Comedy Centered

Hello. Hello, everyone. Hello, cadrites, cadradians, cadrespearions. I'm still. I don't know that we've had a definitive answer on what our collective is called, but hey, man, if you're tuning in, wherever you're tuning in, this is comedy centered. I'm tiffany Norton, your host, comedian, complainer, and yeah, just an all around ne'er do well. I'm just kidding. I try to do well. I don't really know what a ne'er do well is, but it sounds bad. Hey, thank you for joining. I medina by medina, maybe jules.

What's up? How's dry july? You gotta drop it in the comments, girl. I made it. I made it through the 4 July weekend, which was not easy. Actually, a little harder than I had anticipated. It's not my first rodeo staying sober through fourth, but I told you guys, I think I alluded to it. Whatever I'm going through. Hi, honey. I think I'm going well, I just went through a breakup anyway, I don't want to talk about a bunch of personal stuff. Right, but what do you normally do when you break up with someone?

You go up, oh, you did good. You're doing good, Jules. All right, all right. Team drag July. But what do you normally do? You get dressed up. At least you're. If you're me, I don't want, I don't know what everybody else does, but once you've cried all day in your bed and once you eat all the ice cream, you're like, whatever. I'm gonna do my hair, makeup and go out. I'm gonna meet some people. Um, but unfortunately, where do they all hang out? At the bar. So, um, the community where I live and I just moved to, I've got some people who live in the area that I knew before I moved there.

Oh, Jules, was yesterday hard, right? The Saturday was. It was like, harder than the fourth. I don't know. I don't know if it was. If it was rainy where you were, but it was rainy here, and so they, like, called off the fireworks. So Thursday wasn't even hard for me. It really wasn't. But yesterday was definitely hard to stay away from the drinking. Cindy Joy, thanks for joining in and chiming in. Hi. Hi. We're just catching up on was there any struggle if your commitment was to doing dry July or you've already made a commitment to yourself that you want to just abstain from alcohol for a while and see how you feel?

You know, yesterday was hard, and plus, I just went through, like, I was saying, I went through the breakout, and a guy that I used to date. Date might even be a little bit of a strong word. We went out several times. He plays the band. The band was playing down the street. My girlfriend calls me from the boat. We're out on the river. Would you like to come out on the river with us and go down to Stillwater and go drinking? Now, what I did instead, and, like, I, like, kind of like, what Cadre is as well.

For me, what I did instead was I volunteered. I volunteered to help with the parade that they have here in town, and that was great, because they needed me down there at, like, 10:00 in the morning. I'd help hand out t shirts, I'd help hand out pamphlets and help with organizing and all that stuff. So I really felt like I was still like. And I got to walk in the parade, right? Which was cool, but it, uh. I'm not famous or anything, you know, they weren't waving at me, but it's fun. It's fun. It's fun to strut down the little street sometimes.

Like. But, yeah, at least for me, I was last night when people were blowing up my phone and like, oh, just come down, come down. And in my mind, I'm like, I can. I can. I. It's not like I haven't been around alcohol before. It's not like I can't I go and join them. But there is just that little whatever, whatever I call her Patricia. That's my nickname for the woman who lives in my head, who has terrible ideas. She's like, you know, you could just go down there for a little while, just do a hot laugh.

And I was like, I better just stay. So I did. So I did, and I thought about our time that we were going to have together today, but some of my time spent last night not super productive, obviously. All of us, like, our Cadre. I'm assuming other people in the chat or in the group have heard of a thing called TikTok. Have you heard of the TikTok? I'm a late adopter. I did not get into the tick tock deal. Tick, tick. TikTok, TikTok. I miss it through the pandemic, all that stuff. I don't know. I'm kind of like an old man with technology.

Like, ugh, get off my lawn. I don't want to learn something new, you know? But I really have kind of found it interesting, and honestly, I've only been playing with it for a couple of months, and I want to get my followers up. Right. So I was thinking, what's a good way to get your followers up? Who's going to follow me back? Psychics. Psychics will follow you back if you are. That is a little, that's a, that's a hack. You're trying to build your social media presence, and you want to get more followers.

Follow a bunch of psychics. Okay. But now, because I've done this, all I get is psychics. I get psychics all the time. And. But they, they also comment on your, they also comment on your posts, often saying they have secret messages for you for 299 or 499. But it's interesting because there's this through this whole deal, right? I've come across a lot of these now. I kind of understand the hustle right behind it. And here's the thing. I love tarot. I have a tarot. I have my tarot deck right here.

