Chris 7 - The sinister childhood gambling one

Editors note: fuck this one is dark

To keep the theme of childhood going, I am going to tell a story from my childhood, specifically when I was in middle school around the ages of 9-14. The timeline is fuzzy, so read with grace.

My first memory of CSGO is very fuzzy. From what I can recall, which may be wrong, I was playing on the map de_nuke with Quentin, Lucas, and maybe some others (asian john? [for those who know]).

I was horrible. I had no idea what was going on, and I felt humiliated because I'm pretty sure I did not get a single kill. But this did not sit right with me. I've played Cops n' Robbers on minecraft hypixel, and seen Youtube videos of CSGO, but I still sucked ass. I had to be better.

For the next few months, I would play casual on de_dust2 all day long. I learned the map, and with some courage I started to play competitive. 

I still sucked ass, but I atleast understood the game. I tried my best, gave decent callouts, but ended up getting kicked almost every match for either being a squeaker, or for being complete dogshit at the game. Sometimes, it was both. Regardless, this cycle continued and eventually I begged my dad to buy me CSGO on an alternate account because I got so many 7-day comp bans for getting kicked.

I kept grinding, and started to queue with some friends. I started to get a little better at the game.

As my prefrontal cortex was early in development, I ogled at the site of shiny gun/knife skins that our occasional random player in our lobby had. I began to wonder, why would people every spend money on pixels in a video game? But even worse, I began to wonder, why do I want to spend money to get these shiny pixels for myself?.

Regardless of the reasoning, the inkling was swimming around in my adolescent mind, and I was hooked. I started to watch Youtube videos of CSGO players unboxing knives and screaming into their microphone. I did research on what made certain patterns of these skins more desirable and thus more expensive. I knew the case system to unbox these rare skins were literally just gambling, but truly I did not care. I was just a naive little squeaker.

On my 11th or 12th birthday I received a $50 Steam gift card from my parents. A spark was ignited in my mind instantaneously. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I invited an old neighbor to my house, Seth Merrill, and I ripped the entire $50 gift card into CSGO cases. I sat on the edge of my shiny bright red plastic chair, and Seth derped around in a random kitchen chair I pulled up for him next to my computer. It was time. Case after case, key after key, I essentially donated my birthday money to Valve (the creators of CSGO). I got absolutely nothing. My total unboxed skins totaled an astounding $3. I felt defeated. My birthday was ruined. The spark began to dim.

A year or two passed, but I continued to play CSGO pretty much all day everyday. My prefrontal cortex was developing rapidly and I was beginning to realize that cases are literally just a scam. But that did not stop me. It's gambling after all. I watched more CSGO on Youtube, and lots of these Youtubers would also make gambling videos. Some would just open CSGO cases, and others would post videos of them winning thousands of dollars on online gambling websites that used CSGO skins as their form of currency. As the sands of time revealed the truth, it turns out many of these Youtubers actually owned the sites they were winning on, essentially creating false gambling advertisements targeted towards children. But again, this did not stop me. The fire raged on.

I am not trying to frame this as if I am a victim of this. In fact, I believe I got the good ending of this story. For this next part, you will see how my good ending may have come at a truly sinister cost greater than I could ever fathom.

I'd like to zoom into one specific Youtuber: McSkillet. He was a pioneer of his time, creating the infamous "Top 10 Most Expensive Skins & Rare Weapons 2015! Counter Strike Rarest Knives & Skins". This video put CSGO skins on the map, and from the day this video was uploaded the skin community exploded in popularity. People could not wrap their heads around why people would spend millions of dollars on purely cosmetic pixels in a video game.

Much like other CSGO youtubers in his time, he would also go on to make his own gambling website and help a lot of other creators with their sites. His site was called CSGOKingdom. A fun little trick that these websites would use to to make gambling an actual habit of its users, would be to introduce free daily cases for every user. These cases were pretty much guaranteed to pay out a grand total of a few cents per open, but I believe the real motive was just to get as many repeat website visitors as possible.

