BONUS 9: KISMIF - Finding Freedom in Simplicity

[00:00:02] Hi everyone and welcome to the Monomyth Diaries. I'm Mandi and I'm Karen and we'll be your hosts. We're glad you're joining us. Welcome back to another edition of Monomyth Diaries, Shorts Edition. Welcome back Karen. Today we're going to be talking about a party that I used to go to. It was called the KISMIF party. And what that means is it's keep it simple, make it fun. K-I-S-M-I-F. KISMIF.

[00:00:31] Love it. K-And the premise behind this party was during the holidays we are trying very hard to keep things simple so that you don't get overwhelmed. And during this party each person would get up in front of the group and tell a foolish story, some kind of crazy story that they had done at some point in their life. Wow. K-Yeah. And I remember for the first couple years that I attended this party, these women telling these crazy stories

[00:01:02] of crazy things that they'd done and laughing about it. I couldn't understand it. I could not understand how people could tell stories about themselves and make themselves look foolish. Like they'd made these mistakes, done these crazy things. And I just knew I couldn't do that. I couldn't. I thought, Oh, why would you do this? Why would you tell people crazy things about yourself and make yourself look not perfect? Right? Because back then, this is about 20

[00:01:30] years ago. I couldn't have imagined letting people know I was anything but perfect. How brave were they? They were very brave. And the fact that they thought it was funny was, it just blew my mind. So let me give you an example. After a couple of years of attending this party, I finally got it. I can tell a story about something that I did that was super, super foolish. Um, when I was in my early twenties, I decided that

[00:01:56] I was going to be a big shot and I was going to invite everybody over to my apartment for Thanksgiving. And I was going to cook a turkey myself. I didn't have a clue what I was doing. I'm not going to get in my twenties. What did I know? And so I'm going about my day, the turkey's in the oven and then the smoke detectors start going off. Smoke starts pouring out of my oven. And I

[00:02:21] didn't know that there was a bag inside the turkey that had all the insides in it. I guess I, by the way, I've never cooked a turkey since I have never ever cooked a turkey since. And I have always found a way to get invited to someone else's house. So anyway, I like, I pull this turkey out. It's on fire. It's smoking. It was so embarrassing. It was so, so embarrassing, but I was able to get up and

[00:02:46] tell all these women this crazy story about myself. So, uh, and again, you know, keep it simple was my idea. My idea moving forward was I'm going to keep it simple by going to someone else's house. And if it makes you feel better, man, that would be me. I would have made my turkey on fire. I wouldn't have known to look inside and see like, Oh, I think that was one of the fun things too, is that, you know, after you tell your story, all of these people will be like, Oh, let me tell you about the time that I X, Y, Z. Right.

[00:03:16] So what about you, Karen? Do you have any fun foolish stories? Oh gosh, I have a great foot in the mouth story, which I shared about in my, one of my previous episodes, a part of my personal journey of growth, but I'll share it again for here for those who are laughing. I'll repeat it here again as a refresher.

[00:03:42] This is a moment where I put the biggest foot in my mouth, but it netted me, my husband. So no one saw that. Oh, I know what story you're going to share. Okay. So what happened was I started, I was, I was new and I shared in my episode how I started attending church, which was part of my personal journey of growth. Uh, but I heard there was this new member named Venus who had become part of the church.

[00:04:06] And I was all excited because I was like, Oh, what does a human goddess of love look like? So for a year I was like, you know, going to the different social events and because they were in a different geographic location, we didn't meet up all the time. So every time I was there, I'd go and talk to all the women going like, Oh, is this Venus? Is this Venus? And of course, you know, they're introducing themselves and I'm meeting new people and they were very lovely, but I was like,

[00:04:33] on this mission, I need to see who this real life Venus is. And a year later, I go see one of my, my guy friends. I'm saying hi to him. And then this guy, this big Indian guy, the goatee comes up and he's like, and I'm like, hi, I'm Karen from the West region. And he's like, Oh, I'm Venus. And my first words are, you're Venus, but you're a guy. And then like, Oh my gosh, mortified avoid him for

[00:05:00] another year. And then thankfully he never held it against me. We became friends and from friends, we, you know, started dating and now we're married. That's hilarious. But yes, you can recover. You can recover. Well, I'm very excited that I now know what a goddess of love looks like. Well, I think that it's so important for us to be able to laugh at ourselves. And I'm grateful that

[00:05:28] I have grown over the years to a person who can go, man, I can make a mistake and laugh at it. Keep it simple. Make it fun. Kissmiff. Thanks for joining us. Please share, hit like, subscribe, and follow us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Feel free to email us at monomythdiaries at gmail.com with your monomyth and keep the conversations going. Until next time, heroes, let's journey together through stories.