at least points.

We had an interesting discussion. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Remember, your New Year's resolutions are either meaningless or incredibly meaningful. I don't know. We didn't decide anything here. I'm going to tabulate the points, and I will tell you this is the closest game we've actually ever had. Wow. Legitimately.

I have a system. Bob and Wei, you both started out with uh let me tabulate bob's first five points for the main story three for the additional conversation two for an anecdote three points for that spicy take on uh new year's being bullshit like i i like the chutzpah and then it was various anecdotes one more story and then uh it was an anecdote story anecdote uh and then wade you had five points for story and then it was an anecdote story anecdote And then Wade you had five points for story three for a follow-up discussion five points for Molly's wrath As I know that was gonna roast you left three points for story two points for a follow-up it is 19 for Bob 18 for Wade. Yes, I went nope. You were very Less than 80 less than 19. win nope you were very close less than 18 less than 19 yes it was very close i was

trying to be very systematic with it and with that last one bob you eked it out with a two-point gain hell yeah yeah oh i got a bonus point just now well the counting stopped before so i apologize wade so congrats too bad do i get it for next time can i carry it over uh we'll leave that up to wade or i guess that's up to me isn't it yeah so bob any closing thoughts about new year's and resolutions in general and goal setting uh this has made me rethink my opinion on new year's resolutions maybe i'll set some this year that's cool all right and not do them very quickly and then get back to regular life protect your teeth they're expensive to fix yes absolutely all good advice thank you everybody so much for listening go to the distractible subreddit for these follow-up polls so that we can know what you do with your

resolutions uh we have a store with merch now store.distractiblepodcast.com go check that out and remember to follow and subscribe this podcast wherever you're listening to you can find us on our various social medias and YouTube channels and live streaming platforms, wherever they may be. We've mentioned them before. Go listen to other episodes where we actually say them. Thank you. And as always, no.

I'll see you in the next podcast. No, no, no, no, no, no. Bye-bye. No. Podcast out. Oops. God, that's muscle memory. Good save.

Good save.