And therefore, it worked. Everyday I would play CSGO and find a new gambling website to open my free cases on. Everyday I would get a few pennies richer. CSGOKingdom ended up making McSkillet hundreds of thousands of dollars every single month. Its gambling after all.

But one day, something was different. I did my usual routine. I go on CSGOKingdom, open my free case, and click around to the live opening feed of what is being unboxed currently on the site. I vicariously won and lost thousands of dollars through the live opening feed. 

But after scouring this live feed for some time everyday, I always I watched the same user, open the same case, and receive the same outcome. On this day I decided to click on this specific live opening and see what it was. As it turns out, CSGOKingdom had a neat little feature where you could actually make your own case and choose the skins you wanted to unbox, in which the site would calculate the odds for you. Of course it was still rigged heavily against you, but its the same little gimmick that carnival games use to make you feel like you have more control than you really do.

But this one case was... different. By some miracle, whether he was a site administrator flying under the radar, or he just found some bug in the calculations used to create your own case, the odds actually favored you. To be specific, the case had a 99.9% chance of unboxing a $50 skin at the time, a Desert Eagle Blaze. The weird part was that this case costed $40 to open. Therefore, you were almost guaranteed to profit $10 every time you open this case. Being a little wiser at this time, I assumed nothing of this, and went to bed.

7 days passed.

Roughly a week later, I was playing duo-queue with Kyle Musto and I nonchalantly mentioned this funny little case I found to him. He instantly asked me to find the case so he could see it for himself. So, I went back to the live feed, and there it was. The same guy, opening the same case, getting the same outcome. I sent Kyle the link and without hesitation he goes "alright I deposited my knife into the website lets open these cases". I was dumbfounded, but watched his screen in disbelief. It actually worked. Every time he opened this case, he profited $10. Without much thought I instantly deposited my knife as well, worth around $70 at the time. 

We were fucking ecstatic. The fire was not just raging, it was a fucking inferno.

CSGOKingdom had a feature where you could open 10 of the same case at the same time, so we were essentially making $100 every single time we clicked the yellow "Unbox" button. Our balance on the website grew to thousands. I couldn't believe it. As soon as I hit about $3,000 of site balance, I withdrew one of the most iconic CSGO skins from the site, an M4A4 Howl in field-tested condition. This skin is really something special but that's for another blog. Regardless, it was fucking working. The only thing between us and 100 more dollars was waiting on that stupid case unboxing animation to be over. 

Kyle was a bit more timid with his withdrawals, and he was simply just stacking up site balance. I need to fact check with him, but I believe his site balance peaked at around $7,000.

Editors Note: As stated before, a single Desert Eagle Blaze was worth around $50 back then. Today, a single one is worth $700. If we just simply decided to withdraw the $7,000 worth of Desert Eagle Blazes, they would now be worth $98,000. Oh well, we all should've bought bitcoin too.

But alas we were blinded by the inferno. The live opening feed quickly turned into chaos. This case was not only being spammed by us, but now with it littered all over the live feed, I'm absolutely sure that others caught on as well.

Our site balance was frozen before we could withdraw anything else. But the damage was done.

A lingering thought I have always have to this day was: who was the Robinhood that created this case, and how much money has he made? He was disciplined, not cluttering up the live feed, and I can only imagine how much money he stole from this online casino.

The truth is, I felt guilty. Casinos are not the most ethical business, however being so young my moral compass was spinning. But truthfully I did not care because I was able to make more money than I knew what to do with. I was like 13 what the fuck do you even do with $100 at that age?

We made some good money, and this loss was really nothing compared to the millions of dollars that McSkillet would go on to make with various different gambling websites.

But now, we have to talk about McSkillet. This is where it gets grim.

He was only about 16 when he started making youtube videos, and was millionaire from creating gambling websites at 17. He bought a 2014 McLaren, and on the outside, everything seemed fine. But as the world would soon be horrified to find out, he was not fine. Maybe it was the fame, maybe it was the money, but his mental health deteriorated very quickly. His family started to notice, and even tried to get the police involved after he started to imply he was invincible and how he can do whatever he wants, stating "the cops bullets cant hurt me anyway". Despite this, the police did not do anything, somehow stating that there was no clear intention to hurt others or himself.