But I am not a believer in that you should practice tarot or any type of magical practices or anything on anybody else or for money. That's, to me, not ethical. Right. Well, the other thing that's on TikTok is they're not as easy to distinguish as a tarot reader. There are a lot of people on TikTok that sound like they're giving decent advice and you can hire them as a coach. Not saying they're not good coaches. I will say, because, I mean, I don't even consider what I'm doing here, me being a coach.

I didn't go through a coaching accreditation program at all, you know, so I have a minor in psychology from a state college 20 years ago. Okay. I've never really thought that those were morals to rest on as far as accomplishments, on, like, giving people advice about their life. But I didn't realize after I investigated some of these coaches on TikTok, I am actually significantly more qualified than they are to be giving people advice. Right. And I think you'll notice that. That's why I try to always center my talks around myself and how it applies to me, because I never want that distinguished.

I never want anybody to walk away from something that I'm discussing and with the opinion that I think I know something I don't. The only thing I'm ever trying to figure out is this. That's it. So these are my experiences. Stuff I do. Take it or leave it. It may work, it may not. I don't even know if the things I'm doing for myself right now actually work. I don't know if I'm gonna maintain sobriety. I don't know if all that's gonna work out. I don't know. You don't? But what, I guess, what would.

What? I don't try to drop a lot of language, but what p***** me off when people legitimately need someone to listen, legitimately need help, and someone's like, oh, I'm here for you. I would definitely help you fill my cup first. That's not giving. Okay? That's not giving. A good person. Well, person who actually works is a lightworker, someone who really, actually cares about humanity and is not just in it to make money, more than likely won't operate like that, you know? So beware of TikTok coaches and actually, couple the psychics have been kind of right on about a few things.

I'm just saying it also flies in the face of everything else I talk about on this space, too, is like, I talk about that there's no free will. If there's no free will, maybe if they can't scientifically proofread will exists. Do my tarot cards actually work? Probably not, right? But they make me feel better, and they make me ask myself questions. They make me ask myself questions I will never think to ask. And isn't that really the point? You know, doesn't really matter beyond that. What questions have you asked yourself today?

Like, really asked, you know? So I had a couple of other thoughts. Oh, my God, time was so fast. Okay, so, let's see here. Oh, yeah. So, I'm still reading this book that I tell you guys about, uh, determined. And I have it right here. I have it with me this time, if you want to pick up a copy. I I get no money. I get no endorsement money. I mean, so much highlighter and dogmarked pages in this baby. It's fantastic. It is not necessarily easy to read. I'm not the smartest, but I do it in the morning.

I read it in the morning when I'm sure, you know, after I've had my ADHD medication. Right. But kind of returning and talking about as we're going through the experience, because all we are, and we're all human beings here, man. We're all here. We're all out here just winging it every day. Okay? Like, so. But when we, as humans, don't recognize the humanity and others a lot of times, because our humanity hasn't necessarily been recognized at some point, right? So, like I said, I've been going through this book, and I'm wrestling with it because on some level, it makes so much sense that so little of who we actually think we are is actually just stuff that I don't know.

I mean, he's got an analogy in here that most of. Most of the stuff we've got going on our head are old shopping lists, old tires, refrigerator cables, and there's all this stuff. But I'm still attached to my concept of free will. I'm still attached to the idea that I'm really actually the one in charge. But he's got this graph in here that I thought was kind of great. And graphs are nothing awesome to share in a medium like this. So I'll just kind of. It's a pretty easy one, but I'll just kind of highlight it.

But one more. But I guess what I want to say is, well, here, I'll do the thing first, and then I'll say the thing. See, adhd. Okay, so this chart he's talking about the concept of. We're still trying to address how much of us and how much we express ourselves and how many of the things that we go through our decisions through, throughout the day, throughout our lifetimes, are based on us powering down individually before each one of those decisions, calculating how it may or may not work out, checking inside with ourselves, checking with our limbic system, seeing if we like the decision, and then acting right.

