New Things

Posted on by mattfred

[Note: This post is inspired by MsKristina85 and a comment she made on my last post.  Thanks!]

I love to try new things.  There are so many experiences out there that might seem weird or dangerous or even disgusting.

I’ve gone skydiving.

skydiving

I’ve dressed up as the strange buffalo-headed god from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

buffalo dude

And I’ve even spent quality time introducing hay bales to a makeshift flame thrower.

FIYAH

But up until recently (like about a week ago), I always thought that I’d hate the taste of V8.  Yes, the vegetable juice drink.  I think I tried it once when I was pretty young, and I just didn’t like it then.  So the whole time I imagined that it was some horrible dreck that overly healthy people choked down and then went about their day dreaming about donuts.

Some folks had been coming in to the gas station after exercising and buying a small bottle of Spicy Hot V8.  That piqued my interest.  I like spicy food, and I asked them if it even tasted good.  They seemed somewhat offended.  Why would anyone buy something that didn’t taste good?  They confirmed to me that it was, in fact, yummy.

So I took the plunge.  Later in the shift I bought a bottle of it.  I opened it and took a sip.  HOLY CRAP.  It’s really good!  Why had I thought that V8 was disgusting this whole time?  It was because of a childhood bias against it.  My tastes had changed.

It’s good to step back and analyze yourself sometimes.  Maybe some of your beliefs are unfounded.  Maybe you’ve trained your mind against (or for) something for so long that you’ve forgotten why you think that way.  If you periodically take account of your own thoughts, you’ll refine the definition of You.  You’ll make yourself more in tune with how you really want to be.

So go ahead and try something new today, even if you think you might not like it.

5 thoughts on “New Things”

    1. As you can see from the picture, it is really fun. It’s very different than what I imagined. I actually have a bit of a fear of heights, but when looking down from an airplane, my brain didn’t even register it as ‘high’. It didn’t seem real. I thought I’d be petrified, but I was strangely fearless.

      All I did was kneel next to the open door and tip over. I felt the sensation of falling for a few seconds, but then terminal velocity kicked in and I really only felt the air pushing up against me, sorta like I was lying on a fluffy couch. Falling through the air at 120 mph is really loud, too.

      I also distinctly felt the temperature of the air change. It was cold at 14,000 feet, but it was stratified so precisely that I was shocked to feel the immediate transition into warm summer air.

      After a minute of falling, the parachute opened, feeling like a giant yanking me up by the collar. Then it was absolutely peaceful silent. I was in a hammock in the sky. I could steer and look down at the tiny cows in the field. I was even able to spot my wife who had jumped a few seconds before I did (we decided to do this for our 3rd anniversary).

      Landing is like jumping down from a few feet in the air. You might stick the landing, you might tumble, you might skid (like I did), but it’s mostly harmless.

      I’ve had people ask why I would jump out of a perfectly good airplane. My answer is that it wasn’t a perfectly good airplane. It was held together with tape. Literally. I’m glad I had a parachute.

      Long story short, I think you should totally try skydiving. It’s something you can scratch off your bucket list, it isn’t too super expensive, and the whole thing is exhilarating.

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  3. Prunes are like that for people too. Not just for old people guys!

    I love doing new things, trying new things, but I still hate tomato juice.

    Now let’s go try deep sea fishing and see how long it takes for me to get pulled overboard.

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Published by mattfred

I wrangle molecules.