On August 23rd, 2018, 18 year old Mcskillet, real name Trevor J. Heitmann, purposefully drove himself onto the wrong way of a highway and quickly reached speeds of over 100mph. He crashed, resulting in not only his death, but the death of a mother and her 12-year old child. May they rest in peace and I truly hope all the surrounding people and their families are remaining strong to this day. This should have never happened, and it's a shame that the police department did not fully grasp the severity of the mental-health situation that Trevor was in. Regardless, I think such an act of negligent endangerment of other people is not excusable no matter the circumstances. He should have gotten the help he needed, but of course its never truly that simple. Again, rest in peace to those who lost their life.

Now I do not want to be insensitive to the tragic loss of life that happened by making my blog about this subject, but after this news came out in 2018 I had no idea how to feel. Was I somehow to blame? Was he secretly in debt and I contributed to his monetary losses? He was making millions of dollars, surely I didn't contribute to any potential losses, right?  What was the real cost of that M4A4 Howl? Was it really just a mental health issue that went unnoticed for far too long? Am I somehow an accidental accomplice to this horrific event?

These questions used to haunt me everyday. It wasn't until about 8 months ago when more information came out on his mental health situation that gave me some clarity. If you are reading this and hate my guts and/or you are a certain someone with connections to federal investigators I urge you to please watch this video(embedded below) for more information on the topic. In reality I am in no way involved in this event and I just wanted to selfishly mention that to clear my name. Since then, I have came to the conclusion that I was not an accidental accomplice to this, and that his deteriorating mental health was the sole contributor to his horrific actions.

But no one will ever truly know. All we know is that McSkillet's passing and influence will forever be remembered by those that played CSGO in the early days. As for the mother and daughter killed, and their family, my heart and the CSGO communities heart will aways be there for them.

May they rest in peace.

Chris 5: The interactive one.

I present to you... A word search.

Every member in the blog has one word. Your goal is not to find every word, but instead to find YOUR word. 

Essentially, to find your word, you must imagine this: In my brain, there are boxes for each of you. In your box is all of the memories and thoughts I have ever had with you. Your goal is to stick your hand in the box and randomly pull out the right word.  

Your word is created based upon an interaction you have had with me. It could be an inside joke, a common word/phrase, the subject of a recent conversation, a memorable event that we have both been in attendance, or simply just an adjective that describes you. It could even be none of these at all! 

If you find your word, please send it in the discord, or message me privately. I will react accordingly.

Good luck.

*Only active members have a word: JP, August, Nathan, Quentin, Lucas, Kedrick, Katie, and Andra.

Chris: 4 - hey I have some designs idea for wojo can u print them on a shirt for me and give me some of the profit????? bet hmu

Blog TLDR; screen printing good and fun and learn it today for a challenge! but hard. 

hi guys sorry idk what happened I heard a loud snap and then my body turned into dust until a strange portal opened up with a glowing sparkly orange border. All of a sudden all I could see was what I can only describe as a "Quathruphus" and a handsome voice asking me "you know it's your day right".

Ever wondered how your favorite T Shirt was printed? Perhaps on April 1st at 3:03PM EST you found yourself initiating checkout for an awesome bootleg counter strike tee from your favorite clothing brand! Whatever the case may be, knowing how graphic tees are printed can be surprisingly valuable information that can save you some money when shopping, ensuring that the clothes you are buying have a medium of print that is long-lasting. 

I'm going to cover 3 main types of printing, then go in depth on my favorite (and arguably the best) method. If ur bored just skip to screen printing cuz it's coolest. 