We could never get anything done if we did that every single time. So that's a little bit of our conversation from last week, but it's important, kind of, for what are you thinking? So it's pretty easy to. We all can find examples like Oprah and all that stuff. People have been highly successful, and then they maybe had a really rough childhood, right? Didn't have a lot of. A lot of the things that you would normally think of or associate with success. Right? So what he does, he's got a little chart.

One side is biological traits, biological stuff, stuff you cannot control. Okay? This is just you born. This is your biological stuff. And the other column, it's how you choose to react to your biological stuff. Okay? So on one hand, biological stuff, you the human. And I'm reading this from the book. I'm not saying this is me personally right now. You'll understand my students, but having destructive sexual urges. Okay, that is under the column of biology. If someone is having. If someone listening, if someone is experiencing.

Having disturbing sexual urges on a biological level, the question becomes like, okay, so you're having this happen, or are you perhaps a natural marathoner? Because you have a superior body, your body is able to process oxygen more effectively or you have a larger lung capacity or longer legs or whatever would work. Right. What do you. If you're biologically not that bright? Yours truly. Okay. What if you're biologically born with a proclivity towards alcoholism? Or what if you were born with a beautiful face?

Right. These are biological things you don't change naturally. Good at marathoning, having weird thoughts about, you know, all that kind of stuff. Biology. Right. Okay. So now let's leap over to the other corner. This person having these biological experiences has a choice in free will, right? Okay. Having destructive sexual urges. So the choice is, do you resist acting upon them? Being a natural marathoner? Do you fight through the pain not being all that bright? Do you triumph by studying extra hard?

Having a proclivity towards alcoholism? Do you order ginger ale instead? Having a beautiful face? Do you resist concluding that you're entitled to people being nice to you because of that? The larger point being, you cannot do anything about the biological stuff. You can choose what to do with your biological stuff. Right. This is a very gross and extreme example, but it's one I think will make sense. One can't necessarily. One cannot choose to be born. Not a pedophile, but someone can choose to not act on it.

Hurt children choose, but the biological inclination is there. And what do you do about it? What do you do when doing the right thing is the hardest thing? And you have all of this to unravel and work against those, you know, we all know the examples of like, you know, like it takes the 30 days to break a habit. Well, it might take 30 days to break a habit of biting my nails, but it does not take 30 days to break a habit of not being. Not being great at expressing what I need because I didn't feel safe doing so, you know.

So I encourage you to think about the biology that was handed to you and what you can choose. And again, I mean, the free will conversation, I don't. But you absolutely can make a decision and decide. But I will say this. If there is free will, then there also must exist free won't. And I had to. I had exercised a lot of free don't go to the bar last night. So, you know, sometimes you have to just know your own. Your own list of the biology, your list of things working against you. Sydney Joy, you're so cute.

I owe Sydney joy. Hey, Cindy Joyous. Right now it's Jules and I. We're doing dry July together. If you want to be on the team, you can just say yes in the chat put you on the list. We're all group. We're not drinking for the month of July. I mean, I'm probably not gonna drink after July, either, but we got. Okay. And I'm not kidding. Like, it flashed through my mind last night. I was like, yeah, but I got Cadre because I was my. My little was like, let's go out. Let's go out. Let's go out. You know?

So I didn't. But the accountability of this group, the accountability of Cadre, that's that. That canceled that thought out for me. So sometimes it's something just that small, making that commitment. I'm just not gonna do it for a month. You know that in dry July, like I said before, is one of the ones I'm passionate about, because when I first started exploring, can I do this? Can I quit drinking? I'm not gonna tell anybody. I'm certainly not going to an AE meeting, for God's sakes. So I just told everybody I'm doing dry July, when I was going to barbecues and stuff, and I had to go to a wedding and all that, and people were asking, like, no, no health challenge.

Dry July. But so healthy. Didn't know. I just didn't want to stop pulling out my own hair, drinking myself, crying all night, you know? I don't even know that, especially at a wedding. Let's hear that. All right, you guys. Hey, hope you had a great independence weekend. This has been comedy centered, and, oh, we love you, too, Cindy joy. Cindy Joy. Think about it. My Tiffany Norton is my name on there, on the groups. And I had a post earlier today. Throw your name in there. Throw your name on one of the posts.

I read all my posts. I always get back to every comment that's made. So if you want to join our team, you can. All right, you guys have a great night. Happy Sunday. Hopefully, your boss is super hungover tonight watching fireworks, and he comes in super late. Is yours.