 Good morning and happy Saturday, my beautiful internet friends. Welcome to your latest installment of Storytime Saturday. Now, you might be seeing this title and thinking, Joe, a tattoo tour is not a story time. What are you doing here? Well, it is because each one of these tattoos has a story, a little cheesy, I know. And now that I've said that, you really should prepare for the cheese. There's gonna be some cheese puffs in this, very cheesy dripping with cheese kind of stories because everyone in my tattoos has like a deep personal meaning to me. So I wanted to take you through all the tattoos that I have. You guys have only ever seen like, I don't know, maybe 20% of them because most of them are covered all the time. So let me take you through the tattoos that I have and what they mean. This is actually a highly requested video. A lot of people are curious what permanent markings I have on my body. But before we do that, I am trying to get to 100,000 subscribers because you know what, it's a cool number. They send you a cool plaque and it makes me feel official. So if you wanna help me get to that number, I would love that. If you wanna hit subscribe and like on this video. And with that, let's dive in. So let's start with the tattoos that you guys have seen and we'll work our way up to the ones you haven't. This one right here says I refuse to sink. Little anchor there. First of all, before the flood of comments, yes, I know that anchors sink. I know that they do sink to the bottom of the ocean. It's artistic, the whole idea is that like, anchors keep you solid and steady in one place. So just, just go with it. I got this tattoo with one of my very, very best friends a couple of years ago as kind of a commitment to stay afloat for each other. Moving on from there, we have my good friend, the lion. Now, you guys have seen this one in videos before. I got this one just over a year ago and let me talk to you about what it means to me. Cause I told you guys they all have super deep meaning. I feel lame saying this, but we're just gonna dive in. I started drawing a couple of years ago and I found myself drawing a lot of lions. Lions have never been like a thing for me. I just kept drawing them and I started watching a bunch of documentaries about them and I realized after quite a while that the characteristics that we associate with lions are things that I aspired to be. Like I wanted to be someone who was strong and powerful and dedicated and wise and all of those things. And so I decided to get this little puppy. I mean, he's not a puppy, he's a lion. Tattooed on my arm. As a reminder to me on rough days that I am strong, I am powerful and I can get through it. I got it on my forum, which is a pretty obvious place to get a tattoo so that I would see it every day and it would remind me and there have been a number of times where I have had to refer back to it and just remind myself of who I really am. This tattoo I actually got the same day as the lion tattoo. On the back of my left arm, I have a pinky promise with an infinity sign in purple going through. What's this you might ask? Well, I got that tattoo on the same day as the lion. I was actually heading to a retreat for Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence which is an organization that really changed my life. They helped to give me a voice to help talk about some of the rough things that I had been through and I got this tattoo. Glad I shaved my arms this morning. As a promise to myself to keep speaking up for people who don't have a voice or who don't feel like they have a voice yet and to keep talking about difficult subjects and a commitment to not give up on my own story. Looks like I'm wearing like one of those spinning hat things. Anyways, next we have the second tattoo that I ever got. You guys have seen this one before. I got this tattoo right below my collarbone. April 30th, 2012. The word hope stitched. See how it's kind of like stitched with like a needle at the end there. I got this tattoo at a time in my life and on a day that I was, I just didn't want to be alive. Like I was spending every day super suicidal, super depressed and I literally got this tattoo as a safety device for myself because I was not going to let anyone find, this is gonna get a little morbid for a second. I wasn't gonna let anyone find a body of someone who had like given up on themselves and quit life with the word hope tattooed on them. I felt like that was just so ridiculous that I wasn't gonna let that happen and believe it or not, it actually helped. Like actually having this word on my body to remember that there always is hope even if I can't see it has helped me keep hope in mind in days where I had no idea where it was or if it was worth it anymore. A couple months before I got my hope tattoo, I got my first ever tattoo with my brother, Sam. He's one of my best friends. We've been along super well and he's just an amazing, amazing human being. And I wanted my first tattoo to be with him so we actually got matching tattoos on our ribs. Side note, if you're gonna get a tattoo, don't start on one of the most painful, possible places you can get one, but I mean, I didn't know that at the time, so this is what it was. So this is our brother-sister tattoo. We grew up in the forest and so the pine branch was kind of to symbolize where we came from and then we just had brother and sister right there. This one was on April 30th, 2013. You may notice that this one was on April 30th, 2012. This is kind