DTG (Direct to Garment)

DTF (Direct to Film)

Screenprinting (awesome and unnecessarily complicated)

Direct to Garment (DTG) printing uses a literal printer, like one that you would use to print an essay on computer paper. But instead of paper, you use a shirt(or any other garment). DTG printing is fairly cheap, but a DTG printer itself is very very expensive. Like multiple thousands of dollars at times. It processes color similar to how a normal printer would as well, allowing for millions of different colors. This is an important detail that is commonly overlooked when people are first designing logos or really anything to put on a garment. The amount of colors used in a design is in fact imperative to your ideal printing method. However, although this may seem like a best option for a printing something like a full-color photograph on a shirt, the longevity of the print is often lackluster. Given a few washes of the printed garment in a residential laundry machine, and just about a single cycle in a dryer, your print will start to crack and peel heavily. And due to the movement of the human body, and the average persons disregard for the recommended care instructions on their clothes, the print will look like dogshit in just a few weeks.  Although often times this cracking is added into the design itself because sometimes it looks cool.

DTG TLDR; cheap print yay many colors = very bad quality :(

peeling print

dtg printer

Direct to Film (DTF) printing uses a heat transfer sheet, that also requires a special printer. However, unlike DTG printers, a DTF printer will spit out your design on a special sheet of vinyl paper, not directly on the shirt. Once you get your vinyl paper with your design on it, you plop it on top of your desired shirt and use a heat press to apply lots of heat and pressure simultaneously. (~310 degrees fair-and-height for about 15 seconds). After releasing the pressure, you peel the sheet to leave only your design, embedded into your shirt. Boom. Colors are processes similarly to a DTG print as well. But yet again, DTF printing falls short for many of the same reasons DTG does, with some added problems. Firstly, print cracking after a few washes is a common problem. Secondly, if not pressed hard enough or hot enough, parts of your design can simply fall off. For example, if you print the word "Blog" using DTF, entire letters can fall off your shirt without you even realizing it. Before long, people will be raving about your underground knowledge of the brand "Blo".

DTF TLDR; simple and intuitive, quality bad, but good for niche prints like neck tags

this DTF printer costs over $35,000!

a man peels a heat transfer

Now, allow me to explain screen printing.

Here we go. Also no more TLDRs

As the name suggests, screen printing uses a screen. A screen is just a mesh, like a kind of mesh that surrounds a pool in a house. This mesh was originally made of silk, which is cool. But now its normally polyester because plastic is awesome! Its stretched really really tight around a hollow aluminum frame(like a normal picture frame {I was gonna say picture a picture frame, thought that sounded silly}), normally by a machine. Or by hand using some clamps, a staple gun, and some super glue on a wooden frame. However, you should know that not all screens are created equal. Every screen has a "mesh count" which is equal to the amount of holes in the mesh per square inch. 

Pretty much: 

higher mesh count = more holes

more holes per square inch = more detail per print

but more holes per square inch = smaller holes = less ink per print

less holes per square inch = bigger holes = more ink per print

aluminum screen

a visualization of the amount of microplastics found in the human brain according to recent autopsies. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-human-brain-may-contain-as-much-as-a-spoons-worth-of-microplastics-new-research-suggests-180985995/)

DIY wooden screen

Now that you are familiar with what a screen even is, we start the first step of screen printing. 

You have to clean it. Dust and grime gets in these tiny little holes which will clog your screen and cause your emulsion to not coat the screen correctly. 

Now for my savvy readers; you may be thinking to yourself, what is emulsion? If you're August, you're probably thinking "Shit, I just set up my screen and forgot my thermodynamically unstable, yet kinetically stabilized colloidal dispersion of immiscible liquid droplets, maintained by amphiphilic surfactants at the liquid–liquid interface to minimize interfacial tension and prevent coalescence via DLVO-theory-governed repulsive forces!". 

Essentially screenprinting emulsion is just a thick liquid that hardens when a strong UV light source makes contact with it for long enough. 

After waiting 3-4 hours for your screen to be completely dry, you are ready to coat your screen with this emulsion. In a dark room, light a candle or use some special non-UV light bulbs, and pour your emulsion into a scoop-coater. A scoop-coater (scooper) helps you get an even distribution of emulsion when coating your screen. After filling your scoop-coater about 1-2cm deep, it's time to coat. Evenly disperse your emulsion in the scooper, and lets go! 

