 Today's video is sponsored by Shadow's Edge, which is a game I'm very excited to tell you about as it deals directly with building mental health and perseverance. But first, let's dive into the video. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, delightful, and talented internet friends. How many of you are extraordinarily concerned that I am holding a hot coffee cup near expensive electronics? Yeah, me too. I'm just gonna set this down. Welcome back to my channel. It is lovely to see you here. Now, the one thing you need to know heading into this video is that I am not opposed to a good old-fashioned pity party from time to time. I say that as a joke, but in all seriousness, I sometimes think that things like grief and sadness and anger over losses in our lives are downplayed because of, you know, always being positive, which is not a psychologically healthy thing. I think it's important to take time to grieve, to feel what you're feeling. And sometimes in the process of recognizing losses, there can be a sense of self-pity that comes bubbling up along with that. And I found myself yesterday, like, throwing a full-blown, all-members-invited pity party sitting in a lodge up in the mountains of Colorado. I don't want to brag, but I was partying pretty hard, sinking into thoughts of, I hate this. Why me? I just want to be normal. I'm so tired of being in pain. Why do I have to have a stupid prosthetic leg? If you're new to my channel, I'm up below the knee amputee. Proof is in the pudding. Proof is in the picture, actually. I lost my leg about two and a half years ago. And ever since then, I've been trying new activities, like going to the ninja gym and rock climbing, and most recently, snowboarding. And so for the second time ever in my life, we went up to Copper Mountain, Colorado to go snowboarding. And I was pretty jazzed about this because I learned the basics with my friend Noah Elliott about a month and a half ago, and I was ready to put these into practice. But the day did not exactly go as expected. I was able to do a few runs very slowly, mind you. There was lots of falling down. The tailbone is a bit sore today. My leg in my prosthetic socket was hurting a lot more than I expected it to, but by one o'clock, I felt like I was really getting the hang of it. And so I head down the mountain one more time. And about halfway down the mountain, my calf cramps, and it cramps really hard. So if you're a two-legged and have ever had a calf cramp, you know they're not fun, but it does get exponentially worse when your calf is a calf that is stuck in a prosthetic socket that you cannot get out because you are stuck in snow clothes and you have no way of stretching it out or massaging it till you get all the way to the end of the hill and take all your snow clothes off so you can get to your leg. And that was the situation I found myself in. So I unbind my boots really quickly. I sit down on my snowboard like it's a surfboard and surf down the mountain sitting down. I guess you technically also surf standing up, but that's beside the point. Made it to the lodge as quickly as I could, limped in there, took off all my winter clothes, was able to access my leg, get it off. And as I was sitting there and massaging my little leg and drinking Gatorade and water and doing all the right things, I was on the edge of tears because all I could think is I hate this. I hate the fact that my body can so easily flip a switch and go from totally fine to you are not doing anything else today. I hate the fact that I have to get to the lodge to be able to like take my clothes off basically so I can access my leg so I can get it off to like get out of pain. Like it's such a hassle. It's exhausting. Everybody else I know is still on the mountain boarding and getting better and just having a great time. And here I am just sitting in the lodge sad by myself. I'm so tired of this. This shouldn't be the case. And it was a very, very victim-y, poor-me-why-me kind of mindset, which again, I think has a place in certain situations. But as I sat there longer, I began sinking and sinking and sinking. And right behind me was a wall of windows and I could see that it began to snow, just these beautiful, huge Colorado mountain flakes and the landscape and the view were gorgeous. But I was just sitting there being so mad that I couldn't do the one thing I wanted to do and thinking about how unfair that was. And not long after, Brian and the people we were with showed up and we went to go get some food and I was still in this headspace of just like, huh, right? Like I didn't want to talk to anyone really. I didn't want to smile. I didn't want to make conversation. I just wanted to cry. And we're walking through this gorgeous landscape outside after a long and fun day. And here I am just pouting really. But the more I found myself in that headspace, the more I began to realize how silly it was that I was allowing that to suck all of the joy out of the rest of my day. And I don't want to sound like all woo-woo or anything, but I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that the world is such a huge place filled with so many diverse things, diverse people, diverse experiences, things I've never even heard of. There are worlds of learning and subjects that I know not a damn thing about. There are so many things to try and do. And even if I wanted to, I would never be able to try them all because we live in this incredible planet with incredible humans who, you know, are troublesome from time to time. But I almost found myself pity being overwhelmed by this sense of amazement and awe of all of the things that I could still do. And I hope you understand that I'm not saying any of this to like shame myself for feeling bad. Feelings of loss and grief. And you know, I want things to be easier and I'm grieving the fact that they aren't. I'm grieving the fact that I've had to go through this and then it's different all the time, all that. Like that's valid. Those are very valid feelings. It's okay to feel those. But it just became so clear to me in that moment that I was just sitting in these feelings of self-pity. It wasn't like I was feeling grief to process through it. I was just in the goo of a full blown pity party and I realized how counterproductive to life that is. If you've watched my channel for a little while, I've been talking about this experience of trying to adjust to life when everything isn't traumatic. For so many years of my life, there have been like metaphorical explosions going off around me pretty constantly, be it more surgeries or health issues