I learned to juggle in spite of myself

A friend suggested that I do a blog entry on how I learned to juggle. The story has some relevance to the previous post, so this seems to be a good time.

I juggle clubs before a Big Toss-Up at the 2015 Not Quite Pittsburgh Juggling Festival. The photo is by Bill Allen.

I had an internship at the Muskegon Chronicle in Muskegon, Mich., during my junior year of college. Bob Burns, one of the reporters there, kept three Pinky rubber balls on his desk and juggled them pretty regularly. It was a first time I ever saw someone who wasn't a performer juggle, and I was fascinated. 

I'd always loved the circus, and this was an everyday person doing a circus skill. When Bob juggled, I gushed about how marvelous it was. He juggled, and I gushed. He juggled, and I gushed. He juggled, and I gushed. At some point, probably very early on, he offered to teach me how to juggle.

I am the queen of the uncoordinated people, so I assumed I'd never learn to juggle -- despite the fact that the Muskegon newsroom was the first place where I heard the saying about what happens when you "assume." So our new routine became he juggled, I gushed, he offered to teach me, and I said something along the lines of "I'd never be able to learn that."

Bob kept insisting he could teach me. I kept insisting I wouldn't be able to learn. Finally, I decided to let him try teaching me, so that he could see he was wrong. But it turned out I was the one who was wrong. I didn't know it then, but Bob was using the basic juggling pattern, called the cascade. Once he broke it down into steps for me, it looked as if it was something I could learn if I worked at it.

And work at it I did! While I was wrong about not being able to learn, I did have a fairly long learning curve. Some people can learn the cascade in a few minutes. It took me about a week of diligent practice every night in a closed-off part of my apartment so I didn't have to chase the balls very far. (At that point, I hadn't heard of beanbags.)

Eventually, I learned how to juggle and never was so glad to be wrong in my life. Not too long ago, I looked up Bob so I could contact him to thank him properly for teaching me to juggle. I have manners, so I'm sure I thanked him at the time, but I would have had no idea then about the impact learning to juggle was going to have on my life. I couldn't have thanked him enough for the immensely important gift he gave me.

I found him online and emailed him about how learning to juggle affected my life -- which has been filled with meetings of various juggling clubs, juggling festivals throughout this country and in Canada and Great Britain, and friends I never would have met if I didn't juggle. And I told him about his "juggling grandkids," the hundreds of kids I've taught to juggle over the years. I could teach them because he taught me.

Bob responded that he hadn't juggled in years. Because of my email, he said, maybe he would start again.

No excuses!

First-grader Anaya Ellick is my newest hero.

She’s the girl without hands who made news recently because she won a penmanship contest.

According to The Washington Post: “The 7-year-old does not use prosthetics, yet she does all her own writing in class. She stands at her desk and grips the pencil between her forearms. From that angle, she is able to write with perfect penmanship.” The writing sample accompanying the article is much neater than I or many people could manage.

Clearly, this child doesn’t look at her circumstances and say “I can’t.” And given that Anaya has tried something one might think would be impossible for her and can write really well, the rest of us should not be making excuses when a challenge comes our way.

When I’m teaching juggling, I never let the students say, “I can’t.” I tell them they have to say, “I can’t do that yet.” In part, that is because I know that if I, the queen of the uncoordinated people, could learn to juggle, pretty much anyone can. And, also, I know saying “I can’t,” actually can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. “I can’t” is terminal. “I can’t do that yet” leaves open the possibility that the “can” will happen later.

Even though I’ve been preaching to jugglers in training for years, sometimes, I don’t practice what I preach when it comes to my own life. Reading about Anaya has reminded me that I need to challenge what I think are my limitations.

For the full story about Anaya in The Washington Post, go to http://tinyurl.com/h3jybgx.

Maybe it will have the same effect on you.

An invitation to be part of my community

One thing I really loved about editing the McKnight Journal and the North Journal was the opportunity to be involved in community building.

My favorite compliments about the North Hills weeklies always were something along the line of “Every week, I see the name of someone I know in a story, or I see someone I know in a photo.” Hearing that made me feel great because it summed up what I really wanted to those papers to accomplish. I loved the fact that these papers were community papers and made people feel that they were part of the Ross/West View or McCandless/Marshall/Franklin Park/Bradford Woods community.

Even though I’ve left the papers, I’ve found that in one way or another I want to be involved in building communities.

For a long time, I’ve realized that I stay active in juggling because of the people, not just because I enjoy juggling. After all, I’m a social juggler. I rarely juggle when I’m on my own. Being part of the community of jugglers is really important to me. When I’m with jugglers, that’s when I most feel as if I’m with “my people.”

As I am transitioning out of the newspaper industry and into a new type of communications career, I’ve found that many of the jobs that attract me are those where I see the opportunity to help build a community of some sort. Good internal communications, for example, will help turn a company’s employees into a community. Good external communications will involve community building, too. Good communication is needed for a good community. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the words “communication” and “community” have so much in common.

Becoming involved in the Twitter campaign to save the TV show “Galavant” has introduced me to a new type of community. “Galavant” fandom is a community. Community members realized that someone was trying to profit off another person’s fan T-shirt design, and it was heartening to see all the tweeting to let potential buyers know who the real designer was and how to buy the shirt in a way that supports that person.

Whatever I do in the next stage of my career and life, I want to help build some type of community. It is so important to build bridges, not walls.