Hold your screen at a 45 degree angle against the floor. Hold your emulsion-filled scoop coater very still at the bottom of your screen, and allow angle it downwards to allow gravity to push the emulsion down to make contact with your screen. Now, in one moderately swift motion, slide the scooper from the bottom to the top of the screen, making sure to keep the scooper at the same angle against your screen the whole time. Repeat this process on the other side. What? See pictures

this guy isn't even doing the 45 degree nonsense. maybe ive been doing it wrong all along. oh well! 

Fun fact: Every scooper has two edges: one dull and one sharp. When coating emulsion with the dull side, the emulsion is outputted more heavily. When coating with the sharp side, the emulsion is outputted thinner. Thus, the dull side could be seen as more beginner friendly since it's a little less precise and reactive to noob movements.

Now that your screen is coated, leave it to dry overnight with the flat side facing down. Be sure to not expose it to any light unless you want to do this all over again. (remember its light-sensitive)

12 hours passes. It's time to "burn" your design into your emulsion coated screen.

Set up a 500W halogen lamp roughly 12 inches away, parallel from your screen.

Print your design on a transparent sheet of paper, available at staples for about $0.75/print.

Lay this transparency sheet on top of the emulsion, and get ready to blast it with light. You want your transparency in the middle of your screen usually.

Turn on the lamp for the EMRET (emulsion manufacture recommended exposure time). This can range anywhere from 10 seconds to 45 minutes depending on your emulsion and the thickness of your coating.

a man has a DIY exposure setup.

you can also just pay $700 for an exposure unit for speedy sub-10 second burns. very worthy investment for commercial level printers.

Great, you have burned your first screen. Proceed to take it out of your exposure setup and simply spray it with some high pressure water. Your design should quickly wash out, with the emulsion staying hard. Congrats! You made a stencil and it only took 48 hours. Now wait another 3 hours for it to air dry.

a man uses a bathtub to wash out his burnt screen. I hope it doesn't stain!

But it's important to understand why we just did this, and why did I need to print my design on a transparent sheet of paper? Well, the emulsion is light sensitive like I already mentioned. The black ink on the transparency sheet essentially blocks the light from hitting ONLY those parts of the screen, which allows you to easily wash out the emulsion after you burn all around it. Boom stencil.

Amazing! You are now ready to print. Im tired of writing details im so hungry. cover your screen in ink, put your shirt under the screen, and push the ink thru in one swift motion. make sure your screen is NO FARTHER than the height of a quarter (1/16th inch) above your shirt. (see off-contact distance in figure below)

please follow this VERY simple graphic to explain the printing process.

flooding screen with ink

pressing ink thru screen

After each print, you need to dry/cure your ink with a flash dryer or heat press to ensure that it reaches the optimal temperature to minimize risk of cracking after washing or drying. Use the POWBMRCS (Plastisol or Water Based Manufacturing Recommended Curing Specifications) for this step. Plastisol ink is plastic based, and will never dry until you cure it. This is convenient because you can walk away from a print job for a week and continue a week later without washing out the screen. But it's bad because usually plastisol ink has a very shiny and rubbery texture to it, sometimes mimicking a DTF print. Water based ink is petroleum based. Just kidding it's water based, obviously. Based on what? Water based ink is good because the ink truly sits inside the fibers of the shirt without creating a super rubbery or shiny print. But either way, screen prints will age beautifully when the ink is dried/cured correctly, with the ink cracking slowly and developing character based on how the wearer of the garment moves their body everyday.

flash dryer for drying/curing ink

A moment.

GREAT JOB!!!!! You have screen printed a one-color design. Repeat all steps for each individual color of your design. 

Chris: 3 - the first wojo one

I have avoided talking solely about Wojo thus far because it consumes my mind and daily life more than anything else ever has. But for the past week straight its quite literally the only thing that i have been thinking about and working on. So its really the only thing I think I could write about right now.