of national joke, it's a tattoo day. I wanted to remind myself no one else was in control of my story. Like I got to write my own narrative no matter what occurred in my life, no matter what happened to me and so I hopped down to the tattoo store and on the other side here we have, I am the hero of this story written right there. I've always loved that concept anyways, that we are the actual main characters in our own drama, in our own story that end to remember to act like it, to remember that we are so much more powerful than we think we are and that we actually do have control of how we act, and what kind of character we wanna be. By the way, I'm looking in the viewfinder and because of the lighting in this room it looks like my hair is like super silver or white. If anyone asks, no I haven't had it redied just yet. It just looks cool today. Or maybe not cool, I'm not sure. Just looks white today. Okay, so this one is actually my most recent tattoo. Brian and I always wanted to get tattoos together and I just realized I have three tattoos with people but they're like three of the most important people in my life so it's cool and we were actually gonna get ring tattoos and then we decided against it and we went with this instead. What we ended up deciding on was chess pieces with jiu-jitsu belts and the date that we got married on them. Brian and I actually met in jiu-jitsu and we played a lot of chess together and we liked the idea of like king and queen and so we decided to kind of merge all those ideas together and get matching tattoo pieces so we have those in the same places on our bodies and then we just wrote the date that we got married as well. Now on to my very last tattoo. This was I think the third one that I got. Yeah, third one. This one is my shoulder piece. The one I think my parents are still most upset at me for getting. They're not super big fans of tattoos, mom and dad, I'm super sorry. I just, I love tattoos. I think that they're really pretty and they're meaningful to me. Now I got this one back in 2012 as well end of 2012. Now this was again not the best time in my life and so I heard these lyrics to a song. The song is by Kat Dahlia and it goes, I don't know the monsters you knew but I'm trying to forget the ones I met too. Maybe you can help me, maybe I can help you. And when I heard the lyrics of that song I was driving around in my car in the forest and I like burst out crying. I was trying to get away from a lot of darkness at that time. I so desperately wanted to help others as well and so this tattoo was kind of an invitation to myself and others to continue to help. You know, I don't know what you've been through, you don't know what I've been through necessarily but we can be there for each other and that was kind of a permanent marker of that on my body. Tattoos and piercings, like my recent nose piercing have always been a really healing experience for me. They've always been something that have helped me move forward or helped me to process something. Honestly, I have no idea what that is. I don't still love the style of the art of every single tattoo that I've gotten. I don't regret a single one of them. I almost look at it like a way of documenting my life. I think about each tattoo that I get and they all mean something to me. Right now I joke that all the tattoos that I have all basically say the same thing. Please let me know in the comment section if that was true or not but like he says that they all say basically to like have hope and don't give up but I feel like they all have like slightly different meanings. Maybe they all do say the same thing but I mean, at least I know what I like, I guess. I mean, it could be worse. So while that concludes the tattoos I presently have onto the next segment of this video which is where I ask for your help. I, like I said, find tattoos healing and helpful and I am planning a cool leg tattoo for my nevin, my stump. Now this is gonna be a ways out. It's gonna be a long-term plan and I think about this for a long time. I've seen some cool designs out there and I'm curious what you guys would think. I've considered some funny ones like a shark eating the bottom of my leg even though a shark has nothing to do with my accident. I've seen one person who do like a giant toenail on the end of their leg and like had a tattoo there. So like their leg was just one giant toenail which is like gross but also hilarious. There are a lot of ideas out there. I generally go with like less funny, more meaningful ones but I'm curious what you guys think I should get. Please let me know any ideas you have in the comment section down below. I'm going to be checking out all your suggestions and looking into them. Thank you for hanging out with me and adding your voice to the tattoo conversation. Do you have any tattoos? Do you like tattoos? Do you hate them? People are very opinionated on this issue and I understand that but I super appreciate your time spent with me this afternoon. If you would do me a quick favor and hit like on this video and subscribe to this channel. It helps this video get out to more people and helps me get closer to 100,000 subscribers which would be really, really cool. I never thought I would get there but we're actually not that far away from it. A huge thank you to all of my patrons for making these videos possible. Thank you guys so much. I love you all as in all of you guys. I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys. 🎵 Hand her from the sky all about... 🎵