or actual trauma, emotional, physical. I feel like I've been like in survival mode for so long and I'm finally coming out of that and trying to learn how to enjoy life, which is a lot harder than it sounds. Like actually finding joy in things and learning that that can be safe in some moments and that it's okay is very difficult. But I'm taking steps slowly but surely to get there and the realization in that moment at the pinnacle of my rager of a pity party, it was just so clear to me that I didn't need to be so upset about this one tiny little thing that I couldn't do in that moment. When the world is so full and I feel like this is something I've been learning for a long time because there have been other things and other activities in my life that have been taken away from me that I'm no longer able to do and that hurts, that's hard. Like when you find something you love and that you're passionate about you want to do that thing and I'm a pretty passionate person but even when those passions are taken from us or lost, there is so much more here for us. Like maybe I can't snowboard for three hours straight on my second try. Maybe my leg is gonna cramp up and I'm gonna have to sit while everybody else goes and does things but I don't want to waste time letting that color the way I think about my life and who I am. I don't want to waste time thinking that I am the victim in this story instead of someone who will always find a way to get through things who will always find a way one way or another to persevere. I know that is who I am. I know that is who all of us can be. And I don't know that I've ever had a moment before when I was truly deep in that that self-pity where it wasn't like I should be thinking about the things I have and the things I should be grateful for but it was just genuine awe and wonderment and gratitude for being here for being able to even friggin try snowboarding in the first place like that's cool that's really cool and at the risk of sounding cheesy I'm gonna say this I'm really excited to like be alive on this planet. Um I haven't been able to say that for many many many years of my life I've spent so much time not wanting to be here anymore and really battling rough mental health issues and having a hard time what felt like all the time and right now for this moment I have this breath of fresh air where I'm realizing that even though I may not be physically capable of some things though certain activities may not be available to me in no way does that actually restrict what I can do or who I can be I just might have to pivot a little bit you know I don't know it's just a really cool moment for me I really have a vendetta against gratitude and positivity culture when it gets toxic like nine times out of ten I have found that if someone's struggling if someone's having a hard time it is so counterproductive to tell them to be grateful for things or to be like well think of what you do have or other people have it worse because that's not generally how human psychology works like our experiences and our feelings our emotions are valid where they're at it's just how do we work out of those and I finally had this moment of breakthrough of being like I get it now I'm actually grateful I'm actually feeling a little bit of joy for everything I still can do even in this moment where I am very frustrated that there's one thing I can't do maybe being alive in the experience of life though it comes with oh so many hiccups is actually pretty damn awesome all of that being said leads so perfectly into today's video sponsor like I said at the beginning of the video our sponsor today is Shadows Edge which is a mobile game might be thinking Joe you're not really a gamer are you why are you talking about a mobile game because this one is legitimately awesome so Shadows Edge which is loading as we speak is a game that was created specifically to help especially young people develop resilience and good mental health and coping skills which is incredible and not only that it's a really fun game you're going around the city and doing things like painting and journaling to help bring things back to life and what an amazing way to gamify good mental health practices I know you already know this but you know the movies we watch the games we play the things that we do impact how we see the world and so having something that's actually fun and enjoyable and is a game to do but is also encouraging people in the direction of what some good mental health skills could be for them in the real world is incredible but in reality it is it is a weird and really challenging world right now and helping people with their mental health is vital and Shadows Edge does a fantastic job of that so I am putting a link to download it down below clicking that link will help to support this channel as it shows that people are engaging with what I'm talking about but way more than that I would honestly really really encourage you to check this out or perhaps if you have kids tell them about it tell your friends kids about it whatever it might be I do think it is a very positive thing in our world and I'm happy to be working with this company so thank you Shadows Edge like I said link is down below if you want to hit that download it check it out let me know what you think are you a gamer are you a game person I've been getting into some games lately but I'm pretty new to the whole world of playing games I was a very boring child instead of playing video games I was busy sewing my own Lord of the Rings costumes a little tidbit of information about me for you thank you so much for watching this video thank you for hanging out with me today thank you for hearing me talk about a cool moment that I had if it sparked any thoughts for you I would love to hear them in the comment section down below to my amazing and generous patrons over on Patreon thank you so much for your continued generosity and support you are the reason I can continue to do this thank you if you're interested in what Patreon is there is a link on screen also linked down below but most importantly to you watching this video right now thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today you could be anywhere in the world doing anything else and you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that I love you guys I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video can I do it can she do it I made it through an entire video without spilling any coffee on myself or explicit words are hard expensive electronics I feel like I probably deserve a medal at this point actually by now