But what does that even mean. Its a fucking clothing brand. I'm like drop shipping right

Despite the comical remarks I am actually not drop shipping. In fact as of November before I partnered with a local 3PL, (Third Party Logistics) I used to clutter my house with boxes of inventory until I couldn't move and ship them all out by hand. The drives to USPS with my car full to the brim of packed orders were some of the largest dopamine hits I have ever experienced. Nothing will ever beat pulling into the employee-only area in the back of the post office to drop off hundreds of orders while listening to My Way by Frank Sinatra. Always called for a cheeky victory cigar.

But those days are over. As I stated earlier I partnered with a 3PL here in Tallahassee that is owned by fellow FSU students. They essentially handle all aspects of fulfillment for me for the price of a few bucks an order. After partnering with them I was dumbfounded by how much more free time I had after every drop. So naturally I started playing Rust xD. But regardless one thing I have come to realize about owning a business is that the work will ALWAYS expand to fill available time. Doors were closed and now new doors were opening. The machine rages on. But what does prepping for a drop even look like?

Obviously, I need something to sell. So normally I make something called a "tech pack", formally known as a Technical Package. This is essentially a 10 page pdf file describing the garment I want my manufacturer to construct, and is fairly time consuming to make. The first page consists of the front and back of the garment, with an overview of all of the custom details. The rest of the pages go in depth on each detail. For instance the color/wash id like to achieve, ALL of the measurements, any custom hardware, fabric details, etc. 

Once the tech pack is sent to my manufacturer, they (hopefully) inquire about any missing details and confirm with me to specify any vague information I may have included. Usually for things like colors or washing I like to ask them to send pictures of a similar garment they have constructed for a different client. This is because they often will just assume to use the cheapest option for any missing details. I learned this the hard way on one of my first bulk orders for corduroy pants. I forgot to mention the depth of the front pockets, and when I received them they were all very, very shallow. Luckily this was only on the samples, which I will cover now.

Sampling is essentially what all of this is called. Because ordering hundreds of units without knowing what the final product will look like is a little risky, the factory usually has a separate section reserved for creating these singular pieces before bulk runs are made. Not only that, but samples allow me to market and advertise pieces before they go on sale. That way I can gauge the demand and make an educated guess on how many units to order. Now, lets imagine the first sample I receive is perfect. we can start the bulk production.

Production takes about 30-50 days depending on the complexity of the garment, and delivery can take anywhere from 1-6 weeks depending on if you choose to ship by air or cargo ship. This timeline is fucking brutal because it forces you to plan multiple months ahead for collections. 

Now that you have your inventory, its time to update the back-end so everything goes smoothly when they go for sale. My brand uses a drop-based model that relies heavily on setting a release date for my site to be unlocked once everything is ready. As it turns out a majority of my revenue comes from drop day, so its imperative it goes smoothly. Therefore about a week or two before every drop I lock my site, and have an obnoxious SMS signup form for people to give me their phone numbers. I take advantage of this by creating an Early Access system, which essentially gives people benefits for being some of the first to buy. Meaning, 30 minutes before the website is unlocked to the public, I send out an alert to everyone on the SMS list with a website password, that unlocks the site and gives them free shipping, plus dibs on their desired products. This creates a nice FOMO effect that translates into sales fairly well.

One thing that I have a love-hate relationship with is marketing. I love it because the psychology of why people buy the things they do is very interesting to me. I hate it because a lot of people are blindly loyal to shitty brands and are willing to overpay for them. I love it because I can take advantage of exactly that. I hate it because seeing hundreds of tasteless advertisements in my face everyday against my will makes me angry. I love it because that gives me the opportunity to make my own, tasteful ads. But ultimately, I hate it because no matter how hard I try, I know exactly the kind of brainless ads I have to make to succeed. The modern artist has no other option other than being a content creator. The art can speak for itself, but it will almost always be overshadowed by slop that the algorithm prefers. Working with an advertising agency has given me this perspective, because although they take care of me very nicely and give me exact examples of the content I should make for a well performing ad, it's just not what I thought I signed up for when becoming an entrepreneur. But boo hoo its not really that bad. I just have to swallow my ego and do a corny voiceover on a 20 second Instagram reel.

