Introducing: Congrats, You Played Yourself, or: That time I got cat food stuck up my nose

it's as graphic as you are imagining

I’m Juju, your resident hype girl with a penchant for embarrassing herself and no shame about it, whatsoever.

I’ve created Congrats, You Played Yourself as a celebration of all the glorious ways in which we’ve, well, played ourselves: from the dumb mistakes we’ve made and the jobs we’ve been fired from, to the truly catastrophic shitstorms we’ve seen coming on the horizon and failed to prepare for.

And hopefully: a little of what we learned from all of it, and what happened next.

We’ll laugh. We’ll learn. We’ll make fun of each other a little bit. Maybe we’ll cry. I truly have no idea how this is going to go. I like to imagine this’ll be part comedy, part self-help, part self-roasting, part don’t-be-an-idiot-and-here’s-how-because-I’ve-already-made-that-mistake.

Ideally? I convince friends, family, coworkers and any other willing and brave soul to join me in sharing embarrassing faux pas, blunders, and fuck ups along with the inevitable lessons they learned along the way.

Realistically? It’ll be me, sharing less cat food stories (more on that below) but similarly embarrassing stories and anecdotes to hopefully spark some candid-ass conversation.

Me? I’ve been playing myself since toddler-hood.

When I was 4, I had my first emergency hospital visit. My parents, likely regretting the decision to let me dabble in making my own choices, rushed me there with the growing discernible fear that I, their prized middle child, was unable to breathe. Plopping me down onto a hospital bed, it wasn’t long before a tube was shoved up my nose and I sat front row to watch as, piece by piece, cat kibble was sucked out.

Yup, you read that correctly.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I was an innovator! I had wanted to smell the cat food more closely, and bringing it from bowl to nose to smell it was a tedious process. I realized I could streamline operations by simply by sticking it up my nostril. Innovation!

Little did I know, I had just played myself for the first time.

Here, we’ll make fun of each other — hell, if I don’t hear any cat food jokes after this, y’all are not my target audience — but we’re not here to be mean, or to demean. Shame isn’t a word in my vocabulary, and it shouldn’t be in yours either. We all fuck up. It’s a life certainty just as much as death and taxes are, but hopefully not as painful as either of those.

Congrats, You Played Yourself is here to help you breathe easy again (minus the tube up your nose) or, in other words, put the power back into your own hands. When we own our mistakes, fully and completely, we give ourselves the chance to grow and learn from them. And, hopefully, not repeat them.

Not every story will be as graphic or stupid as literal cat food stuck up my nose, nor will it provide as clear of advice (don’t stick cat food up your nose, idiot). You’ll soon find my cat food story as a way to break the ice of shame and start digging deeper into more layered and complex fuckups.

And so, welcome, fellow players. Let’s get this party started. 

Sign up to join me in laughing and learning, at each other and ourselves. In the meantime, tell your friends, or better yet, got a story you’re willing to share? Hit me with it.