Really there is much, much, much, more that goes into Wojo but that's my brain dump for today hope you enjoyed. Drop day this Saturday! Restocking old stuff even though I don't like it anymore so I can make enough money for new projects this summer and fall. Godspeed.

 

Chris 2 - Aruba

 

“And I'm sorry for being late again. I just didn’t know I had to be on time, every single time."
—Headache, 2 minutes and 6 seconds into Truisms 4 Dummies

Given the flow chart i saw my day was March 10th and after a four-second glance at the calendar last week i saw that the 10th was on Thursday… in April. Not March. Oops

Whatever!!!!!!!!! Better late than never. I’m on island time baby idgaf!!!

Since last Friday I’ve been in Aruba with my beautiful girlfriend, Andra. We’ll be here until March 14th, this Friday.

Here are some notable mentions thus far 

I’ve discovered mojitos. Fire 🔥

This place is awesome. I never realized until now how cozy the entire island is. It’s only a 20 minute drive (13 miles) across the entire island. The distance i drive from Pinellas to Tallahassee for FSU is 17x the length of the island, at about 220 miles. Wow

Aruba is a desert. Literally everything is imported here, flamingos included. The only “useful” thing that naturally occurs here is Aloe.

The lizards here are massive and have blue tails. I think they might just be salamanders.

I’ve eaten so much f*cking shrimp this week. I’ve taken a real liking to shrimp ever since i went to Jacksonville with Andra for Valentine’s Day (ahh, the city of love). Aruba has confirmed that i do in fact enjoy shrimp, but Jax still does it better.

We are staying at a Renaissance Marriott Resort Time Share, thanks to the perks of Andra’s corporate finance girly job at Marriott.

There is soooo much to mention i can’t risk being more than 24 hours late so here's 3 pictures we have taken to paint a picture for you.

But first, Andra’s cameo: 

Hi blog. First things first, Chris didn’t discover mojitos on his own he tried mine first because it’s my favorite drink. 😾 Every night Chris makes me watch a rust YouTube video with him because he says “it’s the only way to disconnect.” Sometimes he even has to keep the videos on when we get it on. I have hidden the vape at least 20 times as well, he said it takes him back to those days in his prime. We have a competition going on for whoever works out the most gets a gift and/or shoutout this month, so tomorrow I’m going to sneak out while he’s sleeping. I love Christopher (Alpha) Wojnar. thanks for the cameo blog. 

Chris here guys, that blew my blog out of the water. Hope you guys enjoyed. The rust bit was the hardest I’ve laughed in a while. It’s a bit i swear guys please

Now pictures:

Chris: 1 - Just another penny in the fountain.

authors note: sorry for late. this shit wasn't even supposed to be my topic but the dots were taking too long to connect and I kept derailing so I kept some of what I wrote and chose a simpler topic. to be quite shamefully honest this is the first time ive written my own original thoughts down for a few hours straight since ChatGPT came out. I was also teaching someone to screen print at the same time. forgive me.

    Every single day you have ever lived, you make seemingly simple decisions. Some days you are more in control than others, maybe because you're not feeling very disciplined, but especially for your early years since you simply cannot make certain decisions yet. An individual of greater ability and wisdom hopefully decided to nurture and take care of you. Your mom wiped your ass, and your dad decided you needed a big breakfast with a glass of milk. But you still took an action. You either drank the milk, or you wailed at the sight of your pacifier until your elders made the choice for you. 

    Then one day, in the middle of a highschool biology quiz you look around the room. Most of your peers have their face down scribbling in their answers. Others are dumbfounded by the quiz, instead counting the tiles on the ceiling. 

    You come to an epiphany. One day, every single person in this room, including you, no longer had to consciously think about their everyday actions. You no longer have to consciously think about which fingers grip your pencil. You no longer have to consciously eat breakfast. You no longer have to consciously wipe your ass. You have done these actions so many times that your subconscious takes over. Through hundreds of repetitions of consciously taking a shit your brain essentially flips on autopilot for the entire activity. This autopilot is just your brain using energy more efficiently. The same applies to your hobbies. Cranking 90s in Fortnite becomes automatic after enough repetitions. There is no longer a need for your conscious energy to be wasted on simple tasks. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of your daily actions end up taking on this same principle. Your behaviors form into habits that stack onto each other like building blocks. Your brain knows that when you wake up, it's time to brush your teeth, eat breakfast, drive to work, eat lunch, and mindlessly continue this routine until you go to bed. Sure you have cues of hunger and monetary gain that motivate you to make most of these decisions, but habits are far more linked than you may realize. Of course we still have free will, but in a way we are all still slaves to our behavior patterns that we have accidentally engraved in our subconscious mind.

    Stick with me here. If you imagine the universe in itself as one giant living being, you can see this same energy saving principle in effect very clearly. Fingerprints are eeriely similar to the rings of a tree trunk, the roots of a tree closely resemble the veins on your arm. Given enough repetitions of evolution the universe turns on autopilot for biological formation and these similarities ensue. This aligns with The Principle of Least Action, which states that "the path taken by a system between two points in space and time is the one that minimizes the action. (In simple terms, nature often follows the most "efficient" or "optimal" path). I do not want to derail this too hard by mentioning the universe as a living being, but I just want to further reinforce the notion that repetition often leads to efficiency. 

But here is where I think it gets really interesting.

    Religion by itself is a topic for another blog, but I am still going to dance around it. For many religions praying is a very common practice.  You repeat a mantra in faith it will bring you some change or as an act of worship to a higher being. For this blog, I'm focusing on the former. This is an extremely conscious and one-pointed activity. Your attention is focused completely on the mantra at hand, and your subconscious wanders, visualizing the stated mantra in relation to recent events. It could be a wrongdoing you feel remorseful of, or hope for good fortune and health for you and your loved ones. The end goal is ultimately the same; for a higher power to help you become the person you wish to be. However, for some others like myself who are not religious, mantras can still be commonplace. 

    A couple years ago I started repeating to myself, out loud: "I will succeed with Wojo. I will succeed with Wojo. I will succeed with Wojo. I will succeed with Wojo." To this day, the first dozen repetitions still cringe me out. However with enough conscious focus of visualizing myself doing specific tasks like creating graphics, designing clothes, doing photoshoots, getting sales etc, the mantra is spoken with more and more confidence. Even if my motivation is low, at the end of my repetitions, my confidence that I will succeed with Wojo is unwavering. I have came to the conclusion that I will succeed through the actions I have visualized, and my subconscious is skewed just a little bit more in my favor. In other words, it's a little push for my conscious to make productive decisions. And for what it's worth, it works. I make a decent living off of Wojo and I plan to continue to do so.

    Some call it praying, others call it manifesting, and others, affirmations. The point is, nobody can deny the impact it has. You are consciously repeating an action, in hopes of purposefully reprograming your subconscious. 

I don't expect you to have read this and had your mind blown. 

All I want you to do is start repeating your goals out loud to yourself when you are alone. 

Firstly, sit in silence. 

Think of just one metric of personal success you hope to achieve. 

It could literally be anything. Just make sure you can imagine yourself completing the task with as much detail as possible. 

For instance if your goal is to workout everyday, repeat to yourself every morning "I will go to the gym at 11AM" (more specific=better). 

At the same time, visualize yourself driving to the gym, pulling into the parking lot, stretching, doing a bicep curl, etc.

Only stop repeating the mantra when you are 100% confident that you will complete the task at hand.

Try this everyday for a week straight and observe how your desired task becomes easier to complete.

Or don't. I dont really care it just works for me. It's just another penny in the fountain.

P.S. Happy birthday N8 !!!!!!!!!!!